There have been hundreds of popes in the history of the Catholic Church – each with his own unique peccadillos, like Pope Alexander VI’s penchant for fathering children – but nobody took an approach to health quite like Pope Innocent VIII. This 15th-century Pontifex is best known not as the failed ruler he was – not for his edicts against witches and magicians nor for his slave ownership – but as the Pope who drank blood in an attempt to cure an ailment.
When he suffered a stroke and slipped into a coma, Innocent’s doctor decided to conduct the first recorded blood transfusion in history, giving his patient little boys’ blood to sip on. Unfortunately for Innocent, just because he received the first known blood transfusion doesn’t mean he received the first successful one. It is recorded that he and the children whose lifeblood he consumed died shortly after the macabre procedure.
(CNN)Billed as a reformer and outsider, Pope Francis was elected five years ago.
He took the helm as the Catholic Church wrestled with corruption and the fallout of the child sexual abuse scandal. But this is hardly the first time that the church has been gripped by scandal.
Can you imagine a Pope placing the rotting corpse of his predecessor on trial? Or putting the papacy itself up for sale?
Well, history tells us that popes did all that and more at a time when they apparently played by a very different set of rules.
Here are eight popes you’ll find in the history books for all the wrong reasons:
The Catholic Church, which has presided over a decades-long international cover-up of countless cases, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of child rape and other sexual abuse is arguably guilty of crimes against humanity.
In Australia, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, launched in 2013, has heard much harrowing evidence that for decades child rapists have been protected by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Only a few days ago, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, told the commission the response of leaders of his church to allegations of child sexual abuse amounted to “criminal negligence”.
Lea Rose Emery Remember the time there was a systematic cover up of abuse, molestation, and rape at the hands of priests that went all the way to the top of the Church? A conservative estimate says there were 17,200 victims in the US alone, and this type of mistreatment happened world-wide. When complaints came in, priests and other offenders were transferred, rather than punished. The extent of their actions will probably never be fully understood, because of the decades of cover up.
It’s hard out here for a pope. See, when it comes to religious history, the list of Catholic Church transgressions makes for pretty uncomfortable reading. Despite exalting virtue and kindness in its teaching, Church leadership has spearheaded a long history of outright unforgivable Catholic actions.
You might remember some of these improprieties from school – the Inquisition, Joan of Arc, and the trial of Galileo should all ring a bell. But not everything here is medieval. Though Vatican violence goes way back, there are a number of disturbing episodes from recent history. Some of this repugnant behavior comes from Popes, some was Church-endorsed, and some, most unsettlingly, was just straight-up regular Church practice.
Dark Church history contains scandal after scandal rife with every vice and taboo you can imagine. When the Church was at the height of its power (at which point it was the most powerful organization in the Western world), it’s safe to say everything went to its head. Combine that with the fact that Church leaders seem to stubbornly resist adapting to changing morality and you’ve got a whole lot of unforgivable moments on our hands.
Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Jan Harvey
Our comment: Pope Francis is trying to imitate Jesus of Nazareth – why doesnˈt he try to follow Jesusˈ teachings and live them himself. The way he does it is just a public performance – a show!
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of people waved palm and olive branches in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday as Pope Francis led the world’s Catholics into Holy Week commemorations ahead of Easter calling for the Church to be humble.
Palm Sunday is when Christians mark the day the Bible says Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was hailed by the crowd as Messiah, only to be crucified days later.
FILE – This Oct. 19, 2014 file photo shows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI arrives in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican to attend the beatification ceremony of Pope Paul VI, and a mass for the closing of a two-week synod on family issues, celebrated by Pope Francis. Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published an analysis of the origins of the clergy sex abuse scandal, blaming it on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and church laws that protected priests in a rare commentary, published Thursday April 11, 2019.(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, FILE)Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published an analysis on the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal, blaming it on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and church laws that protected priests.The essay immediately raised eyebrows, seeming to interfere with or even contradict Pope Francis’ own efforts to confront one of the most critical issues facing the church.
One church historian called Benedict’s essay “catastrophically irresponsible,” because it conflicted with Francis’ own efforts to lead the church out of the sex abuse crisis.
Benedict in 2013 had said he planned to retire to a lifetime of penance and prayer and would leave Francis to guide the church.
U.S. church analysts said the essay, published in the German monthly Klerusblatt, was both flawed in content and problematic on universal church level, exacerbating existing divisions in the church that have emerged between supporters of Francis and Catholics nostalgic for Benedict’s doctrine-minded papacy.
In his introduction, Benedict said both the Vatican secretary of state and Francis had given him permission to publish it. The Vatican press office confirmed it was written by Benedict.
In the essay, Benedict traced the start of the clergy abuse crisis to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, citing the appearance of sex in films in his native Bavaria. He also blamed the crisis on failures of moral theology in that era, as well as church laws that gave undue protection to accused priests.
Benedict wrote that during the 1980s and 1990s, “the right to a defense (for priests) was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible.”
A little caution before we begin: Some of this Vortex is a little rough.
Yesterday’s confirmation by the Vatican of the selection of Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory to replace the lying, disgraced Cardinal Donald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington, D.C. is revolting — as in something which should be revolted against by the faithful of D.C.
For six months now, the faithful have been holding public prayer vigils and pleading with Rome for a good bishop following the disgusting revelations of Donald Wuerl’s involvement in transferring around homopredator priests, as well as lying about what he knew about McCarrick, and then getting caught lying about lying.
But this is how the homosexual hive in the Church works. Homosexualist bishops and their allies in the episcopate promote and advance each other in a business as usual method of covering for each other’s sins and crimes once they leave office.
International Answer 