Catholic priests are increasingly being exposed and villified for being guilty of sexual misconduct but would anyone ever associate the figure of the Pope himself with such sinful acts? Maybe not when you look at today’s pontiff, but not all holders of the papacy were good guys. The truth is very far removed from the squeaky clean image we have of the highest office in Christendom, and some Popes were nothing more than murderers and rapists.
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St. Damascus -366-384- was only elected after his men murdered 160 supporters of his main rival. Pope Sergius III (904-911) also became pope by murdering his rivals and then fathered several illegitimate children but he was a mild case compared to some that followed.
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This maniac had his predecessor, Pope Formosus, exhumed, then propped on a throne so it could be tried. The corpse was found guilty, stripped of its sacred vestments, deprived of three fingers of its right hand (the blessing fingers), clad in the garb of a layman, and quickly buried; it was then re-exhumed and thrown in the Tiber river
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John XII – 955-964 became pope at 18 and was called a ‘Monster of Vice’, being into incest, rape and drunkenness. He turned the Vatican into a brothel, castrating rebellious cardinals and gouging out the eyes of protesting priests. It was the husband of one of his rape victims that killed him.
Benedict VIII (1012-1024) bribed his way into the job and Benedict IX (1033-1045) –youngest pope in history at only 12 years of age – was very soon committing murder and adultery on a regular basis. Boniface VIII (1294-1303) got to power by murdering his predecessor and is said to have described adultery as ‘no more harmful than rubbing your hands together’.
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Pope Urban VI – 1378 to 1389 Complained he did not hear enough screaming when his Cardinals were tortured, he launched a program of violence against those he thought to have been conspiring against him, imprisoning people at will and mistreating them brutally. Later historians have considered seriously that he might have been insane.
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John XXIII (1495-1503) was probably the worst of them all – so bad that Catholics won’t acknowledge his existence. An ex-pirate from Naples, who fought his way into the church, having sex with at least 200 women whilst papal legate in Bologna, and running gambling and prostitution in the city at the same time. Deposed after five years, with 72 articles of sin being railed against him.
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During the 15th century – when the papacy was housed in Avignon in France for a while – Pope Clement VI opened a brothel to make extra money naming Jesus Christ as the owner. Gay pope Paul II (1464-1471) was so camp that he spent nights frolicking with his young boyfriends in the papal palace, even dying of a heart attack while being sodomized by one of his favourites.
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Leo X (1513-1521) was another homosexual pope who loved to throw 65 course banquets where naked young boys would burst out of great cakes. These were all men who knew how to have a great time with church money and holiness definitely wasn’t their thing.
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The late 1500’s saw the advent of Alexander VI – most notorious of all popes – who held orgies in the Vatican and insisted on deflowering virgin brides immediately after performing their wedding ceremonies. He even had a long-term incestuous relationship with his daughter Lucrezia.
Things steadily improved over the next few centuries, once the ridicuos witchcraft scares and the Inquisition had run thier courses. Catholic church leaders were forced to clean up their act during the Reformation, but in 1870 the proclamation of ‘Papal Infallibility’ was issued. Since then, Catholics have to listen to the pope whatever happens behind closed doors. Papal pleasures in those olden times were anything but purely spiritual, and who can even guess at what lurid secrets may still be buried within the secretive world of theVatican archives? Perhaps there is much mre to find, but we may never know.
