Ecclesiastical authority (potestas sacra) is the authority which the Church has been given by Jesus Christ to be exercised in his name in carrying out the mission entrusted to it. Sedevacantists do not usurp any ecclesiastical authority in arriving at the conclusion that Francis is not the Pope, because this conclusion is not arrived at by means of putative “legal” judgments, which no sedevacantist has the right to make, but because any Roman Catholic can discern as a matter of fact (not law) that Francis does not adhere to all the dogmatic teachings of the Magisterium of the Church until 1958. Heretics and schismatics are barred from the Supreme Pontificate by the Divine Law itself, because, although by divine law they are not considered incapable of participating in a certain type of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, nevertheless, they must certainly be regarded as excluded from occupying the throne of the Apostolic See, which is the infallible teacher of the truth of the faith and the center of ecclesiastical unity.