“THE BORGIAS AND THE MAFIA

In 1455, the Holy See was occupied by Alfonso de Borja, a descendant of this eighth knight, under the name Callixtus III. Having gained the trust of King Alfonso Il of Naples, he came to power at the age of seventy-seven, while suffering from stomach cancer. His pain made him suspicious. He believed only in the loyalty of his Spanish family. Through the legacy of inheritance, his fortune fell into the hands of Rodrigo Borgia, who used it to fund his own ascension to the papal throne. Thus was born the first Mafia clan in history.

The Borgias possessed an absolute thirst for power. Europe had, by then, lost all hope in the goodness of God: the plague known as the Black Death had made miserably clear just how precarious human life can be, and with the bitterness of an orphan deprived of its supreme father, the populace consoled itself by indulging in carnal pleasures. It was in this context that Rodrigo Borgia, now Pope Alexander VI, began trafficking in a very powerful drug: papal bulls, which granted the forgiveness of sins . . . Every citizen could murder, steal, gamble, engage in prostitution or incest or unbridled gluttony, and all without fear: because in exchange for a handful of ducats, the Church offered absolution and the assurance that God would welcome the sinner into heaven.

The Borgias' passion for life, for dominance over all mankind, their disdain of any divine retribution, this absolute lack of morality, offset by their staggering appreciation of fine art, utterly captivated me. Knowing that the respectable Church of today once had a Spanish adventurer at its roots, a clever thief who was surrounded by his bought-and-sold lovers and by his children, each embodying a spiritual summit as well as an abyss - Cesare, strength and tyranny; Lucrezia, beauty and lust; Giovanni, intelligence and vanity; Gioffre, purity and stupidity - reminded me of the lotus plant, whose bright flowers spring from filthy swamps . . . And so I yielded to the temptation to write a comics script: in the form of a vast historical fresco on the creation, growth, and death of this provocative family, so similar to some of the people currently governing our planet.

(…)

In place of the Black Death, we have cancer and AIDS, along with pollution of our air, our water, and our planet. Instead of cities at war, we are witness to entire countries fighting. Christianity and Islam remain in conflict even today. The discovery of the Americas has now become interplanetary exploration. We're experiencing the artistic revolution of the Renaissance through personal computers and the Internet. The papal bulls of yore are today's commercial "benedictions" from the United States. Just as the ducat was the key to paradise during the Renaissance years, our only God is the almighty dollar: whether its value goes up or down and the gates of heaven open or close . . . Just as Machiavelli, in his book The Prince, recommended aggressive invasions to achieve Italian unity, in this day and age a powerful nation (that shall remain nameless) ruthlessly attacks any country, claiming to obstruct "Evil" but spurred on, in fact, by its thirst for oil . . . Today, the Borgias have been replaced by oil mafias, pharmaceutical industry multinationals, drug cartels, and greedy bankers.

And yet, the corruption that flourished during the Renaissance could not prevent the emergence of a Leonardo da Vinci, a Raphael, a Botticelli, a Michelangelo, a Dante, a Machiavelli even, as well as so many others who opened up new vistas to human awareness. This is what brings us great hope: the possibility that the decadence of the world today is just the pain of a chrysalis becoming a butterfly, and that from the last vast crisis into which we plummet a new humanity will arise, one that will look upon us with the same tender compassion we feel for the monkeys.

—Alejandro Jodorowsky

August 2011”

It’d be funny as hell if the Vatican used its archives, vaults and basements to preserve and display the remains of dead Popes, trapped in amber on display for the general public.

All T-posing, fucking bones and everything.

“There’s Pope Formosus. T-posing as usual.”

which president met the most popes-john paul 2?

Yes, it's Pope John Paul II.

The first incumbent President to meet a Pope was Woodrow Wilson, who met Pope Benedict XV at the Vatican in 1919, so Presidents have really only been meeting with Popes for the past 100 years. So Pope John Paul II basically reigned as Pope for a quarter of the time (26+ years) that Presidents have been meeting with them.

But despite the length of John Paul II's reign, he didn't meet with significantly more Presidents than some of the other Popes. John Paul II met with five incumbent Presidents during his reign: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush (he also met future President Joe Biden when Biden was a U.S. Senator). Pope Paul VI, who was Pope from 1963-1978, met with four incumbent Presidents: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. John Paul II would have probably met more Presidents if not for the fact that Reagan and Clinton were both re-elected and served the full eight years in office (Bush 43 was also re-elected, but John Paul II died just a few months into his second term).

Here's a full list of which incumbent Presidents met with which Popes:

•Pope Benedict XV [1]: Woodrow Wilson (1919) •Pope John XXIII [1]: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1959) •Pope Paul VI [4]: John F. Kennedy (1963); Lyndon B. Johnson (1965 & 1967--a meeting which featured one of my favorite Presidential stories ever); Richard Nixon (1969 & 1970); Gerald Ford (1975) •Pope John Paul II [5]: Jimmy Carter (1979 & 1980); Ronald Reagan (1982, 1984, & 1987); George H.W. Bush (1989 & 1991); Bill Clinton (1993, 1994, 1995, & 1999); George W. Bush (2001, 2002, & 2004) [John Paul II also met future Presidents George H.W. Bush during Bush's Vice Presidency and Joe Biden while Biden was a Senator.] •Pope Benedict XVI [2]: George W. Bush (2007 & 2008); Barack Obama (2009) [Benedict XVI also met future President Joe Biden during his Vice Presidency.] •Pope Francis [3]: Barack Obama (2014 & 2015); Donald Trump (2017); Joe Biden (2021) [Francis also met future President Biden on three occasions during Biden's Vice Presidency.]

Interestingly, Pope Pius IX, who reigned from 1846-1878 -- long before the United States formally established permanent diplomatic relations with the Holy See -- also met four Presidents during his reign (more than any Pope other than John Paul II), but they were all either former or future Presidents. Pius IX met former Presidents Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore in 1855 when they visited Rome (separately) and former President Franklin Pierce when he visited Rome in November 1857. And Pius IX met future President Theodore Roosevelt in December 1869 when Roosevelt's family visited the Vatican. Theodore Roosevelt is actually the only person who served as President known to have kissed the ring of a Pope -- even though Roosevelt wasn't Catholic and was only 11 years old. Former President Ulysses S. Grant met Pope Leo XIII in 1878 when visiting the Vatican during his post-Presidential world tour.

Believe it or not, but at one point there was not one, not two, but three popes vying for power at the same time, during a tumultuous period that lasted for almost four decades.

'The Pope as a Savage'. Melchior Lorck.

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4, 14). Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching', looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an 'Adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.

- Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Never were truer words spoken than by this misunderstood and much maligned great theologian and staunch defender of the Christian heritage of the West against the forces that seek to weaken and destroy it from within.

RIP Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger (1927-2023)

can a pope be pope twice? ie, if Pope Snorlax were to retire, a new Pope Chikorita, were to be elected, and then the new pope Chikorita died, could the Vatican re-elect Pope Snorlax?

I see what you’re saying. And, yes. Once you’re pope you can always be pope again.

Headcanon: When out in public (and unpainted) Secondo will pull down his sunglasses and make funny faces at babies when they start crying, to make them laugh instead.

(but if you see him do that, no you didn't)

I love this headcanon so much that I'm gonna do each of the Papas interacting with upset babies.

Primo: Upset babies don't stay upset for long in his calming presence. All it takes is a reassuring smile and maybe a "Goochy-goochy-goo" and the baby lights up like a Christmas tree. Babies love him.

Secondo: When he encounters a crying baby, particularly in public, he does in fact, lower his sunglasses and make silly, cross eyed faces at them. The babies smile and laugh. If someone catches Secondo doing this, however, he stares at them, menacingly until they avert they gaze.

Terzo: The stealer of babies. He will take a baby out of its parents arms and bounce it on his knee, making horse galloping noises the whole time. The babies are at first confused but then they think it's the most amazingly fun thing in the entire world. They cry once they're given back to their parents.

Copia: Has absolutely no idea what to do with crying babies. The most he can muster is an awkward smile.

Nihil: Upsets the baby even more with an epic saxophone solo in the middle of a crowded bus or subway station. Sister Imperator of course rolls her eyes before taking the saxophone away and apologizing profusely to the crying babies parents.

Allegory of the Papacy of Clement XI Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (Italian; 1678–1745) ca. 1720 Oil on copper The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland

A history of the papacy from the great schism to the sack of Rome / by M. Creighton.

What are we gonna do?!

I don’t fucking know.

Get a lizard, paint it gold and present it to the POPE?!

Tell him it’s a dragon?!

Had he been Catholic, would Jimmy Carter have been a better Pope versus President, or do you think he would have been neutered by Vatican politics like he was by DC politics?

Man, if you have trouble with politics in Washington, D.C., you're going to really have a problem in the Vatican. That's 2,000 years of insanity that makes the House of Representatives look like Barbieland. You know how people talk about problems with Biblical proportions? The Roman Curia is literally a problem of Biblical proportions.

Plus, I just don't think Americans would be good Popes.

Even after his death, Pope Formosus was held to account for his supposed crimes against the church. His corpse was brought to sit trial, even after he was dead and had been buried.

long time no post turns out i’m basically a pope now (in a pope larp class)