Even so, as Cardinal Burke says, members of the College of Cardinals would have to be the ones to declare the pope is in formal heresy, as it is not the place of the laity to do this
In an interview with Catholic World Report (CWR) in December 2016, Cardinal Raymond Burke, archbishop and patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, said that if a pope were to "formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope."
The cardinal was reiterating Church teaching, as expressed by famed canonist Franz Wernz in his Ius Canonicum: "In sum, it needs to be said clearly that a [publicly] heretical Roman Pontiff loses his power upon the very fact." Burke stressed that he was "not saying that Pope Francis is in heresy," but was simply pointing out that it "could happen" that a pope could formally profess heresy.
