Over the past century the Catholic Church has been blessed with heroic, socially minded, saintly, brilliant, and humble men to lead as pope. We have been extremely blessed in recent memory. But this… hasn’t always been the case.
Over the course of 2000 years, there have been some popes that… let’s just say… didn’t exactly live up to their call. More interested in power than discipleship, they acted with greed, lust, vengeance, and pride. Who are the worst popes in history and why is it important that we learn about them?
This is Catholicism in Focus. — First on our list is Pope Stephen VI, a man so twisted and vengeful that he put his predecessor on trial, cut off the three fingers he used for blessing, and then threw him into the Tiber river. But here’s the real kicker… his predecessor had been dead the whole time.
In what has to be the craziest act of a despot in history, Stephen had Pope Formosus dug up seven months after he had been buried, dressed in papal clothes, sat on the throne, and put through a trial. Formosus was accused of perjury and gaining the papacy illegally. Without being able to offer much by way of defense, he was declared guilty and had his papacy retroactively declared null.
This didn’t exactly go well for Stephen, who just a few months later was imprisoned and then killed by strangulation. He ruled for just over one year. Little else is known of him other than the fact that his father was also a priest, so religion… and ignoring the Church’s rules… seem to run in the family.
Next up is John XII, a pope that was hardly a man at all, as he was elected when he was about 18 years old. How do you think giving near absolute power of heaven and earth to a teenager is going to go? Chances are, it went exactly as you would have expected.
The papal residence was turned into a brothel, he cared little for priestly functions, and lived more as a prince than a pope. This was such a problem that some scholars have hypothesized that the legend of Pope Joan, the story of a woman secretly serving as pope, comes from his reign. He had a mistress named Joan who was said to exercise influence during his pontificate.
His moral depravity was so low that one modern biographer referred to him as, “a robber, a murderer, and incestuous person, unworthy to represent Christ upon the pontifical throne. ” Unsurprisingly, his life came to an end when he was thrown out of window by a man… who found him in bed with his wife. It seemed the Church had not learned its lesson about electing super young popes because less than a century later Benedict IX ascended the thrown at the age of 20, and things did not go any better.
They were worse. Much worse. Often regarded as the worst pope in history, Benedict is the only man to hold the papacy on three separate occasions.
How, you ask? First, he was elected through bribery. He was eventually driven out by Sylvester III, but returned a few months later to reclaim his throne.
Losing interest, and finding a better deal, he sold the papacy to his godfather. If that wasn’t bad enough, he tried a fourth time to be pope but was eventually deposed by Henry II, the King of the Romans, with the other two men. Rumors were spread about his violence and sexuality, but it’s just as possible this was propaganda against him.
Hard to tell, given the times. The same is true for Pope Boniface VIII a man with a wrap sheet filled with hard-to-believe quotes and actions. If you google him, you will find some WILD accusations with no citations or sources.
He wasn’t a good man, but we should still be cautious to believe everything we read online. What we do know for sure is that he was a power-hungry man with a propensity for feuds. Such as with the town of Palestrina that challenged his legal status as pope.
He sent armies to put down a revolt, and even after they peacefully surrendered, he destroyed the city anyway. When Frederick III of Sicily rose to the throne, Boniface tried to dissuade him. When Frederick refused, Boniface excommunicated him and put an interdict on the whole island.
And then there was his conflict with Philip IV of France. Seeing the wealth and power of that country, Boniface decreed a papal bull in 1302, declaring, get this, that the pope was the Supreme head of all lands and that all rulers were to submit to him. That… didn’t go over well.
Philip sent an army to capture Boniface, had him beaten, and he eventually died from his injuries. Boniface was hated so much by his contemporaries that Dante included him in the Inferno as a member of the 8th circle of Hell… while he was still alive. Luckily, his attempts at power didn’t result in that much damage to the Church, something that cannot be said about our next pope, Urban VI.
When you literally divide the Church in two or three, you’re going to get on this list. Upon being elected, he revealed himself to be an angry reformer, criticizing the lavishness and corruptness of the cardinals. Many cardinals left Rome, declared his papacy “null because it was not made freely but under fear” and elected their own anti-pope.
Which, at first, doesn’t sound too bad. He was probably right to fight against these cardinals. Until you see his methods.
He not only excommunicated his enemies, he exactly violence against them, killing and even torturing cardinals that tried to take his power away. Legend has it that he complained when they didn’t scream loud enough. Ultimately, his papacy was defined by warring factions, a conflict that mired the church for 40 years.
And while that’s bad, he doesn’t have the reputation of the next two popes, who’s names alone are synonymous with corruption, scandal, and a thirst for power. I talking of course of Alexander VI, a Borgia, and Leo X, a Medici. When Showtime and Netflix make a multi-season show about a pope’s family, you know that there are some seriously not-safe-for-work aspects to their papacies.
Although ultimately different papacies, there were definitely similarities between them, separated by just ten years. Both came from prominent families and used the papacy to further their family’s control; both spent the church’s money freely on lavish occasions; and both had a sense of the finer things in life, investing in art and building projects. Where they differed was in their deeper sins.
Alexander was known for having many children to a mistress, whereas Leo sold indulgences to pay for the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica. When you consider that these two popes ruled just 10 years apart at the beginning of the 16th century, it’s no wonder that reformers like Luther an Calvin had something to say.
And finally, there is Pope Paul IV, the anti-semitic pope. I’m sure he’d like to be remembered for more than that, but it is his most enduring legacy. In 1555, just two months after being elected, he issued one of the most harmful papal bulls, Cum nimis absurdum, ordering the creation of a Jewish ghetto in Rome.
Jews were rounded up, locked in at night, forced them to wear yellow, and destroyed all synagogues but one in each city. And it gets worse. It was during this time that he ramped up the inquisition, using it as an excuse to interrogate Jews and treat them as second-class citizens.
Mobs were known to attack Jews, and in just five years of being pope, the Jewish population was cut in half. He did some other stuff that was pretty bad but I’m not really sure what the point in mentioning it is. Clearly this is a man that did not lead in the way of Christ and brought tremendous shame upon our Church.
And yet, we’re still here. And yet, the gates of hell have not prevailed over the Church. As awful as it may be to learn about these great disappointments in our Church—and we should truly be ashamed of them—it should stand as a reminder to us that while human beings may lead this Church on earth, it is not up to human beings to keep it on the right path.
Our Church was founded by Christ and is guided by the holy spirit, meaning that no despot, heretic, abuser, warmonger, imposter, or anti-semite, no matter who evil, can keep the Church from ultimately achieving the work of salvation. It is with that in mind that we look to our recent popes with great thanksgiving, but also remember that our faith is not in their holiness… but Christ’s.
