[redcarpet]

Papal Impropriety

Monumental indiscretions at the highest level of the Christian heirarchy.

From St Peter to recent history, the papal line has shown an incredible propensity for almost all forms of the worst kinds of corruption. Throughout the ages, the Holy Roman representatives of the Catholic Christian God on earth have been very naughty boys and girls indeed! Several of the following (by no means exhaustive) examples are taken from 'Sex lives of the Popes' by Nigel Cawthorne. A most enlightening tome I'm sure you will agree, but beg, buy or borrow it yourself for the full sordid revelation.

Documented history proves that for nearly two thousand years the Christian tradition of the Bishops of Rome has been founded on, indeed, has wholeheartedly supported deceit, murder, sexual depravity, torture, rape, paedophilia, prostitution, incest.

The dates shown in brackets are indicative of the years in papal office.

It was said that Pope John XII (955-64) invented sins that had not been known since the beginning of the world and whole monasteries spent days and nights praying for his death. He turned his home, the Lateran Palace, into a brothel. He used the papal treasury to pay off his gambling debts. He died on May 14th 964 aged twenty-four, after he was caught in bed by the husband of one of his mistresses in 'the very act of adultery'.


Pope Innocent VIII (1484-92) sired eight illegitimate sons and probably as many daughters, of whom he openly acknowledged. His reign as Pope was known as 'The Golden Age of Bastards'. He authorised an inquisition against those thought to be witches. On his death bed a wet nurse was found for his final craving - woman's milk.


Pope John XXII (1316-34) excommunicated fellow clergymen for not paying their taxes.


In 1932, Pope Pius XI (1922-39) as well as condemning contraception, ordered German Catholics to drop their hostility towards Hitler. He also backed Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia.


Pope Celastine II (1143-44) had a certain Count Jordan condemned to a horrible death, he was strapped naked to a scalding iron chair while a red-hot crown was nailed to his head.


Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) instituted the approved method of interrogation of suspected sodomites. In order to make them confess, suspects were lowered naked onto a red-hot spike. This method was kept until the year 1816.


Robert of Geneva was well known for his ability to decapitate a man with a pike. He became Pope Clement VII (1378-94) and was 'much given to fleshy pleasure'. He surrounded himself with page boys, whose jackets, it was noted, shrunk from being knee length, to mid-buttock 'or even worse'.


Pope Benedict XIII (1394-1417) gave a dispensation to the twenty-nine-year-old Richard II of England to marry Isabella, the seven-year-old daughter of the King of France.


The child-pope Benedict IX (who became Pope at the age of 12!) was bi-sexual, sodomised animals, ordered murders and dabbled in witchcraft and Satanism. He loved to throw wild, bi-sexual orgies. Benedict IX held the post of Pope in the years 1032-44, 1045 and 1047-48. He was described as "A demon from hell in the disguise of a priest...", and St Peter Damian said of him: "That wretch, from the beginning of his pontificate to the end of his life, feasted on immorality". Dante estimated that under Benedict IX the papacy reached an all-time low in immorality and debauchery. When he was 23 he survived an assassination attempt (strangling at the altar during Mass). Benedict went on to marry his cousin and sell the papacy to his godfather, Gregory VI.


Pope Boniface VII (974; 984-85) was described as: "a horrid monster" and "a man who in criminality surpasssed all the rest of mankind".


In the year 440 Pope Sixtus III (432-40) was tried for the seduction of a nun.

Pope Leo I (440-61) was a warped and sadistic torturer. He made his victims confess that they mixed semen with the sacrament and used young girls at the altar for the purpose. He was the first Pope to claim the right to put anyone who disagreed with him to death.


Pope Pius VII (1800-23) comdemned bible societies as "a most abominable invention that destroyed the very foundation of religion".


It was widely rumoured that the ex-pirate Pope John XXIII (1410-15) was an Atheist. He tortured his own cardinals and was said to have "had wicked company with two of his own sisters". Robert Hallum, Bishop of Salisbury said that he: "ought to be burnt at the stake".



The homosexual Pope Paul II (1464-71) liked to see naked men being racked and tortured. Alledgedly, he died of a heart attack whilst being sodomized by one of his favourite boys.


Pope John XIII (965-72) { yes, I know there was more than one John XIII } was condemned as an adulterer who "defiled his father's concubine and his own niece". He was said to have died at the hands of an enraged husband, caught in the act of adultery - just like his dad, Pope John XII.


Pope Sergius III (904-11) enjoyed sex with underaged girls. According to the historian Baronius, Sergius III was "the slave of every vice". When he was 45, Sergius took a 15- year-old mistress - the affair produced a son who went on to become Pope John XI.


Pope Stephen VI (896-97) had the body of his predecessor, Pope Formosus (891-96) dug up, dressed in papal vestments, set on a throne and tried for perjury and coveting the papacy.


Pope Benedict XII (1334-42) was such a hardened drinker that the expression "drunk as a pope" became popular in his lifetime.


Pope Anacletus (1130-FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=Cool" committed incest with his sister and several other female relatives. He enjoyed raping nuns.


Pope Clement VI (1342-52) was described by Petrarch as "an ecclesiastical Dionysus with his obscene and infamous artifaces". Clement VI slept with prostitutes and had dozens of mistresses. When he died, fifty priests said Mass for the repose of his soul for nine consecutive days, but it was generally agreed that this was not going to be nearly enough to prevent the dead pope from going directly to hell.


Pope Pius II (1458-64) had been a well known author of erotic literature, and had fathered about 12 illegitimate children.


The Sistine Chapel was built by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84). He had six illegitimate sons, of which one was the result of an incestuous relationship with his sister.


Pope Julius II (1503-13) who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the the Sistine Chapel, was a paedophile and spent much of his time with small boys and male prostitutes.


In the year 1095 Pope Urban II introduced the callagium, a sex tax which alllowed the clergy to keep mistresses, provided they paid an annual fee to the papacy. This had the immediate effect of reducing the use of concubines and hugely increasing clerical homosexuality.


Pope Paul III (1534-49) enjoyed an incestuous relationship with his daughter. To gain control of his family inheritance, he poisoned several relatives, including his mother and neice. He killed two cardinals and a Polish bishop to settle an argument over a theological point. Paul III was probably Rome's biggest ever pimp - he kept a roll of about 45,000 prostitutes, who paid him a monthly tribute.


Pope Julius III (1550-55) sodomized young boys, of which one was his own, illegitimate, son. He appointed several handsome teenage boys as cardinals. Cardinal della Casa's famous poem In Praise of Sodomy was dedicated to Pope Julius III.

[Todd D.]

No sources, no documents, no nothing, most of this comes from blatantly Anti-Catholic sources and have little substantiation, and the ones that do are completely irrelevant. Catholic Dogma states that while dealing with matters of faith and morals, the Pope is infallible, protected by the Holy Spirit against leading the flock astray. As a matter of their personal lives and regulating certain aspects of church law, the Pope is a human being, fallen and sinfull like the rest of mankind, as is open to sin just like the rest of us.


I think that another way to look at it is the fact that despite all of these men that have been in power, the Catholic Church remains the oldest establishment in the world. No other organization can claim to have been around in their current form longer than the Catholic Church, and I think that points at least in part points to some sort of divine protection. That's just my opinion though.

[redcarpet]

The British monarchy has been around longer than the RMC!

[Todd D.]

What kind of tripe is that? The British Monacy's earliest days can be traces back to Alfred the Great, a Saxon around 870. That's 800 years later than the Catholic Church.