Our parish priest is a vocal critic of the pope, as are many others-and this place is remote enough that he can speak out-to his very appreciative parishioners, of which I am one-and FYI, the money that goes into the collection basket in individual churches is used only to maintain that church and the priest’s residence-unless there is a separate special collection for some other purpose-we get an accurate accounting of the funds every year.
Historically speaking, Catholics-or those of any other denomination-don’t usually leave their faith over a bad church leader, unless their faith was less than strong in the first place-the pope is not God-there have been worse popes-especially in the Middle Ages-the Church survived them and it will survive this one, too...
The problem is that in the Middle Ages the territory under which the writ of the Church ran was universally and culturally, not just apparently, Catholic. That is increasingly untrue. A bad pope matters much more now than he did in 1455.