made a bishop because of "character defects". The author responded that it was not a rumour, but first-hand information from a priest who had read the report. Lawler stated that the book "is the product of a great deal of solid reporting", but criticised it for failing to provide evidence for its more extreme or implausible claims. He said that the fact that the work was pseudonymously self-published was likely to limit its readership, and that it suffered from a lack of copy-editing. Authorship To conceal his identity, the author of the book decided to write under the pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna, an Italian nobleman who fought at the Battle of Lepanto. The author described himself as a historian who was educated at the University of Oxford, but is now living in Rome. "Colonna" said the reason he chose to keep his actual name private is due to the fear of retaliation, but expects to be "unmasked" by opponents eventually. He also said that Pope Francis has been shown a list of six people who they think could have been the author and that a person in England who had been misidentified "received threatening phone calls from Rome". Tess Livingstone of The Australian described in Rome a "frantic witch-hunt" to uncover the author. On 19 March 2018, the author was revealed to be Henry (H. J. A.) Sire, born in 1949 at Barcelona of French ancestry. According to The Tablet, Sire, a historian and member of the Knights of Malta, had lived in Rome at the Knights' Grand Magistry Palace on the Via dei Condotti from 2013 to 2017 while researching for his book The Knights of Malta: A Modern Resurrection, at the behest of Fra Matthew Festing, the former Prince & Grand Master. Sire had studied in England at Stonyhurst College (a Jesuit institution) and at Exeter College, Oxford, before establishing himself as a Catholic historian. After Sire was revealed to be the author, the leadership of the Knights of Malta, now under Fra Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, suspended Sire's membership and distanced themselves from his critique of Pope Francis. The Order later expelled Sire on November 19, 2018. Editions in other languages The Polish edition of The Dictator Pope (titled: Papież dyktator. Skrywana historia pontyfikatu papieża Franciszka) was to be released in the middle of November 2018. References External links Discussion of "The Dictator Pope" on