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Vatican conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that concern the Pope or the Roman Catholic Church. A majority of the theories allege that the Church and its representatives are secretly controlling secular society with a satanic agenda for global domination.
Pope John Paul I died in September 1978, only a month after his election to the papacy. The timing of his death and the Vatican's alleged difficulties with ceremonial and legal death procedures have fostered several conspiracy theories. British author David Yallop wrote extensively about unsolved crimes and conspiracy theories, and in his 1984 book In God's Name suggested that John Paul I died because he was about to uncover financial scandals allegedly involving the Vatican. [1] John Cornwell responded to Yallop's charges in 1987 with A Thief In The Night, in which he analyzed the various allegations and denied the conspiracy. [2] According to Eugene Kennedy, writing for The New York Times , Cornwell's book "helps to purge the air of paranoia and of conspiracy theories, showing how the truth, carefully excavated by an able journalist in a refreshing volume, does make us free." [3]
Various theories have been brought forward in regards to the attempt by Mehmet Ali Ağca to kill Pope John Paul II. Those theories have involved the Grey Wolves, [4] the Bulgarian Secret Service, [5] and others.
The Know Nothings were an anti-Catholic political group in the United States in the 1840s and '50s who claimed that the Irish and other Roman Catholic immigrants to the United States would be controlled by the Pope for anti-American purposes. [6]
There are several theories about the contents of the Vatican Apostolic Archives: some theories claim that they contain secret information about the Priory of Sion, proof that Jesus had a wife and descendants, [7] secret information about the third secret of the Fatima, the real Spear of Destiny, secret information about the Holy Grail and/or the Ark of the Covenant, [8] [9] [10] a supposedly-real Chronovisor machine, and many other secrets. There are also theories that claim that the Vatican has information about the Illuminati, [11] and even secretly contains the world's largest collection of porn. [12]
A 2022 film called Watch The Water alleged that the Catholic Church created COVID-19 and that the virus was actually a modified form of snake venom designed to turn people into demonic hybrids by altering their DNA. The film received over 640,000 views within two days of its release and the claims became a trending topic on Twitter. [13] [14]
Pope John Paul I was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 26 August 1978 until his death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal history, resulting in the most recent year of three popes and the first to occur since 1605. John Paul I remains the most recent Italian-born pope, the last in a succession of such popes that started with Clement VII in 1523.
Lucian Pulvermacher was a traditionalist schismatic Roman Catholic priest and a modern-day antipope. He was the head of the True Catholic Church, a small conclavist group that elected him Pope Pius XIII in Montana in October 1998. At the time of his death, he lived in Springdale, Washington, United States.
The Palmarian Church, officially registered as the Palmarian Christian Church and also known as the Palmarian Catholic Church, is a Christian church with an episcopal see in El Palmar de Troya, Andalusia, Spain. The Palmarian Church claims to be the exclusive One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ. It claims that the Holy See, the institution of the Papacy and the headquarters of the Catholic Church was moved to El Palmar de Troya at the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar, under the auspices of the Patriarchate of El Palmar de Troya, in 1978, due to the alleged apostasy of the Roman Catholic Church from the Catholic faith.
David Anthony Yallop was a British author who wrote chiefly about unsolved crimes. In the 1970s, he contributed scripts for a number of BBC comedy shows, including Minder. In the same decade he also wrote 10 episodes for the ITV court drama, Crown Court.
Paul Casimir Marcinkus was an American archbishop of the Catholic Church and president of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, from 1971 to 1989.
Hitler's Pope is a book published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell that examines the actions of Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, before and during the Nazi era, and explores the charge that he assisted in the legitimization of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, through the pursuit of a Reichskonkordat in 1933. The book is critical of Pius' conduct during the Second World War, arguing that he did not do enough, or speak out enough, against the Holocaust. Cornwell argues that Pius's entire career as the nuncio to Germany, Cardinal Secretary of State, and Pope, was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. He further argues that Pius was antisemitic and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews.
John Cornwell FRSL is a British journalist, author, and academic. Since 1990, he has directed the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was also, until 2017, Founder and Director of the Rustat Conferences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2011. He was nominated for the PEN/Ackerley Prize for best UK memoir 2007 and shortlisted Specialist Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2006. He won the Scientific and Medical Network Book of the Year Award for Hitler's Scientists, 2005; and received the Independent Television Authority-Tablet Award for contributions to religious journalism (1994). In 1982 he won the Gold Dagger Award Non-Fiction (1982) for Earth to Earth. He is best known for his investigative journalism; memoir; and his work in public understanding of science. In addition to his books on the relationship between science, ethics and the humanities, he has written widely on the Catholic Church and the modern papacy, often with much controversy.
Some hold the conspiracy theory which asserts that the conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, then the Archbishop of Genoa, was elected pope in the 1958 papal conclave, taking the name Pope Gregory XVII, but that his election was suppressed. Siri did not associate himself with this idea.
Pavol Mária Hnilica, S.J. was a Slovak prelate of the Catholic Church who served as a titular bishop of Rusadir from 1964 until his death in 2006.
Pope John Paul I died suddenly in September 1978, 33 days after his election. Following his death, several conspiracy theories have sprung up.
Jesuit “conspiracy theories” are conspiracy theories about the members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), a religious order in the Catholic Church. Such theories began appearing as early as 1550, just ten years after the founding of the Jesuits, who were often accused by their enemies due to the intellectual and political influence which members of the Society of Jesus exerted.
The relations between Pope Benedict XVI and Judaism remained fairly good, although concerns were raised by Jewish leaders over the political impact of Traditionalists in the Church during the papacy of Benedict.
Pope John Paul II worked to improve relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism. He built solid ties with the Jewish community in the hope of promoting Christian–Jewish reconciliation.
Holy See–Soviet Union relations were marked by long-standing ideological disagreements between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union. The Holy See attempted to enter in a pragmatic dialogue with Soviet leaders during the papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II's diplomatic policies were cited as one of the principal factors that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Carlo Maria Viganò is an Italian traditionalist Catholic archbishop who served as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016 and as secretary-general of the Governorate of Vatican City State from 2009 to 2011. He is known for having publicized the Vatican leaks scandal of 2012, in which he revealed financial corruption in the Vatican. He also wrote a widely disseminated letter in 2018 that accused Pope Francis and other Catholic leaders of covering up sexual abuse allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. In 2024, Viganò was charged by the Vatican with schism. He was declared guilty and excommunicated.
Three Popes and the Jews is a 1967 book by Pinchas Lapide, a former Israeli Consul to Milan, who at the time of publication was a deputy editor in the Israeli Prime Minister's press office. The "three popes" are Pope Pius XII (1939–1958), Pope John XXIII (1958–1963), and Pope Paul VI (1963–1978).
The Catholic Church has been criticised in fiction, such as literature, film and television. Polemics have also been written on the Church and its practices. Some examples are the anti-Catholic stereotypes that filled Gothic fiction of Anglican England, the films of Luis Buñuel who took issue with the Church in Spain, the humor of some US television pundits like Rosie O'Donnell, and the rhetoric of some fundamentalist preachers.
Several authors have alleged that there was a plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII by the Nazis when they occupied Rome during World War II. SS General Karl Wolff stated that he had been ordered on September 13, 1943, to kidnap the Pope.
LifeSiteNews is a Canadian Catholic conservative anti-abortion advocacy website and news publication. LifeSiteNews has published misleading information and conspiracy theories, and in 2021, was banned from some social media platforms for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.