Scandals & Tales of the Vatican
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Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. It's one of the most famous historical and religious sites in the world. But what secrets does the Vatican really have? In recent decades, it's been rocked by scandal after scandal. The Vatican Bank

child abuse, and more recently, serious accusations against Pope Benedict XVI and his number two, Cardinal Bertone. So what's been going on behind closed doors? And what does the future hold for the Vatican? Hidden in the Vatican, they have a huge amount of secrets. It is possible they would have the Ark of the Covenant,

Nobody knows where it went. The heretical pieces of art, music, documents, that's the boring stuff. The real secrets, those are relics, things that would cause history to be rewritten. There's been no doubt that the Vatican, despite promoting kindness to all men and Christianity, also has its dark side.

Over the centuries, the Church has accumulated donations and buildings. Nobody knows how much money the Church has got, least of all the Church. Corruption and paedophilia has left such a mark on the credibility of the Church. I think the Vatican Bank could actually bring down the Catholic Church. Has the Vatican covered up secrets for centuries? Or is it all just noise created by its many critics?

The Vatican firmly say it's the latter, but are they telling the truth? For decades now, the Vatican has been under constant attack from newspapers, authors, historians, and critics who claim that it's corrupt and riddled with twisted priests who live immoral and sinful lives behind its walls.

Although it vehemently denies it, over the years it's been accused of storing Nazi gold bullion, laundering mafia money, child abuse, and even running slave labor institutions with prostitutes and single mothers in Ireland at so-called Magdalene laundries. Some have even accused it of harboring satanic worshipers, indulging in black magic, and hiding relics such as the body of Jesus itself.

It might sound a little far-fetched, but its accusers are adamant. There's no doubt that the Vatican has an enormous amount of secrets because the simple reason it's been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years at the nexus of politics, religion, it's the center of so much of human behavior over that time.

And there's no doubt that there have been more than its fair share of financial scandal, more than its fair share, perhaps, of abuse. There's a lot about the Vatican that needs cleaning out. I mean, on the outside, you look at the Vatican, it looks a very, very austere, very religious, fantastic place. But to be honest with you, it's nothing but a house of fun.

Even before it was built, still underneath there are bathhouses, brothels, and the same thing applied with the Vatican. You have to realize this is the wealthiest nation on the planet. They could have built their headquarters, their capital, anywhere. They own so much land. But they chose this spot.

which is directly over ancient pagan temples, Mithra temples. I can't believe for a second that it's an accident that Vatican City is situated where it is. I think any institution that has managed to amass the kind of wealth, the kind of power, the kind of history and mythology that the Vatican has, hasn't done so by giving away all of its secrets.

One of the great mysteries of the Vatican is just what is inside its infamous secret archives that was not revealed when they were officially opened a decade ago. Philip Willen has been a Vatican insider for over 30 years. He's reported on three popes, numerous scandals, and knows the Holy See like the back of his hand. British investigative reporter Jamie Theakston went to meet him.

So, Philip, what is in the so-called secret archive? The secret archive is basically the Pope's personal archive. So the documentation that's generated in the course of running the affairs of the International Global Church

Once they're no longer needed for immediate access and action, they are moved aside and stored in this enormous archive, which of course goes back centuries and tells the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy and throughout the world. Does the Catholic Church have something to hide in there? Almost certainly there are things that

secrecy applies to very conveniently and the Vatican does have considerable confidence in its ability to maintain secrets, particularly maintain control over these archives. So one could

keep embarrassing documents in there in the confident knowledge that no one else is going to get access to them. So there could be all sorts of things that we don't know about and of course that leads to a lot of speculation as to what might be in there.

No one really knows what's in the secret archives, but certainly one would assume that there's something to do there with things like the Ark of the Covenant or the raiding by the Templars of King Solomon's mines.

You know, there's always contention around Jesus' bloodline. One wonders if there's something in there around that. So certainly all of those kind of key themes that the church is based on, all of the stories that have been told, people wonder, and it's not surprising, people wonder if there's anything in those secret archives that might go against what people have been taught and told all these years.

Jamie's next stop is a sit-down with the editor of The Heretic magazine, Andrew Goff, who has studied the history of the Vatican for many years. He believes that there is a basic problem at the heart of Christianity that has affected all its actions for well over a millennium, that perhaps it's all nothing more than a myth.

I've heard all the different rumors, but what do you think is hidden in the so-called secret archive? There's basically two camps of secrets. There's the conventional ones, which are interesting, you know, sort of the letter from Henry VIII requesting an annulment for his marriage, the letters about Galileo and his heresy. But there's also going to be relics, you would think. That could be the treasure of Solomon, the menorah. But how about the Ark of the Covenant?

How about the Holy Grail? You know, would you want that stuff exposed? Maybe, maybe not. They probably have their reasons. It is more than possible that there are so-called relics within the Vatican. Most big Catholic churches throughout Christendom have always had relics, so why wouldn't the Vatican have them? Perhaps mummified bodies even of great church fathers.

It is rumored that they have the mysterious Veil of Veronica hidden in one of the great pillars under the Vatican. So you're telling me that the archive is not a reference library to illuminate, you think it's a depository for hidden items, is that what you're saying? You could argue if there's anything that's deflammatory that would be not in their best interest if it was brought to light, then why wouldn't you destroy it?

But if it's private, if it's secret, there's probably an even stronger case for keeping it, but keeping it really locked up. And we're talking, you know, real biggies. Like, look around here. Every church, every basilica in this city, beneath it, you have pagan temples. One of the surprising things about Rome is that the city we see today, including parts of the Vatican,

lies right on top of the original ancient pagan city from well over 2,000 years ago. And some say that the old worship sites still play a secret but important role at the very highest levels of the church today. Perhaps the very earliest people wanted to show the pagans, "Look, we're in charge now. We're building on top of the ruins of your religion." Okay, so that's as far as most traditionalists would go.

But maybe there's also an element of we are absorbing the power. It's believed by many people, for example, that churches were built on power lines or ley lines and that these in themselves had power in the land.

This was the craft of the wise. We believed in Mother Earth and that we go back to Mother Earth. And it's not really a bad thing at all. And they nicked all of the ideas, all of the pagan sites, and Christianized it and splashed holy water on it.

and nicked all of the religious relics and things that were inside. And I would imagine they're probably still tucked away somewhere underneath the Vatican. The church is not a holy, benevolent organization. It's actually satanic. And there's black masses and rituals, and they situated their city and the country above pagan temples below. And in fact, they're still venerated. Isis becomes Mary Magdalene.

you have Osiris becoming Jesus and so on. So the fact is, it's a really, really dark place. San Clemente Church in Rome, run today by an Irish order of Dominican monks. It was founded over three and a half centuries ago and houses one of the last remaining entrances down into the ancient pre-Christian remains of the city. Vatican historian and local guide Rob Allen is an expert on subterranean Rome

and agreed to show the remains of a 2,000-year-old temple, which in its day was actually at ground level. The amazing thing is that we're walking down to the first century AD now, and we're walking into a house of brick that 100 years later after it was built was made into what was known as a Mithraeum, okay, for the cult of the pagan god Mithras.

What do we know about Mithra? Born on December 25th, died, was resurrected three days later. He was called the Savior. He performed miracles during his lifetime. He had 12 apostles. Does that sound familiar? But that was way before Christ. So they're kind of suppressing that because it was a bit dark. You know, they'd slaughter bulls. There was a sexual element to it. So Christianity kind of cleaned it up.

and polished the myth and told us it was true. And I think that is a biggie, that they've lied about the story because it's allegorical, it's not real. Mithraeum was a pagan cult. It wasn't a state cult, it was a mystery cult. So that doesn't mean that people didn't know of its existence, but people didn't know of all these important rituals about how to get involved in this kind of secret society cult. A cult that was exclusively for

for soldiers, for administrators. You know, for decades, now hundreds of years, there's been rumors from priests, from cardinals, from reputable people that there's a small sort of sect within the church, maybe not so small,

who conduct sacrifices and rituals that are very, very dark indeed. So you have to wonder then, is it any accident that they've situated their capital and their country right on top of these temples? I think not. Was Vatican City deliberately built on top of pagan temples? And if so, why did the church in Rome use these sites to conduct ancient non-Christian practices?

And is there evidence of this hidden away in the Vatican's secret archives? This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Halloween is the spookiest time of year. A time where we get to have fun with what scares us.

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Visit BetterHelp.com/ForbiddenUS today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com/ForbiddenUS. The Vatican has been under attack for centuries by its critics, who accuse it of harboring important ancient relics, documents, and secrets deep within its archives.

Some even claim that the doctrine at the heart of Christianity itself is a lie, conjured up two millennia ago for the purpose of power and control. British investigative reporter Jamie Thixton is in Rome and has discovered that the holy city we see today was built right on top of ancient pagan temples which date back well over 2,000 years.

Some say that these old worship sites still play a secret but important role at the very highest levels of the church today. The Vatican, like so many other Christian sites, was built on an existing place of worship. It's the form of the church saying, "We're in control of religion now, so your pagan site now becomes a Christian site."

Yes, there are remnants of old religions there that were probably a little bit darker than what Christianity is supposed to be. But the idea that the leaders of the Catholic Church within the Vatican are a bunch of satanic occultists is nonsense of the highest order.

The Catholic Church, or should I say Christianity in general, hijacked paganism. That was, before them, the true religion, if you like. And they just nicked all of the sites, all of the ideals, the ideology behind it, and took it on for themselves.

These sites had some sort of power and they wanted to be co-opted by this new religion. And if you look at most monotheistic societies, they more or less say all the same things, kind of like a smorgasbord of what's gone on before, which is why you see, whether it's paganism or Christianity, these kind of same things being enacted over and over again, to the point that even some of the names are similar.

Author Rob Howells has been studying and researching the Vatican and its secrets for over two decades. He believes that it does protect very important objects, documents, and other secrets. So Rob, what is the Vatican keeping secret?

The entire time that they've existed, they've collected manuscripts and relics and items from either campaigns or crusades, not only for their own research and to support their ideas, but also to prevent anything coming out. Because they need to control the information around biblical issues and the biblical dogma, they can't allow alternative views to become public. What kind of things exactly are you talking about?

In terms of documentation, they've got 52 miles of shelving of books and manuscripts alone. So that will be everything from early first century fragments to potentially entire alternative gospels.

There are also ideas that there's a book of Q that academics have termed a book that would have been the source material for the main gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because the main gospels were written long after the time of Christ. So if they've got something like a book of Q that would undermine everything else. It has secret archives and people say, "Oh well, the word secret just means private."

Well, technically it does, but let's be honest, it means secret with knobs on. They are not letting the average person look at them. You can't photocopy anything. I've heard it on very good authority that there's said to be the Vatican within the Vatican, which is they have enormous pillars, enormous pillars. You can get, you know, quite almost like ballroom-sized pillars. And in there are the secrets of the secrets.

said to be the veil of Veronica and all sorts of relics. The heretical pieces of art, music, documents, that's the boring stuff. The real biggies, the real secrets, those are relics, devices, things that would cause history to be rewritten. Like what? Well, the fact that the church is based upon pagan origins, not holy foundations, that's the biggest secret.

Traditionally, archives are kept to illuminate, to show people different things. And in this case, it seems different. Yeah, you'd expect an archive to be a public record that's made available. But because there's the potential for controversial material, you're not allowed access. You can get access to the secret archive in the Vatican only if you know exactly what you're looking for. No one's allowed to browse. And there is this other issue that they have...

potentially tens of thousands of documents that are still uncatalogued because they don't have an army of researchers in there, they've got a few librarians. So there could be documents they've got no idea of the importance of that they've just got stored.

And is it just documents or are there relics and other objects? There's definitely relics. We know that from the Holy Land certain items were returned, some quite extreme items. The foreskin of Christ is one of them that's said to be in the Vatican. Even the umbilical cord was supposed to have been kept. Whether they're real or not is very questionable. But many, many items were recovered supposedly and returned to the Vatican at various points in history.

People always talk about conspiracy theories and how these are really far-fetched, but actually, if you look at the Arch of Titus in Rome, it does depict people sort of pillaging places like Jerusalem, bringing back relics. So, you know, what's to say, in effect, that those relics aren't some of the things that these conspiracy theorists are saying that are under there, whether they're chalices or shrouds or whatever they are?

Now, of course, because there's this huge distrust about what so many former popes and senior figures in the Vatican have got up to, therefore, a lot of people think there must be all sorts of sort of evil stuff lurking in there, or indeed fantastic stuff like the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. I mean, this is just clearly nonsense. If the Vatican had the Ark of the Covenant kicking around, oh, look, what's that?

of course they'll display it. So I think there's some fanciful theories about what's in this archive, and I think they are largely bunk. Very few people today are aware of the Vatican's true history. The most controversial pope of modern times was Pius XII, who took over in 1939 and was labeled Hitler's pope by those who accuse him of turning a blind eye to reports of the Holocaust. Further back, there was Pope Leo XIII,

who in the closing years of the 19th century dashed fledgling hopes of reconciliation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome by declaring that all Anglican ordinations were null and void, a judgment which still stands. In the 9th century, Pope Stephen VI decided to exhume the corpse of his predecessor but one, Formosus, so that it could, wait for it, stand trial.

Dressed in the papal vestments, it unsurprisingly offered no adequate defense and was condemned to be mutilated and thrown into the Tiber. In fact, over a thousand years later, rumors and accusations still swirl around this holy city. In 2003, the so-called Magdalene laundries came to light.

where it was proved that single mothers and prostitutes were forced into slave labor houses in Ireland, overseen by Catholic nuns. A $43 million settlement was paid to survivors.

In 2009, it was revealed that the Archdiocese of Boston had covered up the sexual abuse of thousands of children by 70 priests. That figure has now increased to over 3,000 Catholic priests around the world accused of allegedly conducting systemic abuse of tens of thousands of children.

Do you think that the Catholic Church has known for some time about the problems that they have with child abuse and have been reluctant to go public with it? Absolutely. They've been covering it up for years. There are cases of priests being caught and being found guilty internally within the Vatican.

by their peers and be moved to other locations before a scandal could break. So there has been a history of cover-ups, and the cover-ups have just done more damage because as soon as they're discovered, it's no longer an issue of one priest acting on his own. It's the whole organization gets called into question for being that corrupt. Has the Vatican been covering up child abuse scandals for years? Just how much exorcism does the Church in Rome sanction every year?

and investigative author John Dickey examines the murky world of Vatican finances.

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For decades now, the Vatican has been rocked by scandal after scandal: child abuse, the Magdalene laundries, and more recently, serious accusations against Pope Benedict XVI and his number two, Cardinal Bertone. British investigative reporter Jamie Theakston is in Rome to examine just what's really been going on behind the Vatican's closed doors.

This is an evil empire. Whenever they come across, are made to face up to yet another example of child abuse. First of all, they always deny it. Second of all, when forced to accept it, they say, "Oh, well, it's just, you know, the odd rotten apple in a barrel." There's an awful lot of rotten apples. There is obviously a network.

There's no doubt that throughout its history there have been a lot of bad apples in the Vatican. There's no doubt that there are Catholic priests at all levels of the Vatican have done bad things. You know, we've seen it in Ireland, so many child abuse cases carried out by Catholic priests, but I don't see the Vatican as being in itself this kind of

center of evil that, you know, is responsible for bad things happening in society throughout the ages. I see it as being as veal and corrupt as any other flabby, overly large institution that's not really held accountable. One of the more bizarre services offered by the Vatican is the removal of devils and demonic spirits, or exorcism, as it's more commonly known.

For centuries now, Vatican-trained priests have gone out to combat evil and rid its followers of satanic forces, armed only with a crucifix, a Bible, and some holy water. And it's still going on today. In fact, the Vatican's head exorcist for the last 30 years, Father Gabriele Eymorth, recently died. He claimed to have overseen over 180,000 exorcisms in his life.

He famously hated the Harry Potter novels and even yoga, saying, "Practicing yoga is satanic. It leads to evil, just like reading Harry Potter." It is interesting that the Vatican does wholly believe in demons as an entity, and they've got more exorcists now than ever. Pretty much every deist has an assigned exorcist within their region that they can call upon.

They perform the Rite of Exorcism, which is a huge kind of document full of litanies and Latin and invoking the saints and basically trying to expel the demon.

There are now over 200 of them employed by the Vatican. Their job is to cast out demons that possess their flock, that take them over body and soul. And this, of course, goes back to the New Testament and earlier where you read about Jesus casting out demons. And of course, this is very much in that tradition.

It seems extraordinary that even today, relatively well into the 21st century, that the Vatican still has some of its priests performing exorcisms. It shows that there is still this huge belief in what we'd associate with being some very ancient ideas of evil spirits and demons. These are kind of biblical concepts from the Old Testament. Padre Fortea from Madrid in Spain

is one of the Catholic Church's most prolific exorcists. He says it's all very real. I believe there are evil spirits, and those evil spirits match perfectly with the characters that appear in the Bible as demons. I can say by my own experience that I receive people every day coming from all around Spain,

Every year, two new cases of perfect demoniacal possession were discovered. The Church predicated on the belief that there's good and evil, and you can't have one without the other. And if you believe that,

then it's not surprising that you will believe in demons and evil spirits. The church is also predicated on the idea that nothing ever changes, right? So it is so strong in a way because nothing is ever questioned. Therefore the exorcisms become part and parcel of this understanding.

The interesting thing is the church does not deny that there are demonic energies. The fact that the rite of exorcism and the number of people trained in that is actually increasing year on year. And that's not an arbitrary sort of ritual. That's an 84-page Latin document that says, "This is how we do it." So the fact that they acknowledge evil just makes the sort of rumblings about the fact that they are evil much more interesting.

The exorcist is one of the few ones that we have the opportunity to hear demons speaking through a human person. They speak most of the times with a very ugly voice, sometimes with a lot of intelligence or great knowledge of theology. We know sometimes there is a demon there because a few times we had the proof

that that person could not know a little part of the Bible or the theology. Several times I was surprised. They knew perfectly well something. It was almost impossible. There's no such things as demons. Basically, the church

invented the devil because there was good they had to invent evil because there was pluses they had to invent minuses and demons became little devils and possessed people and anyone that was hearing voices in their heads perhaps a little bit mediumistic or sensitive oh no it was a demon whispering in their ears and it needed exorcists to get rid of them begone evil demon

Financial scandals have swirled around the Vatican, ever since the death of Roberto Calvi in 1982 rocked the Catholic Church to its core. Calvi was head of the Vatican Bank and was found hung under Blackfriars Bridge in London. John Dickey is an investigative author who has looked long and hard into the secret world of Vatican finances. His books have included Cosa Nostra, Darkest Italy,

and blood brotherhoods. According to Dickey, vast sums of money have been stolen and misappropriated by the Church in recent years. The finances of the Catholic Church are an absolute labyrinth because you're not just talking about one pot of cash under the control of the Pope.

You've got parishes, dioceses, you've got the Holy See, which is like the Pope's mission to the world. You've got the Vatican City, which is a mini country.

and you've got the churches of all of the different countries, and then you've got all of the different religious orders. Now, over the centuries, all of these bodies have accumulated donations and buildings and churches, and nobody's kept tabs on this stuff. Nobody knows how much money the church has got, least of all the church.

For centuries, you would have one pope who would spend everything, empty the coffers, and the next pope that would come in and tax and rebuild and put all the money back in. And the next pope would come in and start building lavish works and buildings. And that still appears to go on. And the current pope is very humble and is very against spending and lives with a sense of humility.

The problem the Vatican's got itself into, which is one of the reasons I think they chose the current Pope, is it has become completely incongruent with Christian values, basic Christian values of humility and love and poverty and the way Jesus acted and behaved. He never kept any money, he gave everything to the poor. And then you look at the Vatican and the billions of pounds worth of works of art, of statues, of documents, of all this wealth and lavishness. So what are we to make of that?

For years now, the Vatican has been accused of all manner of sins, lies, and cover-ups. Some of it they have admitted to and apologized for, but much they have not. The result is a holy sea under the spotlight as never before, and a testing time for the Pope and his senior cardinals.

Pope Francis is undoubted. He came in on a brief to introduce financial transparency. And he's certainly done that at the central level, particularly at the level of the Vatican Bank, the IOR, which for a long time was like an offshore bank. You know, there were political bribes being laundered through the Vatican Bank in the 1990s, mafia money.

scandalous and a lot's been done to make the Vatican Bank much more transparent. But Pope Francis has got a big, big job ahead of him. It would probably take ten reforming popes and not just one to really get to the bottom of all of the meandering underground rivers of money within the church in the broad sense.

Every new pope, including the current one, claims that they are going to reform the Church. Yeah, right. This is the wealthiest institution that's ever been. They answer to no one. There's no transparency about their actions. So I like the fact that he's trying, but good luck to him. So today, the Vatican is still facing serious allegations on a number of fronts, as it has for much of its thousand-year existence.

In each case, the Vatican has been forced, time after time, to apologize and pay huge fines in compensation, yet continues to court new controversy. However, what is still unclear is what was not discovered or not revealed in the various archive openings.

Many continue to believe that the heavily guarded vaults under the Vatican contain heretical material, including alternative Christian gospels, captured gospels from other competing religions, and even core relics such as the Ark of the Covenant and the human remains of Jesus himself. Strictly no browsing is allowed in the secret archives.

you're only permitted access to the specific documents or objects that you ask to see and that the Vatican have confirmed that they actually have. Some have accused this as being the perfect way to hide anything they like.

What we're looking at today is that it is slowly entering into the 21st century in which it's being held to account more. I think people are more cynical, they are less trusting, and even people who are devout Catholics look at the Vatican and go, is this representing what I want in an institution that is there to promulgate and further my faith? These are reasonable questions to ask.

There's a lot about the Vatican that's really, when you look at it, quite archaic. If you think about it, this feeds into one of the core notions of religion in general: you do not change. You got it right when the Messiah came and said, "This is how it was," and you don't question and you don't change. Because if you change one thing, then everything begins to be questioned. And I guess this is very much what they live by.

The whole Jesus story is made up and everything from the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, four mortal sins, purgatory, hellfire, damnation, Beelzebub, Baphomet, Baal, the devil, demons, the Antichrist and witches are all made up to keep us under control through fear.

I think their days are numbered. Imagine a time bomb. A whistleblower is going to emerge, the equivalent of Edwin Snowden, and the whole thing is going to be exposed. Not a few documents that a priest leaks to the media, everything. It's just a matter of time before the whole thing tumbles down. It's been mired in scandal after scandal for the last 30 years or so.

Money laundering, theft, bullying, child abuse. No matter how much is thrown at the Vatican, it shrugs it off and seems to remain as strong as ever. Its critics have written it off for decades, predicting its collapse, and yet, in some parts of the world, the Catholic Church is actually growing. The new Pope, Francis, is said to be cleaning up, but whether he will succeed, it's too early to say.

One thing's for certain, the next chapter in the Vatican's history is going to be an interesting one.