If you were to actually read the sentence I wrote, you'd see that the word "infallible" isn't in it anyplace.
I simply asked if this character looked like one who had any "openness to divine guidance."
If this one has no business speaking on behalf of the Holy Spirit, why should I think others have been any better?
That's the point.
It is a fair point, and it deserves a fair response, which I hope I may provide:
The Catholic position is not the Pope is guaranteed to be a man of such impeccable holiness that he shall be able to discern with his own, personal, spiritual insight the true Christian doctrines. Any person, and any office is inherent corruptible. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not heresy! Indeed, countless Catholic authors, including J.R.R. Tolkein, have upheld precisely that moral message.
The evil tendencies of ecclesiastical authorities have long been recognized by Catholic saints, such as St. John of Antioch, who wrote, "The highway to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." He was not exiled by the Pope for such comments, and, in fact, came to be known by the popes as St. John the Golden-Mouthed. The precise intent of such jarringly strong language (and its approval) was to prevent people from being scandalized by wicked.
I do not know if there is, in fact, a mechanism proposed by which the Holy Spirit does keep the Catholic Church from proclaiming false doctrine; Only as late as Vatican I did the Church infallibly declare how infallible doctrine should be formulated. I am quite sure however the grace works, it has had several means of expressing itself. As related in Pope Fiction, one pope even dropped dead mysteriously between the drafting of an errant biblical commentary and the promulgation of the bull officially endorsing it!
One motive which at least minimizes the need for extraordinary divine assistance, however, is the human recognition of consistency. However evil medieval pope's character may be, they got away with what they did, at least in part, because they never invented doctrine; The Church has condemned as evil actions of indiscriminate violence, while making saints out of those who reconverted Europe through reason and prayer. The Church hardly rebuked violence, making a great many saints out of those who fought the Muslims; rather, it simply found that reason was far more effective, except where motivations were highly tainted (the Germanic lowlands and Great Britain).
Had there been the slightest din of insincerity or inconsistency, such reason would have proved entirely futile.
(That refers to the saints who converted the masses, not to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but the saints' message was based on the consistency and sincerity of the Church's doctrines.)