This has to be a debate larger than a single Western priest who wasn’t even a pope.
Catholics who are of the bent “well, if you get saved by Christ it means you get incorporated into our church whether or not you know it at the time” — I can respect that, with the counter statement that it’s Catholic Christians who will find themselves together with us part of a larger congregation that however much presence it had in Rome, never had a central anchor in Rome — because its central anchor was outside this world.
The Central Anchor of the Church for 2000 years has always been Jesus Christ, our Lord, God and Savior