In November 2000 Italian headlines screamed, "Devil Defeats Pope!" Il Messaggero reported that the Pope had been confronted by a teenage girl in the Vatican who screamed insults in a cavernous voice during an audience. John Paul attempted an exorcism but his ministrations had no effect on the girl.
On April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II passed away and his chamberlain went to the papal hospital bed and asked the Bishop of Rome a question, "Are you dead?" The chamberlain would then use a silver hammer and strike the Pope on the head and repeat his question, "Are you dead?" The chamberlain would then thrice call out the Pope's baptismal name. He would then declare the Pope to be dead.
This is the way the Church has determined papal deaths for centuries. This is the way of the world's oldest monarchy.
In 896 Pope Stephen VII had the late Pope Formosus who had been dead for 9 months put on trial. Formosus' corpse put on a throne in the council chamber and provided with council while Pope Stephen raved and screamed at it. After Stephen's rant, the corpse was stripped and its fingers chopped off. It was hurled from a balcony to a howling mob below who threw it into the Tiber. Pope Stephen was strangled to death a few years later.
In 964 Pope Benedict V raped a young girl and absconded to Constantinople with the papal treasury. The pontiff was eventually slain by a jealous husband. His corpse, bearing a hundred dagger wounds, was dragged through the streets before being tossed into a cesspit.
According to Catholic historian Peter de Rosa in his book Vicars of Christ:
"Popes had mistresses as young as fifteen years of age, were guilty of incest and sexual perversions of every sort, had innumerable children, were murdered in the very act of adultery. In the old Catholic phrase, why be holier than the Pope?"
Julius II who purchased the papacy with money didn't even pretend to be a Christian. A notorious womanizer who sired a number of bastards, Julius was so eaten away with syphilis that he couldn't even expose his foot to be kissed.
Under Leo X (1513-21)--specific prices were enumerated by the Roman Chancery for every imaginable crime. For instance, a deacon accused of murder could be absolved for 20 crowns and could not be prosecuted by civil authorities. Two hundred years earlier, John XXII had done much the same thing, setting prices for crimes ranging from incest to sodomy.
In his History of the Inquisition, Canon Llorente, who was Secretary of the Inquistion in Madrid from 1790-92 estimated the number of condemned in Spain alone to have exceeded 3 million, with 300,000 burned at the stake.
On April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II passed away and his chamberlain went to the papal hospital bed and asked the Bishop of Rome a question, "Are you dead?" The chamberlain would then use a silver hammer and strike the Pope on the head and repeat his question, "Are you dead?" The chamberlain would then thrice call out the Pope's baptismal name. He would then declare the Pope to be dead.
This is the way the Church has determined papal deaths for centuries. This is the way of the world's oldest monarchy.
In 896 Pope Stephen VII had the late Pope Formosus who had been dead for 9 months put on trial. Formosus' corpse put on a throne in the council chamber and provided with council while Pope Stephen raved and screamed at it. After Stephen's rant, the corpse was stripped and its fingers chopped off. It was hurled from a balcony to a howling mob below who threw it into the Tiber. Pope Stephen was strangled to death a few years later.
In 964 Pope Benedict V raped a young girl and absconded to Constantinople with the papal treasury. The pontiff was eventually slain by a jealous husband. His corpse, bearing a hundred dagger wounds, was dragged through the streets before being tossed into a cesspit.
According to Catholic historian Peter de Rosa in his book Vicars of Christ:
"Popes had mistresses as young as fifteen years of age, were guilty of incest and sexual perversions of every sort, had innumerable children, were murdered in the very act of adultery. In the old Catholic phrase, why be holier than the Pope?"
Julius II who purchased the papacy with money didn't even pretend to be a Christian. A notorious womanizer who sired a number of bastards, Julius was so eaten away with syphilis that he couldn't even expose his foot to be kissed.
Under Leo X (1513-21)--specific prices were enumerated by the Roman Chancery for every imaginable crime. For instance, a deacon accused of murder could be absolved for 20 crowns and could not be prosecuted by civil authorities. Two hundred years earlier, John XXII had done much the same thing, setting prices for crimes ranging from incest to sodomy.
In his History of the Inquisition, Canon Llorente, who was Secretary of the Inquistion in Madrid from 1790-92 estimated the number of condemned in Spain alone to have exceeded 3 million, with 300,000 burned at the stake.
