Papal Impropriety 
        (or: 'pass
        me another catamite, I've worn this one out!') 
        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... well I won't go
            on, you get the picture. I suppose that the real
            message of this web page is to inform Catholic
            Christians of the true nature of their god, for why
            would He allow such deviation in His name by His
            chosen messengers? And of course the answer is that
            gods don't exist. As an Atheist, I understand
            perfectly well the real nature of the historical
            Catholic Popes - power breeds corruption, but to be
            corrupt with the authority of a god behind you... 
              
            
              
             
         
        The dates shown in brackets are indicative
        of the years in papal office. 
        
            And now, in no particular order... 
              
            
                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 (1130-8) 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. 
                  
             
            There
            are some more examples of current Catholic priestly
            behaviour on my bits and bobs page! 
              
         
         
         
         
        
              
         
        
            I found the
            following article on the Internet Infidels splendid
            website - 
         
        
            The Apology of John Paul II
            Or:
            'Will 50 pages be enough?' 
            By John
            Patrick Michael Murphy (26th February 2000) 
            In a bit more than
            a fortnight Pope John Paul II will make a request for
            forgiveness for the conduct of his church over the
            centuries. The infirm pontiff has prepared a list of
            the murders, tortures and horrors the papacy has
            caused to humanity. It reportedly takes 50 pages to
            lay it all out--things like the papal pogroms against
            the Jews, the crusades against Islam, and the
            Inquisitions that went on for centuries. Will 50
            pages be enough? 
            Not if he tells it
            all. He knows his church historically engaged in
            political assassinations and other monkeyshines to
            impose the will of the Vatican upon the civil
            governments of the world. Will he mention that, even
            while families hold up pictures of desaparecidos,
            their kin, who disappeared in countries run by
            Catholic bishops and generals, like Argentina, Chili,
            and Croatia? Will he mention Rwanda?  Will he
            say he's sorry Pius XII said nothing while million of
            Jews were taken to their deaths? Will he mention
            Monsignor Tiso, head of the Slovak State, who
            delivered the first trainload of Jews to Auschwitz?
            How about the Catholic Ustashi of Croatia who carried
            out the "quiet holocaust" of Jews and Serbs?
            I doubt it. 
            How about women who
            had priests inspect their naked bodies, claiming to
            be looking for "witches marks" so they
            could light them on fire, in a sacred celebration
            during the Middle Ages called auto de Fe (act
            of faith)?  Will he admit to hundreds of
            thousands of victims in this category alone, or will
            he avoid numbers? 
            And then there are
            other matters, like the mad monks led by Saint Cyril,
            the patron saint of arsonists, who burned the Great
            Library at Alexandria, destroying 600,000 volumes of
            knowledge of the ancient world--the greatest property
            crime of all time. Surely he should mention that, but
            he probably won't. Then there was that dust-up with
            Luther and the wars that followed wherein Germany
            lost half its population in a generation. And of
            course the slave trade-shall he admit that his church
            was an instigator and a major player in that
            institution? And the destruction, plunder, rape and
            papal pillage of the peoples of the Americas and the
            eradication of their culture-will he go into all that?
            Will he say he's sorry that some of his predecessors
            tried to kill every Protestant in France when they
            were called Huguenots? 
            Will he admit the
            "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery,
            and thereby acknowledge that his predecessor, Adrian
            IV, the only English pope, really didn't own Ireland
            and therefore had no right to give it to England?
            Will he admit that forging documents has been a
            Vatican tradition for centuries, even during John
            Paul's lifetime, when favored Nazis had Holy See
            passports to escape Europe and their crimes? 
            And finally what
            about all the boys who were castrated to make them
            into church singers, shouldn't he apologize for that
            also? What will he say to the children who have
            had their bodies raped and their trust stolen when
            the priests of his church molested them? Will he ask
            forgiveness for the bishops who knew, and re-enabled
            the priestly perverts by moving them about, giving
            them access to more and more children? If so, will it
            be a real apology or some whiny, wishy-washy non-apology,
            like he gave before he came to Denver. Will he now
            apologize for insulting the American victims and the
            American people with that crass, so called apology of
            seven years ago when he implied we were so bad we had
            corrupted his priests? 
            No one expects him
            to apologize to the Third World, which has been kept
            in hunger, in major part, due to the Vatican's ideas
            on birth control. Women may not expect an apology
            either, as he is convinced they have no right to
            control their own bodies. Don't even ask about the
            gays and lesbians. 
            I
            think the question must be asked: could a church
            devoted to deviltry have beaten the record of harm
            and horror established by this one, which claims it
            was selected by the Lord to run the world until his
            return? Could Judas and a long line of betrayers have
            done worse than Peter and the popes? 
         
        (The
        above article, and many more are available at the Secular
        Web: http://www.infidels.org/ For more information send mail to infidel@infidels.org) 
         
        THE POPE APOLOGISES - NOT 
        
            Well,
            the pope finally came out with a bunch of prayers
            shrouded in a made-up religious ceremony - which can
            be found here. It's a sort of wishy-washy
            prayer session that addresses nothing. No apology for
            anything really. Was the planet dissapointed? I 'spect
            so. I was. Didn't even mention contraception. Bah. 
         
        
              
            The
            Internet Infidels - a great source of information -
            go visit! 
         
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