High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! David Allen Bawden (born September 22, 1959), is a Traditionalist Catholic recognized as Pope Michael I by a small group of conclavists based in Delia, Kansas, USA. He was elected by a group of six lay sedevacantists, which included himself and his parents, as they felt the Catholic Church had departed too far from the teachings of Jesus, and that the popes elected since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958 were all invalid as they were "modernists". Conclavists and some sedevacantists believe that if the College of Cardinals will not or cannot elect a valid pope, lay Catholics can do so, under the principle of "epikeia" (equity).