I am reading an interesting book by Will Durant, ‘The Reformation” and particularly a chapter that discusses the famous Papal Schism.

It was clearly a time of confusion, when politics and religion were mixed. According to Will Durant,

The Papal Schism (1378-1417)…like so many of the forces that prepared the Reformation, was conditioned by the rise of the national state; in effect it was an attempt by France to retain the moral and financial aid of the papacy in her was against England.

Because of the schism, there were two popes, or better two lines of popes both claiming to have the authority.

Will Durant comments:

…the divided Church became the weapon and victim of the hostile camps. Half the Christian world held the other half to be heretical, blasphemous, and excommunicate; each side claimed that sacraments administered by priests of the opposite obedience were worthless, and that children so baptized, the penitents so shriven, the dying so anointed, remained in mortal sin, and were doomed to hell – or at best to limbo – if death should supervene….

The Council of Pisa met on March 25, 1409. It summoned Benedict and Gregory (the two popes) to appear before it; they ignored it; it declared them deposed, elected a new pope, Alexander V, bade him call another council before May 1412, and adjourned. There were now three popes instead of two. Alexander did not help matters by dying (1410), for this cardinals named as his successor John XXIII, the most unmanageable man to mount the pontifical chair since the twenty-second of his name.

Not all popes were elected in a situation so extreme, amid so much confusion, but it is good to know that we have a simple but effective system in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when a new prophet needs to be called.

It is a system in which the senior apostle become the new prophet, so that there is no space for campaigning, confusion, or fights when it is time to decide who will be the next prophet.