What You Didn't Know About the Popes of
Rome by Mark Owen
On the evening of Saturday April 2, 2005, after
receiving the Rite of Extreme Unction, Pope John Paul II
passed away. At this time his chamberlain would have gone to
the papal hospital bed and asked the Bishop of Rome a
question, "Are you dead?" There would be no
reply from the Pope.
The chamberlain would
then pick up a silver hammer and strike the Pope on the head
and repeat his question, "Are you dead?" Again there would be
no reply. 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.
Since 1763 the august Almanach de
Gotha has been the ultimate authority on the royal houses
of Europe. Listed under "Reigning Sovereign Houses" is the
Holy See. Therein is stated, "…the incumbent of the Holy See
is considered by Christian sovereign families as the 'Father of the Family of
Kings,' [and] his Holiness represents the OLDEST MONARCHY on
earth."
The triple sovereignty of the Pope's
Person, Holy See & Vatican City - is distinct in fact and
in law. Internationally, he is not subject to any authority on
earth. His Cardinals are considered to be Princes of the
Church and peers of the sons of reigning monarchs. Each
diocese is considered to be a royal fiefdom. The word
"diocese" originally signified an administrative unit devised
by the Emperor Diocletian, a tyrant noted for his persecution
of Christians.
Following are brief sketches of some of
the more interesting holders of the title "Vicar of Christ"
(it should be noted that the Latin equivalent of the Greek
"anti" is "vicarius," from whence is derived the word
"vicar").
Without a doubt, there was one Pope who
was completely mad. In 896 Stephen VII set in motion the trial
of his rival, the late Pope Formosus who had been dead for 9
months at the time. Formosus' corpse was dragged from its tomb
and arrayed on a throne in the council chamber. The corpse,
wrapped in a hair shirt, was provided with council, who wisely
remained silent while Pope Stephen raved and screamed at it.
The crime of Formosus was that he had
crowned emperor one of the numerous illegitimate heirs of
Charlemagne after first having performed the same office for a
candidate favored by Stephen. After Stephen's rant, the corpse
was stripped of its clothes and its fingers were chopped off.
It was then dragged through the palace and hurled from a
balcony to a howling mob below who threw it into the Tiber.
The body was later rescued by people sympathetic to Formosus
and given a quiet burial. 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
only to reappear when the money ran out. Church historian
Gerbert called Benedict "the most iniquitous of all the
monsters of ungodliness." 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.
In October 1032 the papal miter was
purchased for the 11-year old Benedict IX. Upon reaching his
14th year, a chronicler wrote that Benedict had
already surpassed in wantonness and profligacy all who had
preceded him. He often had to leave Rome in a hurry.
Gregory VII was a master forger,
surpassing even the great fraud known as the "Donation of
Constantine," the document that created the Papal States.
Gregory had an entire school of forgers turning out document
after document bearing the papal seal of approval. These
documents were later systematized in the mid-1100s in Bologna
by Gratian, a Benedictine monk. He called his work the
Decretum, or Code of Canon Law. It was peppered
throughout with several centuries of forgeries along with
Gratian's own fictional additions. Gregory also formalized the
celibacy doctrine in order to curtail the many gifts of church
lands being given away to all of the illegitimate children of
priests and bishops. 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?"
Another interesting figure was Alexander
VI (formerly Rodrigo Borgia). He reigned from 1492-1503.
Alexander committed his first murder at the age of 12. Upon
assuming the Papal miter he cried, "I am Pope, Vicar of
Christ!" In his Decline and Fall Gibbon referred to
Alexander as the Tiberius of Rome. Like his predecessor
Innocent VIII, Alexander sired many children, baptized them
personally and officiated at their weddings in the Vatican. He
had ten known illegitimate children (including the notorious
Cesare and Lucrezia), by his favorite mistress Vannoza
Catanei. When she faded, Borgia took the 15-year old Giulia
Farnese. Farnese obtained a Cardinal's red hat for her brother
who later became Paul III.
Alexander was followed by Julius II who
purchased the papacy with his own private fortune. He didn't
even pretend to be a Christian. A notorious womanizer who
sired any 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), who cursed and
excommunicated Martin Luther, 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. Once pardoned, he 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.
During his pontificate Innocent VIII
(1484-92) granted a 20-year Butterbriefe indulgence to persons
who met his price. For a sum, one could purchase the privilege
of eating favorite dishes during Lent. Leo X (Giovanni de
Medici) commissioned the Dominican friar Tetzel to sell
indulgences which released one from purgatory. Tetzel's famous
refrain went, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, a soul
from purgatory springs!"
Pope Sixtus IV charged Roman brothels a
Church tax. According to historian Will Durant, in 1490 there
were 6800 registered prostitutes in Rome. Pius II declared
that Rome was the only city run by bastards (the sons of Popes
and Cardinals).
The iniquity of the various Popes has
filled many books, and one has to wonder if the Church has
been cursed from the very beginning. After all, Constantine
leveled the Stadium of Caligula and the Temple of Apollo and
used the stones and marble from them to erect the original
basilica of Peter. Could he have been engaging in an act of
sympathetic magic, as some have alleged? Constantine's choice
of building materials might account for the observation made
in Rome by Martin Luther centuries later who declared, "If
there is a Hell, Rome is built over it. It is an abyss from
whence issues every kind of sin."
Very brief mention should be made of the
staggering scale of the Inquisition. 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. A Catholic historian comments on
the events leading up to the suppression of the Spanish
Inquisition:
"When Napoleon conquered Spain in 1808, a
Polish officer in his army, Col. Lemanouski, reported that the
Dominicans (in charge of the Inquisition) blockaded themselves
in their monastery in Madrid. When Lemanouski's troops forced
an entry, the inquisitors denied the existence of any torture
chambers. The soldiers searched the monastery and discovered
them under the floors. The chambers were full of prisoners,
all naked, many insane. The French troops, used to cruelty and
blood, could not stomach the sight. They emptied the torture
chambers, laid gunpowder to the monastery and blew the place
up…"
Rome was truly drunk with the Martyr's
blood.
And the Papacy isn't faring much better
in our modern age, and would appear to be in serious decline,
if not in outright defeat.
In November 2000 Italian headlines
screamed, "Devil Defeats Pope!" when 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.
Devils in the Vatican would come as no
surprise to Msgr. Luigi Marinelli. His book Gone With the
Wind at the Vatican fairly flew off the shelves in Italy,
revealing as it did stories of money-laundering prelates, sex
abuse and Satanic rituals performed within the walls of the
Holy See.
Marinelli's comments echo those of the
late Fr. Malachi Martin, a former Jesuit and exorcist, whose
1990 book The Keys of this Blood contains the following
disturbing information:
"Most frighteningly for John Paul, he had
come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength
in his own Vatican and in certain bishop's chanceries. It was
what knowledgeable Churchmen called the 'superforce.' Rumors,
difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of
Paul VI's reign in 1963. Indeed, Paul had alluded somberly to
'the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary,' an
oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony performed by
Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic
pedophilia 'rites and practices' was already documented among
certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin in
Italy and South Carolina in the United States. The cultic acts
of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be
the culmination of the Fallen Archangel's rites."
Adding fuel to the fire is ex-Jesuit
Robert Kaiser with his recent book Clerical Error.
Kaiser states that Malachi Martin was something of a
confabulist who lived for 30 years as a kept man under the
roof of Manhattan socialite Kakia Livanos, the ex-wife of
Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos. Kaiser goes on to say
that Martin also stole his wife Mary from him at one point in
the 60s when all three were quartered in Rome. Kaiser also
surmises that Martin may have been a paid lobbyist for the
American Jewish Committee.
In his new book Glimpses of the Devil,
psychiatrist M. Scott Peck weighs in with many interesting
comments on possession and exorcism. He also declares Martin
to have been most scrupulous in his histories of the exorcisms
recounted in Hostage to the Devil. However, according
to Peck, although a formidable scholar and gifted polyglot (17
languages), Martin could by turns be a "pathological liar" and
a "leprechaun." Needless to say, the jury is still out on the
legacy of Malachi Martin.
On the other hand, the verdict on the
pederasty that is endemic to the Roman priesthood, is in. The
Church paid out more than $1 billion in claims to victims of
sex abuse by clergy in the 1990s alone. And the American
branch offers a very disturbing treatment method to offenders.
One startling example should suffice:
Fr. Jay Mullin was accused of molesting a
boy more than 20 years ago in Boston. Then Cardinal Bernard
Law commanded Mullin to be evaluated at St. Luke's Institute.
The Institute is a Washington clinic that was profiled in a
Boston Globe article of February 24,
2002:
"…Mullin was flown south in 1992 to a
clinic outside Washington, D.C. The church-run clinic had a
huge collection of child pornography of varying degrees, which
ranged from soft porn to hardcore S&M images, all
featuring pre-teen boys and girls…"
This would have to rate as the most
devilish form of aversion therapy ever known. It would be akin
to treating alcoholics with copious quantities of vintage wine
or bombarding junkies with free packets of China White heroin.
Truly degenerate and depraved lunatics were running the asylum
known as St. Lukes.
Notwithstanding the scandal and shock of
the aforementioned, Rome carries on quietly with her program
of world dominion, leading the competition to establish the
first one-world system that has ever existed. Their ultimate
goal is global religious syncretism, and to eventually wield
control and authority over every individual on earth. The
human solidarity goals of the Roman Church are identical to
the goals and objectives of the United Nations. This is why
they are such a perfect fit. Rome only gives the appearance of
objecting to the UN agenda. At the 1996 World Food Summit in
Rome Cardinal Angelo Sodana pledged the Holy See's support for
the UNs humanistic "Programs of Action."
Rome also has designs on
Jerusalem.
For 46 years after Israel's rebirth the
Vatican refused to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. But
Rome wants to exert premier influence over Jerusalem, which
will one day function as the capital of her World
Church.
In a 1993 letter to the Pope, Shimon
Peres promised to internationalize Jerusalem, granting the UN
political control of the Old City and the Vatican hegemony
over the holy sites within. This was confirmed by the Italian
newspaper La Stampa. In March 1995 the Israeli radio
station Arutz Sheva was leaked a cable from the Israeli
Embassy in Rome, confirming the hand over of Jerusalem to the
Vatican.
The future Pope will establish his throne
one day within the walls of the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem.
It is from here that he will rule his World Church.
And this day may not be as far off as
many believe. The cornerstones for the Third Temple have
already been quarried by the Jewish group known as the Temple
Mount Faithful. They are extremely well financed and
organized. They have also produced priestly vestments in
accordance with scriptural outlines and are presently
attempting to breed a perfect red heifer in anticipation of
the coming dedication ceremonies. Obviously, Rome and the
Temple Mount Faithful are headed for a
showdown.
In a letter sent to the Vatican in
January 2004, the TMF demanded that Pope John Paul return the
Temple Menorah and other vessels and treasures removed in 70AD
by Titus and taken to Rome, where they are presently held
within the Secret Vatican Archives.
Mark Owen is a freelance writer living in
Toronto, Canada. He can be reached at markowen10@hotmail.com |