Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

by H. Paul Jeffers

  According to Los Angeles Police Department Complaint # BC307934, filed December 17, 2003, from 1955 through 2002 at least twenty-eight priests within the LA Archdiocese inner circle accused or convicted of sex abuse, “occupied the highest positions.” The complaint stated, “Well placed priests including Bishops Juan Arzube and G. Patrick Ziemann ‘used their prominence in the archdiocese administration to cover up for other priests. Priests involved in education such as Leland Boyer and Gerald Fessard utilized their positions of authority to gain access to victims and then to funnel the children they molested into seminaries and the priesthood. These twenty-six priests and likely many others occupied positions such as Auxiliary Bishops, Vicar for Clergy, Vicars General, deans, and teachers at local seminaries and as recruiters for seminaries. The elevation of child molesters to these positions helps explain why so many child-molesting priests were protected by the Defendant Doe Archdiocese, how so many child molesters became priests, and how so many seminarians and priests became child molesters.”

  Jeffrey Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who specialized in sexual abuse civil suits, was aware of more than three hundred civil claims against Catholic priests in forty-three states through 1991, and had handled eighty cases himself. Catholic reporter Jason Berry had tracked at least one hundred civil settlements by the Catholic Church in the years 1984–90, totaling $100 million to $300 million. Roman Catholic canon attorney Father Thomas Doyle estimated that about 3,000 Roman Catholic priests had been pedophiliac abusers of children (an average of sixteen priestly sex abusers per diocese).

  Baltimore psychotherapist and former priest A. W. Richard Sipe, author of A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy, made a comprehensive study of the sexual conduct of priests. He reported, “Estimated chances that a Catholic priest in the United States is sexually active: one in two.” Sipe studied 1,000 priests and 500 of their “‘lovers’ or victims.” He found that “20 percent of priests were involved in sexual relationships with women, 8 to 10 percent in ‘heterosexual exploration,’ 20 percent were homosexual with half of them active, 6 percent were pedophiles, almost 4 percent of them targeted boys.”

  Offices of the national monthly Freethought Today in Madison, Wisconsin, reported receiving three to four newspaper clippings per week from readers detailing a new criminal or civil court accusation against a priest or Protestant minister. It had surveyed reported cases in North America during the years of 1988 and 1989 and found 250 reported cases of criminal charges involving child-molesting priests, ministers, or ministerial staff in the United States and Canada. Of the accused clergy, seventy were Catholic priests (39.5%) and 111 were Protestant ministers (58%).

  Although priests made up only about 10 percent of North American clergy, they were 40 percent of the accused. With outcome unknown in about a fifth of the cases, the study found that “88 percent of all charged clergy were convicted (81 percent of priests were convicted)…. A majority of the cases did not go to trial…. Three quarters of all clergy who pleaded innocent were found guilty. About half of the Catholic priests pleading innocent were convicted.”

  The study revealed that Catholic priests were acquitted or dismissed of child molestation charges at a higher rate than Protestant ministers. Similarly, Catholic priests received a higher rate of suspended sentences when convicted, and when sentenced, spent considerably less time in jail or prison.

  Angela Bonavoglia, author of the book Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church, noted that many Catholic priests around the world—in Mexico, Latin America, Africa, and the United States—were involved in consensual relationships with women. Many other priests were involved in consensual relationships with adult men. “It is obvious that the crisis in the Church is much larger than pedophilia or the sexual abuse of minors,” she wrote. “It is about crimes and criminals, sex and power, yes. But fundamentally, it is about hypocrisy. By forbidding priests who choose to be sexual in mature ways that include commitment, responsibility and respect, and by protecting them from the costs of their sexual exploits, the Church has effectively condoned a clerical sexual free-for-all. That heterosexual and homosexual behavior may thrive in the Catholic priesthood does not reflect anything inherent about homosexuality or heterosexuality but is rather an indictment of the hypocrisy and duplicity of an elite, closed, all-male system, a secret society of sorts that condones, indeed, demands, lying about the reality of one’s sexual life at all costs.”

  Asserting that Pope John XXIII’s 1962 document remained in force until May 2001, the authors of the book Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes by Thomas P. Doyle, A.W.R. Sipe, and Patrick J. Wall, presented their account of what they called the Catholic Church’s 2000-year paper trail of sexual abuse. They wrote that the letter was “significant” because it reflected the Church’s “insistence on maintaining the highest degree of secrecy.”

  Forty-six years after Pope John XXIII signed De Modo Provedendi di Causis Crimine Soliciciones and pledged the Church to secrecy about sex abuse of youths by the clergy, Pope Benedict XVI in his tour of the United States and in Australia apologized privately to individuals who were abused by priests and frequently spoke publicly on the subject. To a World Youth Day audience in Sydney, Australia, he declared, “These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain and have damaged the Church’s witness. I ask all of you to support and assist your bishops, and to work together with them in combating this evil. Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice. It is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome environment, especially for young people.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Murder in Holy Orders

  The archives of the Vatican contain evidence that being pope has been one of history’s most dangerous jobs. Through the centuries many have been murdered or assassinated. The first was Pope John VIII. In 882, he was poisoned and then clubbed to death by scheming members of the papal court. According to Matthew Brunson’s The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See most murders of pontiffs occurred in the Middle Ages, especially in a period described by Cardinal Cesare Baronius in Annales ecclesiastici as “the Iron Age of the Papacy,” from 867 to 964, when powerful families had popes elected, deposed, and murdered to advance political ambitions, or as vengeance. Of the twenty-six popes during this era, sixteen died by violence.

  The most tantalizing of the murders was that of John XII (955–964). “Just 18 years old when he was elected pontiff, John was a notorious womanizer and the papal palace came to be described as a brothel during his reign. He died of injuries after he was caught in bed by the husband of one of his mistresses. Some legends say that he died of a stroke while in the act of love.”

  Theories and claims of murderous cabals blossomed following the death of Pope Clement XIV in 1771. He “was reportedly so racked with guilt over disbanding the Jesuits that he spent his last years terrified of being poisoned.” Following his death, there were so many stories about his possible murder that a postmortem was conducted. It found nothing to implicate the Jesuits.

  The following is a list of murdered pontiffs and the manner in which they are thought to have been removed from The Pope Encyclopedia:

  John VIII (872–882): Poisoned and clubbed to death

  Adrian III, St. (884–885): Rumored poisoned

  Stephen VI (896–897): Strangled

  Leo V (903): Murdered

  John X (914–928): Suffocated under a pillow

  Stephen VII (VIII) (928–931): Possibly murdered

  Stephen VIII (IX) (939–942): Mutilated and died from injuries

  John XII (955–964): [Killed while caught in the act with a mistress by the woman’s outraged husband] or suffered a stroke while with a mistress or murdered by an outraged husband

  Benedict VI (973–974): Strangled by a priest

  John XIV (983–984): Starved to death or poisone
d

  Gregory V (996–999): Rumored to have been poisoned

  Sergius IV (1009–1012): Possibly murdered

  Clement II (1046–1047): Rumored poisoned

  Damasus II (1048): Rumored murdered

  Boniface VIII (1294–1303): Died from abuse while a French captive

  The most bizarre story of a pope is that of Stephen VII. In “896, [he] set in motion the trial of his rival, who had been dead for 9 months.” Author Mark Owen noted in an article on the notorious pontiffs that the body of Pope Formosus was dragged from its tomb and placed on a throne. Wrapped in a hair shirt, the corpse was provided with legal counsel, who remained silent while Pope Stephen raved and screamed.

  “The crime of Formosus,” Owen recorded, “was that he had crowned emperor one of the numerous illegitimate heirs of Charlemagne after first having performed the same office for a candidate favored by Stephen.

  “After Stephen’s rant, the corpse was stripped of its clothes and its fingers were chopped off. It was then dragged through the palace and hurled from a balcony to a howling mob below, who threw it into the Tiber River. The body was rescued by people sympathetic to Formosus and given a quiet burial. Stephen was strangled a few years later.

  “In 964 Pope Benedict V raped a young girl and absconded to Constantinople with the papal treasury, only to reappear when the money ran out.” A church historian called Benedict “the most iniquitous of all the monsters of ungodliness.” He was also “slain by a jealous husband. His corpse, bearing a hundred dagger wounds, was dragged through the streets before being tossed into a cesspit….

  “In October 1032, the papal miter was purchased for eleven-year-old Benedict IX. Upon reaching his 14th year, a chronicler wrote that Benedict had surpassed in wantonness and profligacy all who had preceded him.”

  According to historian Peter de Rosa in his book Vicars of Christ, popes had mistresses as young as fifteen years of age, were guilty of incest and perversions of every sort, had innumerable children, [and] “were murdered in the very act of adultery.”

  Pope Alexander VI (formerly Rodrigo Borgia) reigned from 1492–1503. He committed his first murder at the age of twelve. “Upon assuming the Papal miter, he cried, ‘I am Pope, Vicar of Christ!’ Like his predecessor, Innocent VIII, Alexander sired many children, baptized them personally, and officiated at their weddings in the Vatican. He had ten known illegitimate children (including the notorious Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia), by his favorite mistress Vannoza Catanei. When she faded in allure, Borgia took fifteen-year-old Giulia Farnese. Farnese obtained a Cardinal’s red hat for her brother, who later became Paul III. Alexander was followed by Julius II who purchased the papacy with his own private fortune…. A notorious womanizer, Julius was so eaten away with syphilis that he couldn’t expose his foot to be kissed.”

  “Pope Sixtus IV charged Roman brothels a Church tax. According to historian Will Durant, in 1490 there were 6,800 registered prostitutes in Rome. Pope Pius II declared that Rome was the only city run by…the sons of popes and cardinals.

  Pope Leo I (440–461) asserted that it did not matter how immoral or inept a pope was as long as he was deemed the rightful successor to St. Peter.” There is no official list of popes, but the Annuario Pontificio [Papal Yearbook], published every year by the Vatican, contains a list that is generally considered the most authoritative. It cites Benedict XVI as the 265th pope of Rome.

  Number 263, John Paul I, received the designation on August 26, 1978. The first pontiff to choose two names (in honor of his predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI), he was born Albino Luciani on October 17, 1912, in Forno di Canale (now called Canale d’Agordo), Italy. He differed from his predecessors in having never held a major position in the Vatican’s internal government or diplomatic corps. Despite being prominent within Italy, he was largely unknown to the wider world.

  Ordained on July 7, 1935, “he studied at Rome’s Gregorian University before a brief period as curate in his childhood parish. After he was appointed to a deputy position at Belluno seminary in 1937, he spent years teaching, during which time he became vicar-general to the Bishop at Belluno. Toward the end of 1958, Pope John XXIII appointed Luciani as bishop of Vittorio Veneto, and after a slow start at the Vatican Council (1962–65), he soon became an active voice in doctrinal matters.” Named archbishop of Venice (1969) and a cardinal in 1973, he rejected many of Catholicism’s more opulent aspects and encouraged richer churches to give to poorer ones.

  After his election to the papacy by the College of Cardinals, Time magazine reported, “The Cardinals knew what they wanted: a warm and humble man. Seated at a table in front of the Sistine Chapel altar, the Cardinal solemnly intoned the name written on each ballot. ‘Luciani…Luciani…Luciani…’ Beside him sat two other Cardinal scrutatores (vote counters) who carefully plucked the ballots from a silver chalice, unfolded them and passed them to their colleague. It was the fourth and final ballot of the astonishing one-day conclave that gave the Catholic world its 263rd Pope.”

  Succeeding in penetrating “the wall of secrecy that attends such conclaves, and the vows of silence taken by the Cardinals as they enter and are sealed from the outside world, Time’s reporters Jordan Bonfante and Roland Flamini pieced together much of the story of the proceedings in the Sistine Chapel. It was clear that Luciani came to power through no accident, but as a result of a spontaneous consensus that evolved from three agreements reached in a lengthy pre-conclave period that followed the death of Pope Paul VI on Aug. 6 [1978].

  “Probably half of the 111 Cardinal-electors went into the conclave undecided. Most were fairly convinced that the Pope would have to be an Italian….

  “The second consensus, resisted to the end by some members of the Curia, was that the Church, whatever its far-flung political and administrative problems, needed a pastoral Pope. ‘It is one thing to interpret the faith and another to convey it to the people in the parishes,’ said one ranking Curia prelate. ‘That is something that the bishops—whatever their theology—understand better than the Curialists at their little desks.’”

  Another Cardinal said, “I think all of us had agreed in our own minds before the conclave that we needed to go back to a humble, pastoral man, although we did not really consult each other about it. And then, when we went in, it became clear to us that this was what we wanted.”

  One participant said there was a consensus that the new Pope be “not obvious, and not controversial.”

  As the balloting produced no obvious leading candidate, Luciani was a man “not actively disliked by anyone, and actively liked by everyone who really knew him.”

  “At noon,” the Time reporters wrote, “the two sets of ballots, skewered on a long needle and strung like a kind of combined ecclesiastical shish kebab and necklace, were thrust into the chapel stove along with black chemical flares to send up a dark ‘no Pope’ signal to the waiting crowds in St. Peter’s Square. But the flue above the stove was broken, and black smoke seeped through the chapel, partially obscuring Michelangelo’s famous frescoes. For a quarter of an hour, the assembled Cardinals coughed, covered their mouths and rubbed their eyes until two windows were opened to clear the air.

  “As the Cardinals broke for lunch, walking to the Pontifical Hall in the palace’s Borgia apartments, intense discussions were under way. On the third ballot, at 4:30…Luciani burst to the fore, falling just short of a majority.

  “At that point,” Luciani explained later with a grin that would earn him the nickname “the smiling pope,” the situation “began to get dangerous for me.”

  “Cardinals Willebrands of the Netherlands and Ribeiro of Portugal, sitting on either side of him, leaned toward him. Whispered one: ‘Courage. If the Lord gives a burden, he also gives the strength to carry it.’ Whispered the other: ‘The whole world prays for the new Pope.’”

  On the fourth vote, “no other name but Luciani’s was read out. There were a number of blank ballots…. But roughly ninety votes went to Luciani.” Rin
ging applause echoed in the chapel. “The chapel door was opened and eight conclave aides entered to accompany Jean Cardinal Villot, the church’s ‘Camerlengo,’ or chamberlain, to the flustered Luciani, who was still seated in his place under a fresco of the baptism of Christ. The Camerlengo, his face wreathed in smiles, asked the ritual question, ‘Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?’

  “Luciani at first replied, ‘May God forgive you for what you have done in my regard.’ Then he gave his assent, ‘Accepto.’”

  Burning ballots and chemically treated straw in a stove sent a puff of white smoke up a chimney, signaling to a throng in St. Peter’s Square that the Church had a new pope. Inside, Luciani announced the name he had chosen for himself as the new pope. He would be “loannes Paulus.” The crowd outside was told the name of their new pope was “John Paul.”

  “After the singing of the ‘Te Deum’ of thanksgiving, the pontiff was escorted to the sacristy to don his temporary papal robes. He reappeared in a white cassock with a shoulder-length cape and a high white sash. Grinning happily, he took the throne that had been erected in front of the altar, and joyful Cardinals approached one by one to embrace him and to kiss the papal ring.”

  “Rome did not get its first real look at John Paul until the next day, when 200,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square for the weekly Sunday noon blessing. John Paul spoke for seven minutes.…Let us ‘understand each other,’ he told the crowd. ‘I do not have the wisdom of heart of Pope John, nor the preparation and culture of Pope Paul. However, now I am in their place and must try to help the church. I hope you will help me with your prayers.’…

  “The new pope, John Paul, gave a glimpse of his personal style with the plans for his Sept. 3 open-air accession ceremonies. At his direction it was not called a ‘coronation’ or ‘enthronement,’ but a ‘solemn Mass to mark the start of his ministry as Supreme Pastor.’ John Paul asked not to be carried on the usual portable throne but to walk in procession. Most significant, he did not wish to be crowned with the triple-decked, bee hive-shaped tiara. Instead, a pallium, the white woolen stole symbolizing his title of Patriarch of the West, would be placed on his shoulders….