Pope Clement XV

Like Joan of Arc, Michel Collin was born into a Lorraine peasant family, and like the Maid, he heard voices. "You will become a priest, then a bishop, and finally Pope," he recalls Jesus telling him. To a purported 50,000 followers in Western Europe, Canada and the U.S., Collin is now Pope Clement XV of the "Renewed Church." Paul VI, of the Vatican, is a mere usurper.

The moonfaced, high-voiced claimant of the papal tiara is a former Roman Catholic priest who was defrocked by Pius XII in 1951 for founding, without permission, an order called the Apostles of Infinite Love. In 1960, says Collin, the Virgin of Fatima told the local bishop that the next Pope would be called Clement XV. The bishop told the Vatican, Collin says, and

Jesus passed it on to him. "If the next Pope does not call himself Clement XV," the vision advised him, "you will know that he is a false Pope." When Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini chose to reign as Paul VI, Abbe Collin became Clement XV.

Today Le Petit Vatican--two gray concrete buildings with corrugated roofs --sits at a rural crossroad in the French village of Clemery. One building is the 200-ft. "Basilica of Glory," austere on the outside but stuffed with plaster piety inside: battalions of pink and blue angels, scores of polychromed saints, gauze curtains and blue and beige carpets. The make-believe Pope has only a modest Curia --ten "cardinals" and "bishops" and a covey of giggling "nuns": most of the followers are or have been Roman Catholic priests and nuns.

For six years after it was founded, Clement's church was declared exempt by French tax men. In January, however, Clement was presented with a bill for $50,000 in taxes for the past four years, an estimate based on Clement's receipts of international money orders. Clement responded with appropriate pontifical pique. "For your crying injustice, lies, threats and demands," he wired the tax man, "in view of your hatred and persecution of Clement XV and the Renewed Church, you are excommunicated."

As for his rival in Rome, Clement has had little chance for a confrontation. Twice last year he and his entourage marched--or rode--on Rome, but he was turned away under an Italian law that added insult to injury: his presence was disrespectful to the Pope.

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