Can We Legitimately Pray for a Pope's Death?

There's much more packed into this question than at first meets the eye

It all began with (what I thought would be) a non-controversial post on Facebook, later replicated on Twitter. You’d think, after a decade of controversial posting, that I’d know better, but I’m still surprised at certain reactions. Here’s how it ran:

“Cajetan says that the only remedy in the case of a heretical pope is to pray and to have others pray that he will die!” (Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole, O.P., Introduction to the Mystery of the Church [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014], 612). Why are people so wimpy and so easily offended nowadays? If you say this kind of thing in 2024, you can lose your job at a Catholic school. But Cajetan was one of our great theologians, and Soujeole is no lightweight either. Clearly, they are right to say this, and we should have the fortitude to pray for an urgent remedy to an out-of-control disease. To do anything less is to fail in love for Christ and His Church.

Although many understood what I was saying, others quickly attacked me for my “lack of charity” towards the Holy Father, as if to say “How dare you say that someone could or should pray for his death?” One particularly noisy YouTuber thought he was being clever when he posted:

Honest question. Would Peter also say people can pray for the early death of dissenter philosophers who constantly bash the pope, or does this road only go one way. Either way, I won’t be praying for the early demise of anyone – I’m just wondering if there is consistency here.

But this was a silly reaction. Of course he can pray for my death—if he thinks I am a notorious heresiarch who will lead millions astray into eternal perdition. If he’s wrong about that, then such a prayer won’t be answered as prayed. And even if he were right in thinking so, the prayer might still not be answered as prayed, but in some other and better way. In the end, it is God alone who will decide whether and how to answer anyone’s prayer. For hyperpapalist podcasters, I pray only that the scales fall from their eyes about Pope Francis, whom extensive evidence has convinced me is a notorious heresiarch leading millions astray, and therefore, one from whom I beg the Lord to deliver us in His mercy.

Another reaction was positively over-the-top. This YouTuber devoted a podcast to explaining how Kamala Harris and Peter Kwasniewski are — get this — “agents of death.” Kamala, because she supports abortion; me, because I said we could pray for the pope’s death. I’ll come back to that fellow later.

There’s a lot more to this question than meets the eye, as I will proceed to show.