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As reported by Phil Johnson of the Topeka Capital-Journal, January 13, 2012 (link, photo in original):
DELIA — Attired in a black cassock that covered all but the bottom of a pair of red pants and Nike flip-flops, David Bawden on a recent Sunday afternoon reclined on a couch in the living room of his Vatican in Exile, a wooden-frame farm home in southwestern Jackson County, and talked about events that led to what he said was his election as pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
Bawden matter-of-factly reflected on the 21 years that have passed since 1990, when he was voted in as pope by six people who gathered at his parents’ second-hand store in nearby Belvue.
His biggest beef with the Roman Catholic Church, which he said led to his papacy, was its move toward modernism, starting with Vatican II, which included doing away with the traditional Latin Mass.
By now, Bawden has heard the whispers and out-loud criticisms that have come his way since he declared himself the head of the Roman Catholic Church and its 1 billion adherents worldwide.
Yet he remains committed to his papacy, saying it was ordained of God, and that nothing will stop him from being pope.
A book he wrote that was released this past May, “54 years that Changed the Catholic Church: 1958-2012,” chronicles Bawden’s claim to the papacy and also sheds light on where he said the Roman Catholic church went astray.
For his new book, he said, “I discovered some very important information that would help present the case more clearly.”
The 196-page self-published book provided details of Catholic Church changes beginning with the election of Pope John XXIII in 1958.
That pope, and all who followed him, weren’t truly Catholic, Bawden asserts, because of the “pseudo council called Vatican II” that resulted in their elections.
A few faithful Catholics realized they could lawfully take the matters into their own hands and began the restoration of the church, Bawden said.
Some were emboldened by Roman Catholic archbishops who were critical of Vatican II — including Marcel Lefebvre and Ngo-Dihn Thuc.
Bawden, a native of Oklahoma City, came to St. Marys in 1980 after he and his family became members of a breakaway Catholic group known as the Society of St. Pius X.
Bawden in the late 1970s had attended St. Pius X schools but was asked to leave. Despite his efforts to return, he was barred from being a student again.
“There was some infighting in the seminary, and I got in the middle of it,” Bawden said. “I was dismissed because of that.”
While continuing to pursue his vocation, Bawden held fast to his belief that Rome no longer had authority for the Catholic Church, that popes it elected were heretics and therefore the papal position was vacant.
It was Bawden’s belief that if the College of Cardinals wasn’t equipped to elect a pope, the duty fell to laypeople in the church.
Before he staked his claim to the papacy, he outlined his problems with the modern Catholic church in a 1990 book titled “Will the Catholic Church Survive the 20th Century?” He said he wrote the book to appeal to other traditionalists like himself.
After his book was published, he sent notices of an upcoming papal vote to traditionalists around the globe. But only six people showed up for the pivotal vote that took place July 16, 1990.
One was Bawden’s late father, Kennett, who died in 1995. One was his mother, Clara “Tickie” Bawden, 83. One was Bawden himself.
Then there were three others, all of whom, Bawden lamented, since have “fallen away” from the Catholic Church that he leads.
Bawden said he had an inkling he might be voted in as the pontiff that day.
“I thought it was a possibility,” he said. “But it was in God’s hands, who showed up to vote. We had to get the job done.”
More than two decades later, his actual followers are few, he acknowledges, with but one full-time and one part-time student in the Annunciation Seminary he runs out of the house that he shares with his mother.
Yet he says many people — perhaps millions — around the globe share his sentiments and mindset.
Bawden has a presence on the World Wide Web at www.vaticaninexile.com and even has a fan club on Facebook, something he said caused him to chuckle when he stumbled upon it.
“Someone in Germany started it,” he said. “Yes, I was surprised.”
His sermons are uploaded on YouTube by a follower in Rockford, Ill. People keeping tabs on him are notified each time a new sermon is posted.
A film class from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., made a visit to Delia a few years ago and produced a documentary on Pope Michael, parts of which can be found on the Internet.
“I was impressed by that,” Bawden said of the documentary. “I was quite impressed with the quality of work they did and their questions.”
Despite the few followers in his flock, Bawden said he doesn’t see himself as an outcast in the Delia community, located about 10 miles north of Rossville.
Bawden said he visits with people when he sees them at the grocery store in Rossville or when he passes them on the country roads in his neck of the woods. The conversations are always cordial, he said.
Each day starts with Mass, followed by prayer, seminary classes and work around the farm.
Bawden announced recently that he was ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop in December by a bishop in the National Catholic Apostolic Church, qualifying him to celebrate Mass.
Bawden is cultivating a grape arbor for wine-making for the daily Masses.
He and his several followers also are in the process of taking classic Catholic books — some of which are borrowed from the Benedictine College library in Atchison — and scanning them into computers, so they can be republished in an “on-demand” printing arrangement with a publisher.
Bawden’s mother supports her son and said his rise to the papacy started when he was a boy.
“I was trying to raise him right — to raise him in the Catholic Church,” she said. “When you see it disintegrating in front of you, you feel like something has seriously gone wrong.”
She said her closest family members were convinced that they needed to pursue what they believed to be the correct teachings of the Roman Catholic church, even if it meant taking a road less traveled.
It hasn’t always been an easy road, but she said she has no regrets.
“Everyone in their time and place — grace is coming to them,” she said. “And it works perfectly.”
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