Narrative of Papacy

THE PAPACY HAD BEEN DOMINATED BY THE BYZANTINE EMPERORS, THE LEADING FAMILIES OF ROME AND FOR A CENTURY BY THE GERMANS.  In 1073, a monk named Hildebrand was elected Pope Gregory VII.  He was determined to keep kings and emperors from running the church.  His fight with Emperor Henry IV, whom he forced to do penance standing in the snow at Canossa, established papal authority in the appointment of bishops, strengthened new canon law making the election of the pope the job of the College of Cardinals, not of any secular authority.

St. Peter

Saint Peter (33-64/67), is recognized by the Catholic Church as the first pope (Bishop of Rome) since he received the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven from Jesus the Founder himself.  He was martyred in Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero the Fiddler while Rome burned and hanged on the cross upside down.

Leo the Great

Gregory the Great

Fast forward to circa 440-461.  Only two popes have ever been called great:  Pope Leo I (440-461) and Pope Gregory I (590-604).  St. Leo the Great was born in Tuscany, Italy, and served as a deacon in the Church at Rome.  After Pope Sixtus III died in 440, he was chosen to become pope and served for 21 years.  During his papacy, the church was in turmoil over dogmatic disagreements, heresies, barbarian attacks, and the disintegration of the Roman Empire. In 451, he restored order to the Eastern churches at the Council of Chalcedon.  The 630 bishops and four papal legates exclaimed unanimously, "What Leo believes we all believe; anathema to him who believes anything else, Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo."  Many people in the East, Egypt and Syria, did not accept the decrees broke away and formed separate churches.  In 452, Leo known for his diplomatic and political skills personally met with Attila the Hun who ravaged central and western Europe as he advanced upon Rome and convinced him to spare the city from destruction and plundering.  In 455, Leo also saved Rome when Genseric, leader of the Vandals, threatened to destroy the city.  As an administrator Leo built and restored churches such as St. Paul's Outside the Walls.  In 1754,  he was named and honored as a doctor of the Church.
The pontificate of Pope Gregory I was a great period in papal history.  He brought many reforms, insisted that the clergy not marry, suppressed simony or the practice of buying and selling church offices instead of earning them through ability.

During the next 300 years, the papacy carried out one of the greatest tasks of spreading Christian faith among the Anglo-Saxons, Visigoths, Franks, Lombards and other tribes controlling Western Europe.  In the 500's, St. Benedict founded the Benedictine order of monks.
Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West on Christmas Day, 800.  This action now claimed by popes the right of crowning emperors.  And in turn, the emperors had the right to confirm the election of popes.  Tit for tat.  Pope Nicholas I denounced Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, due to religious conflicts resulting in Photian Schism. between East and West.  It resulted in the final break in 1054.
In 962, Otto the Great brought some order to the papacy when he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.  But he kept strict control of papal elections.  Pope Nicholas II took the power to choose the pope away from the court and returned it to the church.  During the pontificate of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), nearly every European ruler bowed to the power and authority of the church.

There had been "The Good, The bad, and The Ugly Popes" for good, bad, and ugly as they came, depending on whose side you're on:

• Pope Stephen VI (896-897) had the body of his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber River.
• Pope John XII (955-964) gave land to a mistress, killed several people and was killed by the husband of the woman he was in bed with.
• Pope Benedict IX (1032-1048) sold the papacy
• Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
• Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) the father of Cesare Borgia and Lucrezia Borgia and whose unattended corpse swelled until it barely fit in a coffin.  He threw wild parties that culminated in the same practice of naked boys coming out from birthday cake at the Vatican.  The family became notorious as murderers and poisoners.  Although two of the eight children of femme fatale Lucrezia (thrice married) became a nun and the other a Jesuit priest.   His modern day descendant was Rodrigo Borgia Cevallos, the left-wing Socialist President of Ecuador (1988-1992)
• Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1474) authorized an inquisition targeting converted Jewish Christians in Spain, at the request of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand
• Pope Leo X (1513-1521) according to Fr. Martin Luther's (yes, he was a Catholic priest) observation when he was sent by his cloister to Rome saw the pope's birthday party in which naked boys popping out of his birthday cake for the sexual pleasure of those in attendance.  Surely, it runs in the family.
• Pope/St. Pius V (1566-1572) Excommunicated Elizabeth I of England in 1570.  During his papacy, the Victory of Lepanto was won 
• Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) initiated the Trial of Galileo Galilei
• Pope Clement XIII (1758-1769) provided the famous fig leaves on nude male statues in the Vatican.  :)
• Pope John Paul I (August 1978-September 1978) the "Smiling Pope" died of heart attack or murdered mysteriously (?)

Pope John Paul I

From 1048 - 1257 the papacy had conflict with the leaders and churches of the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire, resulting in East-West schism, dividing the Western and Eastern church.  In 1165, the first appointed foreign cardinal - bishop was Conrad of Wittelsbach.  He retained his position as well as Archbishop of Mainz and Archchancellor of Germany (the highest official of the Holy Roman Empire, after the Emperor).  The Wittelsbacks were movers and shakers who soon were to become the royal house of Bavaria which gave the right to vote for the Holy Roman emperor.  However, the Hohenstaufen family had become powerful in the German Empire which was most of Europe north of the Alps and east of the Rhine, and the Welf family.  In 1122, the most notable member of Hohenstaufen (father) and Welf (mother) marriage was Frederick Barbarossa - aka Red Beard Fred - the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, King of Burgundy and King of Italy.

In 1285, Philip age seventeen inherited the French crown and didn't like the fact that Edward III of England also claimed to be the rightful king of France.  War went on for 100 years, became so expensive that Philip decided to tax the clergy.  Pope Boniface was unhappy of Philip's anti-clerical policies.  Philip responded by invading the papal territory and his army caught up with Boniface in Anagni, 35 miles southeast of Rome, arrested and beat him up.  The town people rescued Boniface, but he was pretty shaken up and died a few weeks later.  The cardinals, half were French by then, thought it made good sense to elect a Frenchman. 

Pope Clement

They elected Raymond Bertrand de Got and was installed as Pope Clement V (1305-1314)  in a ceremony held at Lyon, France.  The popes stayed in that French town for the next 70 years, appointing French cardinals and doing pretty much what the kings of France told them what to do.  Finally in 1376, through the influence of St. Catherine of Siena, a great mystic and prophetess, Pope Gregory XI decided to return to Rome, where he promptly died.  From 1257 - 1377, the pope (Bishop of Rome) resided in Viterbo, Orvieto, Perugia and Avignon.

The cardinals, wanted to get back to the safety of France, held a conclave which was surrounded by Italians demanding an Italian pope.  They elected the kind and scholarly Archbishop of Bari, who turned out to be nothing of the kind.  He demanded that cardinals not be on the payroll of secular rulers, church business without the usual fees, and worst of all, he was not going back to Avignon.  The French cardinals met at Anagni and declared that they had been forced by the Romans into electing Urban VI (1378-1389) and declared the election invalid.  Urban was considered a bad pope because he complained of not enough loud screaming while the Cardinals who turned against him were being tortured.  They then elected Robert of Geneva as pope and went back to Avignon.  In 1377, Robert of Geneva put down a rebellion in Cesena, Italy where he massacred 4,000 civilians earning the nickname "butcher of Cesena."

An antipope is a man who has been improperly elected pope.  Emperors and rulers tried to control or influence the papacy in order to further their own ambitions.  They did this by appointing antipopes to support them.  The first antipope was Hippolytus who was elected in 217.  The last antipope to be noted was Felix V, a Duke of Savoy, who was elected in the 1400's.

There were now two popes.  The situation continued for the next 39 years.  In 1409, a bunch of bishops got together in Pisa in an unauthorized Council (only a pope can call a council) and elected a pope, Alexander by name.  Now there were three popes.  In 1415, Pope Gregory XII, the Roman pope, called the Council of Constance, Switzerland to elect a new pope.  He excommunicated the French Pope who refused to step down.  Pope Gregory then resigned, thus ensuring the legitimacy of the election.  At the Council of Constance they elected Pope Martin V.  The authority of the papacy was so weakened by this holy mess that within 100 years, the monarchs of much of Europe figured how to dump the papacy with the help of a German monk by the name of Martin Luther.

In the estimation of papal historians, an independent papacy was not such a bad thing.  In the middle ages, the popes guaranteed that no one could make war during lent, advent, Christmas, holy week, Easter week, or any feast day of which there were many.  They could not kill non-combatants.  They were just allowed to kill one another at certain times of the year.  The aristocracy of Northern Europe was happy to dump the mean old pope in Rome who would threaten them with excommunication.  After the reformation, the aristocracy was able to establish national churches which would allow them to do with their peasants and work them to death.  The German peasants rebelled to slaughter the aristocracy, to which Luther told the aristocracy to smite the peasants hip and thigh, wiping out perhaps 100,000 peasants instead. They were guaranteed heaven's blessing because they paid the clergy's salary.  Eventually, the Catholic Church at the other end cleaned up its act by electing reformist popes and holding the Council of Trent and struggled back to being the majority religion.

Pope Callixtus III

Alfons de Borja from Torreta, Spain was a law professor at the University of Lleida and a diplomat for king of Aragon.  He was useful in clearing up the mess at the Council of Basel (1431-1439) in which the crowned heads of Europe were trying to democratize the Catholic Church.  He was made a cardinal for his service and though old and feeble was elected as a candidate for pope in 1455 and took the name as Pope Callixtus III (1455-1458).  He invited friends and relatives to Rome and gave them high position at the church office. 

Pope Alexander

In 1456, Pope Callixtus III elevated two of his nephews as cardinals: Rodrigo Borgia who later became Pope Alexander VI in 1492.  He was the father of at least four illegitimate children and possiblly ten or eleven.  Catholic priests of today who are pro-marriage would probably love him as pope.  Pope Alex managed to marry his children of with powerful families of Rome and Italy.   The next pope died after 26 days and once again the papacy was in trouble - the French connection, the Spanish and Holy Roman Emperor.  The Muslim Turks who had conquered the Eastern Empire and taken Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in 1453 were planning to invade Italy and all of Europe. 

Pope Julius II

Fortunately, a man named Giuliano della Rovere (Pope Julius II 1471-1484) , a.k.a Il Terribile, reconciled the powerful families of Rome, took the battlefield and drove the French across the Alps, began the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, hired Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel.  His was a Renaissance Papacy.  The papacy was saved from the vultures and enemies of the church.

Pope Leo X

In 1513, Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici was elected Pope Leo X (1513-1521) and he wasn't even a priest!  He was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, a ruler from Florence and his mother was an Orsiini.  Pope Leo X said to his brother Giuliano de Medici when he became pope, "Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it."  He sparked the Protestant revolution by his questionable fundraisings for the rebuilding of St. Peter's.  Pope Leo was generous, spendthrift, spent money lavishly, funded the arts, and promoted the Renaissance.  The King of Portugal gave him a white elephant named Hanno which became his favorite pet.  Hanno died when the pope tried to feed him gold to cure Hanno's stomach ache.

Pope Hadrian

The Spanish and French cardinals were deadlocked and elected a non-Italian from Holland - Hadrian Florenszoon Boeyens (Pope Hadrian VI 1522-1523), but only lasted about a year.

Pope Clement VII

 In 1523, Giuliano de' Medici, cousin of Pope Leo X, succeeded him and became Pope Clement VII (1523-1524).  Pope Clement realized Luther was trouble with a capital T when the troops of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, King from Mexico City to Vienna and everywhere invaded Italy, raped and pillaged their way through Rome and sacked the Vatican in the name of religious reform. 

Castel Sant'angelo

Swiss Guards

Clement fled for his life down a secret passage to Castel Sant'angelo, a re-configured tomb of Emperor Hadrian, while the German Lutherans killed most of the Swiss Guards.  Meanwhile the very Catholic King of England, Henry VIII (I am, I am) wanted an annulment in order to dump his Spanish wife Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and wanted to marry Ann Boleyn who was raised in a French court.  You know what happened.  Henry got mad, said bye-bye to the Catholic church and established the Church of England. 

The year 1527 was not a very good year for the papacy: the German Lutherans trashing and burning Rome, the French invading Milan, the Spanish owning Naples, the English joining the anti-Catholic camp and the pope in hiding in a re-habbed tomb for a Holy Roman Emperor overlooking the Tiber River.  The pope remained a prisoner for six months.  He bribed (with what?) his jailers and escaped disguised as a peddler.  He returned to Rome in 1528 and found the city in ruins, depopulated.  The Protestant Reformation led the Catholic Church through Counter-Reformation.  He did his best to restore it and finally died after eating bad mushrooms (in his lasagna?) in 1534. 

The next 250 years the popes were not bad fellows all in all, some were better, some were worse, but the bad old days of the secularized papacy seemed over.  Around 1600, the crowned heads of Europe claimed what they called the right of exclusion (jus exclusivae), a veto by which a crown-cardinal, a representative of a Catholic European monarch could block the election of any candidate they did not approve.  Although they didn't get to pick the pope they could say who they would not accept.  The English, the French, and the Spanish pretty much owned the world, including the popes.  The French "Sun" King Louis XIV was a devout Catholic and never missed Mass.  He never missed an evening with his many mistresses, nor an opportunity to wage a pointless war of expansion, to ally with the Muslim Turks, nor to ignore the pope.  Nobody was afraid of the pope anymore. To quote Louis, "Apres moi, le deluge" (After me, the flood).  He ruled France for sixty-four years and managed to put his grandson on the throne of Spain, so Louis controlled all of north and south America and about half of Europe.  When he died in 1715, he had outlined seven popes.  One long life later the deluge he predicted came in 1788 with the French Revolution.  It swept away the monarchies of Europe over the course of the next century.  The monarchies, no matter how hard they tried, didn't manage to sweep away the papacy.  The years since the American/French Revolution have been an unending catalogue of wars.  Napoleon tried to abolish the Church in all Europe.  In 1809, the temporal powers of the pope suffered a severe blow when Napoleon annexed the papal states.  In 1815, the Congress of Vienna restored the states to the papacy under the protection of Austria.  The pope was invited in Versailles for his coronation as Emperor Napoleon but he put the crown on his head himself, ignoring the pope.  From 1848 to 1870, all papal provinces were confiscated by the state during the struggle for unification of Italy.  In 1650, England tried to destroy Catholicism in Ireland by means of Oliver Cromwell and war and again in 1842 by the use of mass starvation.  They all failed.

Pope Pius XII
Opus Justitiae Pax (The work of justice shall be peace)

In 1866, Germany (now the most atheist country in Europe) tried to limit Catholicism after the Prussian takeover of German speaking Catholic countries by means of Bismarck's Kulturkampf (Second Reich), then went to wars with a re-Catholicized France in 1870.  Germany tried again in 1914, initiating World War I which swept all the monarchies of Europe before it.  Those crowned heads that tried to control the papacy and the Church, had been decapitated from their royal shoulders one way or another.  The monarchs were gone, but the tyrants were not.  The dictators of the 20th century waged unremitting war on the successors of Peter, the first pope of the Catholic papacy.  The only major voice to persistently resist Hitler and the Nazis was that of the papacy.  Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XII despised national socialism and worked tirelessly against it.  He was credited with saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death under the Nazis.  Hitler hated Pius, tried to kidnap him and deported to Germany where he could be disposed of as he pleased.  Everybody knows Hitler was an anti-Semite because Stalin, the Marxist dictator of Russia, who starved millions of Ukrainians (Catholic and Orthodox) to death, and who tried to erase religion in Russia, realized after World War II, the only force capable of resisting the Marxist takeover of Eastern Europe was the Catholic Church.  He started a disinformation campaign against Pope Pius and the Church, and infiltrated seminaries and religious institutions, especially in Poland. 




Blessed John Paul II
Totus Tuuo (Totally Yours)

 Poland clung to its faith and Cardinal Karol Josef Wojtyla, the second non-Italian Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) brought Marxism to the ground by simply saying "Do not be afraid" when he returned to Poland in 1979.  When Winston Churchill reminded Stalin to consider the Catholicism of Poland, Stalin quipped, "Why? "How many divisions does the pope of Rome have?"  It turns out he didn't need divisions of soldiers.
In the 1900's, the papacy has enjoyed high influence and prestige in Italy and all of Europe.  Pope Leo XIII and his successors elevated the papacy spiritually, morally, and the social issues of the day.  Pope Pius X (1903-1914) worked hard to keep peace in Europe.  The shock and horror of the outbreak of World War I hastened his death.  He was succeeded by Pope Benedict XV continued the papal policy of strict neutrality during the war.
In 1929, Pope Pius XI reached an agreement with the Italian government with the Lateran Treaty and Concordat (relations with Italy), ending the 60-year dispute between church and state.  It gave the pope full sovereignty over Vatican City.  By the terms of the treaty, canon law is recognized in Italy.  Italian courts consider marriage by the church as legal, schools have religious education and own property in the community.  It also provided that the papacy receive payment from the government as compensation for the loss of Papal States confiscated and where Pope Pius IX and the three popes who followed him made themselves voluntary prisoners in the Vatican.

Pope John XXIII
Obedientia et Pax ( Obedience and Peace)

 Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli succeeded Pope Pius XII and called himself Pope John XXIII (1958-1963).   He did some changes with reforms and initiated the Second Vatican Council in 1962.  It was ended two years later by Pope Paul VI (1963-1978), formerly called by the long name of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini.  He was responsible for renewing the procession of  the Station of the Cross on Good Friday at the Colosseum in Rome.

Pope Paul VI
Cum Ipso in Monti (With Him on the mount)

Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, and all the petty tyrants of the 20th century have tried and failed to control or eliminate the church and the papacy.  Now we have a new kind of government in the modern world (America) who's trying to curtail religious freedom.  We are ruled by the mainstream and social media, taught impressionable students by Marxist elites in the academia - who tell us what to think, how to act, whom to marry and whom to elect.  They are the arbiters and redefiners of traditional and natural values by image proxies and poster childs of left-wing agenda.  They decide that it is time for the Catholic Church to change its ancient and authentic beliefs about the sanctity of human life and the nature of marriage.  The news media, time and time again, are trying to destroy the holiness and sanctity of the Vatican, that it is corrupt, the bank laundering money, the sexual abuse of children by priests (by few proven true cases out of thousands good priests), when they don't have any proof, foment ridiculous innuendos and bombastic exposes.

Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013) from Germany succeeded the world traveling Pope John Paul II.  He resigned because of his health condition, the second pope to vacant the Chair of St. Peter after 400 years.  As Pope Emeritus he now dedicate his time to meditation and spiritual well-being.  His motto is "Cooperatores Veritatis" (Cooperator of Truth).
So, when one looks at the long list of 266 popes, you can only come up with around ten who were scoundrels.  There are ten times as many popes who are revered for exceptional holiness, 94 certified saints (74 canonized, 16 beatified, 33 martyrs).  From Nero until now, the powers of this world called the Mediacracy tried to control the church of Christ and the papacy that Christ established to govern it.  Thus far they have failed.  I doubt that the media chic who think themselves above the law of Christ and his church will succeed either. 
The Roman Empire, gone! The Holy Roman Empire (Germany), gone! The Spanish Empire, gone!  The French Empire, gone! The British Empire, sort of gone!  Communist regime, failed!  What remained, you asked? Christendom!

"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
                                                                  - Matthew 16:18

Christ's promise has held true 265 times so far. 

Pope Francis
Miserando atque Eligendo (by having mercy by choosing him)

On March 13, 2013, a humble Cardinal from Buenos Aires, Argentina was elected pope by 115 cardinals at the Sistine Chapel. The first Jesuit pope from a long line of Dominican popes.

God bless Pope Francis (266)!


Source: Multiple
             Pope photos from Wikipedia

Don't Know Much History Publication