In the 2024 film Conclave, which received eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture, the process of selecting a new pope reveals skeletons in each candidate’s closet. Although the story is fictional, the real-life papacy has had no shortage of secrets and scandals over the centuries. Here are seven of Atlas Obscura’s favorite tales of wild, shocking, or just plain peculiar goings-on behind the Vatican’s walls.
The Unsolved Case of the Attempted Assassination of Pope John Paul II
By Matthew Blitz
In 1981, Mehmet Ali Ağca shot Pope John Paul II multiple times during a public appearance with the intent to kill. The pope survived and publicly forgave his assailant, while Ağca served a 19-year prison sentence in Italy before being sent back to his native Turkey, where he served additional time and has mainly kept a low profile since his release. But what were Ağca’s true motives? And was he acting independently, or did others play a role? Long after John Paul II’s death from natural causes in 2005, the circumstances surrounding the attempted assassination remain clouded in mystery and conspiracy.
Found: Pope John Paul II’s Letters to a Lady Friend
By Sarah Laskow
Another source of speculation in the life of Pope John Paul II is his relationship with a female philosopher named Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. They met in 1973, five years before he became the pope, and remained close for over 30 years until his death. While not openly scandalous, the many letters they exchanged over the years reveal an unusual degree of intimacy. “I am thinking about you, and in my thoughts I come to Pomfret [Tymieniecka’s home] every day,” the pope wrote toward the end of his life as his health declined.
The Cadaver Synod: When a Pope’s Corpse Was Put on Trial
By Elizabeth Harper
Intense political infighting within the early Church led to the Synodus Horrenda or Cadaver Synod of 897. The short version is that one pope had another pope’s dead body exhumed and forced the corpse to stand trial for crimes he was accused of in life. This bizarre, but true, story ushered in one of the most corrupt eras in the history of the papacy, a time that’s now referred to in all seriousness as the pornocracy.
Europe’s First Pornographic Blockbuster Was Made in the Vatican
By Esther Inglis-Arkell
And speaking of porn and the Vatican, it’s rumored that salacious paintings once decorated the walls of the 16th-century Constantine Room in the papal apartments. Whether they were deliberately commissioned by a licentious pope or placed out of spite by a disgruntled painter is unknown. The paintings are said to have inspired The Sixteen Pleasures, a book of erotic engravings that circulated widely (despite the Vatican’s best efforts to censor it by imprisoning the author).
That Time Portugal’s King Gifted an Elephant to the Pope
By Devon Field
Poor Hanno the elephant. Born in Portuguese-controlled India, he suffered the discomfort of a long voyage to Europe, where he drew massive crowds when he was presented to Pope Leo X in 1514. Though prized by the pope, Hanno survived only a short time in ill health before being buried under the Vatican. Fueled by human greed for prestige and entertainment, Hanno’s journey came at the expense of his well-being—a tale still too often the case with elephants today.
When the Pope Made 10 Days Disappear
By Cara Giaimo
The Earth does not take an even number of days to make one journey around the Sun, and by the late 16th century, the Julian calendar used in much of Europe was gradually getting out of sync with the changing seasons. So to keep Church holidays like Easter and Christmas at the same time of year, Pope Gregory XIII came up with a novel solution: He decreed that 10 days in October 1582 would be skipped. But as you can imagine, disappearing more than a week from the calendar created some problems.
Found in the Garbage: A Supposed Bone of a First-Century Pope
By Christina Ayele Djossa
In 2017, Enviro Waste, a U.K. waste removal company, discovered something highly unusual in a London trash bin: a red wax–sealed box containing a small piece of human bone. An attached inscription identified the bone as belonging to Pope Clement I, who lived so long ago that few details of his life are known with certainty. Papal remains can sometimes end up in unusual places (the heart of Pope Pius VI is in France, while the rest of his body is in the Vatican), but the discovery of Clement’s alleged reliquary in London raised a host of unanswered questions. Was it genuine? And just how did it get not only to London, but into the trash?
Article by:Source: Andrew Coletti
