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Although Vatican City has fewer than 1,000 citizens and only 44 ha of territory, it has one of the richest governments in the world and a complex and secretive history.
Let’s discuss interesting stories, theories, and facts connected to the smallest independent country in the world.
Secret Archive
The Vatican does have a collection of archival documents from the Middle Ages to the present day. However, many experts believe that among the documents are also erotic literature from ancient Rome, Michelangelo’s pornographic works of art, and other classified materials. Moreover, according to unverified data, the Vatican has the most accurate collection of occult literature worldwide.
The murder of Lincoln
Lincoln was convinced that the Jesuits created the prerequisites for the American Civil War and did not hide it. For the denunciation of the papacy, he paid with his life. Thus, there is a belief that the president was killed by the Jesuits, who acted on the instructions of the Vatican.
Banco Ambrosiano Scandal
Vatican scandals and secrecy usually revolve around money and banking, and the Banco Ambrosiano scandal is one of the most famous among them. From 1971 until 1989, the Vatican Bank, or the Institute for the Works of Religion, was presided over by an American Archbishop, Paul Marcinkus.
Sometime recently, its collapse in 1982, impelled by an unfavorable debt, Banco Ambrosiano was among Italy’s biggest private banks. After the bank ceased operations, its general manager, Roberto Calvi, died a strange death. His dead body was found dangling from Blackfriars Bridge in central London. At first, it was thought Calvi took his own life, but afterward, it showed that he was killed.
In reality, it emerged the whole case had grim associations with the Vatican bank — a major shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano. Billions of dollars were siphoned from the private bank to a dozen shell companies.
When specialists attempted to approach Marcinkus on the matter, he became inaccessible. Disobliging the justice framework in every conceivable way and utilizing diplomatic immunity, Marcinkus continued running the Institute for the Works of Religion for several more years after the scandal erupted.
However, the banking scandal ended up in fiction. Godfather Part III spun around the Banco Ambrosiano Scandal as well as the suspicious 1978 passing of Pope John Paul I, who served for just one month before being found dead.
Death of John Paul I
According to the official reason, Pope John Paul I passed away because of heart failure. However, conspiracy theorists propose that he might have been killed. As a new Pope, he was a modern and open candidate, whereas certain members of the College of Cardinals had pushed for a more conservative voice. Moreover, he was called “the Smiling Pope” by his people and was known for his humor and good-natured attitude.
On the morning of Sept. 29, 1978, Sister Vicenza entered the pope’s room to check on him after noting that he had yet to come out for his morning coffee. Instead, to her frightfulness, she found him dead in his bed. She rapidly summoned another sister to affirm what she’d seen, a more youthful nun named Sister Margherita. Both nuns detailed that the pope’s skin was cold and that his nails were dim.
Almost immediately after the declaration that he had died from a heart attack, people started to question it. He had never given any sign that he had been sick, and indeed, the nurses who found him were shocked to learn that he’d had a heart condition. He had purportedly been taking anticoagulants, although they were being taken for a non-life-threatening ailment. The more that a heart attack was touted, the less the public accepted it.
A few years after his death, British crime writer David Yallop published a book titled In God’s Name, which suggested that Pope John Paul I had been murdered.
Yallop claims that the pope was aware of corruption within the Vatican Bank and that it became why he was killed. He states that when the pope’s body was found, he’d had a note crumpled in his hand with the names of bank members involved in Freemasonry, which is strictly banned within the Catholic Church. However, today, the official cause of his death remains a heart attack.
The tomb of Pope John Paul I is inside St. Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Joan
Pope Joan is a legendary female pontiff who reigned under the title of John VIII for 25 months from 855 to 858
There are many versions of this story, but most of them describe her as a talented and intelligent woman who disguised herself as a man. Because of their abilities, Joan rose through the church hierarchy and was eventually elected pope. However, her sex was revealed when she gave birth during a procession, and she passed away shortly after, either through murder or natural causes.
There is a belief that the story is true, but the Vatican removed Pope Joan from its official lists and crafted a ritual to ensure that future popes were male. Moreover, in the 16th century, Siena Cathedral featured a bust of Joan, among other pontiffs, which was removed after protests in 1600.
The Army of Exorcists
Even though we live in the 21st century, exorcism is alive within the Catholic Church. In fact, Father Gabriele Amorth, the former chief exorcist of the Vatican who died only in 2016, claimed to have performed 130.000 exorcisms in his time.
Moreover, the BBC reported in 2018 that the Vatican welcomed 250 priests from around the world to an annual exorcism school because the Church believes there has been an uptick in demonic possessions in recent years.
Exorcism is recognized under the Catholic Church’s canon law but can only be performed with high-level permission from within the church. Five years ago, the Vatican backed the International Association of Exorcists, which was founded in 1990 and has licensed more than 200 members on six continents.
The Vatican Smuggled Nazis to Safety
Many high-ranked Nazi officials and war criminals escaped across the Atlantic to several South American countries like Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Most of these escapees managed to realize their plan using routes through either Spain or Italy known as “ratlines.” Here, according to historians, Nazi fugitives were assisted by Red Cross and the Vatican.
The Vatican Refugee Commission knowingly provided Nazi fugitives with false identities.
The Vatican has consistently refused to comment on these events, and the majority of documents from that period of time are still in the Secret Archives. However, Pope Francis promised to open these documents to qualified researchers in 2020. So, who knows what we will recognize soon?
Read more about Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican.
Making Money Off the Holocaust
Nowadays, there is little doubt whether the Vatican also used its privileged sovereignty to help smuggle Nazi-looted gold, art, and other property belonging to Jewish families and other victims of the Holocaust.
It is said that the Vatican’s financial advisor Bernardino Nogara, the founder of the Vatican Bank, is said to have possibly been one of the Third Reich’s spies within the Vatican, and–though the devastation of war-time records makes the complete scope of his plan unclear–he and the Nazis are charged to have instituted a scheme wherein the Vatican contributed in Italian insurance companies which kept all the assets from life insurance plans of killed European Jews. Since the Vatican was just an investor and not the direct insurer, they didn’t need to pay back any of the money they made in this conspiracy.
Leaking Secrets
In 2012, Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published a book called His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI, which consists of private correspondence and other classified documents of the then-pope leaked to Nuzzi by Benedict’s butler. This book represents the inner life of the smallest government in the world and discusses many topics that the Vatican does not usually afford to the public. For instance, such topics as corruption within the Holy See and many scandals that previously were hidden from the public.
Secret Court for Extremely Bad Sins
Particular crimes in the Catholic justice system are considered heinous. In Vatican City, bishops of the extralegal tribunal who work with these sins are members of an elite membership known as the Apostolic Penitentiary.
As The Telegraph explains, the Apostolic Penitentiary, or the “Tribunal of Conscience,” was founded by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and remained secret until 2009. The feature of the system is that only the pope can grant absolution for the sins. Examples of crimes include attempting to murder the pope, a priest having sex with someone, and spitting out a Communion wafer.
The pope, acting through this tribunal and its head, known as the Major Penitentiary, at that point either gifts absolution to the individual looking for mercy or lets the automatic banning that comes with such horrifying sins stand. Such cases are held secretly and pseudonymously, as they are considered a matter of conscience and not an open concern, which sure is a conclusion one could reach.
