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Episode 441 - Catholic Conspiracy Theories (Back to the Conspiracy)
506 Plays4 months ago
Josh and M go back (to the conspiracy) and look at Papal plots and plots against papists!
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Transcript
Introduction and Humor
00:00:00
Speaker
Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. Sit, child, and tell me of your woes. How long has it been since your last confession? Oh gosh, I don't know. um How old am I? yeah that That many. Child, when did you first receive the sacrament? The sacri-what? Child, are you Catholic? Is the Pope Catholic? Well, some minds say so. Some people say he isn't, some people say he is, but there are other popes. And don't get me started on the Orthodox Church, you think the Pope is just an upstart patriarch. Kyle, I think this confession is going awry. What brings you to the confessional today? Well, Father, it's been years since the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy has talked about Catholic conspiracies and conspiracy theories, and we're seeking forgiveness.
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm not sure that talking about Catholic conspiracies is a sin, child. In fact, I think talking about them is considered to be a mortal sin by the church. dar But it's not you or the church we seek forgiveness from. It's our audience. Well, may God have mercy on us all, because the audience of the podcast is a venial and jealous thing.
00:01:09
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Em Dinteth.
Horror Films and Conspiracies
00:01:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. In Auckland, New Zealand, I am Josh Addison, and in Zhuhai, China, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, it's only Associate Professor EMR extended. Yes, my tendrils are everywhere, although it's not just the water, it's also the beach.
00:01:39
Speaker
There's actually a large number in the wake of Jaws, films about how dangerous it was before you even got into the waters, an entire horror film about some kind of fungal growth in the actual beach itself, swallowing swimmers before they can even get to the sea.
00:01:57
Speaker
Is that the recent one? I've seen a recent one about it. all right no no no you know so the There is a recent one on the same theme, but there is one that's almost contemporaneous with Jaws itself. I think it's a classic case of an Italian film ripping off a franchise, in this case Jaws, in the same way that there was a Alien 2, Alien on Earth sequel to the original Alien film, which is not Aliens, because it was made before Aliens, and a sequel to The Terminator set underneath Venice. It was a lot of great Italian films from that time period. And there's one, so I think the one you're thinking of is The Sand, which sounds have been right is a, I think was either straight to DVD or straight to streaming film. I actually thought it was quite good.
00:02:47
Speaker
but the yeah yeah the premise I thought it would have made a better, shorter film. I didn't think they could stretch it to fill a whole film. It's still actually not bad it was in war for basically one set and really annoying teenagers who got exactly what they deserved.
00:03:07
Speaker
ah But yes, the there is an earlier film from the 70s, which is the same thing on a slightly larger scale, and has the kind of Jaws conspiracy of the authorities know that something is going on, but by jingo, they're not going to stop people from going to the beach because that would be bad for capitalism.
00:03:27
Speaker
and Anyway, I fear this discussion might not be might not be relevant. is It is conspiracy related though. I mean it's conspiracy related. Because Jaws and the Italian film, I think it's an Italian film, maybe it's an Italian funded production, are both about authorities covering up mass deaths out of each, sometimes in the water, in the case of Jules, and sometimes the beach itself, as according to this particular film, whose name I cannot recall, and thus every few years I have to go and look it up to remind myself what the name is. And because you gave me no warning whatsoever, we're going to be talking about beach-related conspiracy films,
00:04:07
Speaker
at the beginning of this podcast, I have not done the research and thus I cannot remember the film's name. Right. Well, you know who else is responsible for covering up lots of deaths at a beach?
University and Vatican Administration
00:04:17
Speaker
You, I assume. What have you been up to in the last two weeks? I've been finishing off chapters. I have two chapters due at the end of this month, which is awfully close. It's the 28th of August when we record. The chapters are due on the 31st. One of the chapters is in. The other other chapter is with its co-author Jo Jusinski, and hopefully that will be back to me soon, or maybe Jo will just send it straight on to the editing team for the collection. But it's been chapter, chapter, chapter, chapter.
00:04:49
Speaker
chapter house tune just chapters no no papers no well also course preparation because classes start technically classes start next week but B&U ZH has this very strange system where the first week of the academic year which starts halfway through the calendar year only second and third year students are allowed to enroll in your class and only in the second week can first year students enroll and I tend to get more first year students than second or third year students in my epistemology of weird beliefs course which means I'm going to have this weird situation next week
00:05:28
Speaker
where I'll have some students turning up for a class which I'm basically not going to teach because there is no point teaching that class because I'll need to teach it again the next week anyway if it's going to make any sense. So um it's a strange administration we have here.
00:05:44
Speaker
university life, eh? Well, if I can try my hand at another segue, the administration of a university is surely less Byzantine than the administration of the Vatican. Hey, let's talk about the Vatican. I mean, I'm going to say, I mean, depending on where you are in Italy and what period of time you are in Italy, the Church is administrating your university. It's as complicated as the Church itself. Eventually, I suspect my university is actually more Byzantium than the Catholic Church itself. Well, I don't know. Let's talk about it. I think there might be more accountability in the Catholic Church than there is for some decisions at my university.
Catholic Conspiracies Overview
00:06:29
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know. So that's the plan. We're going to talk about Catholic conspiracy theories, papal plots, something else that alliterates as soon as one of us plays a chime. Catholic Cabals. I suppose. Catholic Cabals and Catholic cartels. That's better. Yeah, I'll take it.
00:06:49
Speaker
Buckle up. We're going back to the conspiracy.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, so at the request of one of our listeners, because because we'll we'll do anything on Adair, we're talking about Catholic conspiracies. So this is a this is a listener request, and it's's I guess it's a back to the conspiracy episode, because we're going to rehash a couple of our old episodes from October of 2018 when we delivered the one-two punch of episodes 193 and 194, one of which was about Catholic conspiracies, and the next was about popes and dead ones in particular.
00:07:25
Speaker
which which frankly is all of them, except for two. Oh no, sorry, except for one. Been addicted, died. So when we last recorded this, there were two living Popes, which is yeah a weird sentence. Now there's only apparently one living Pope, although of course,
00:07:41
Speaker
Given that Pope Francis is very old, there is a distinct possibility that between recording this podcast and releasing this podcast, he actually might be dead. So this podcast may exist in a weird quantum state of the quantum pope. Is Papa Francis alive or dead? He is alive at the time of recording. Will he be alive at the time of putting it online, and will he be alive at the point that someone listens to the podcast? It's a quantum spread of possibilities. Are popes like kings? Is it the Pope is dead long of the Pope, or are we actually... No, no, because they because she's a new one because yes there is a period of time in which there is no Pope, and there must be a pay papal election, because, and once again, I seem to be defending the Catholic Church here,
00:08:30
Speaker
least the paper papacy has some degree of an election going on. Unlike most monarchies, where one monarch dies, the next monarch is instantaneously instantiated, and then just has to have their title conferred by some kind of ceremony, when a pope dies, there is a period without a
Know Nothing Movement and Film
00:08:53
Speaker
pope. Sometimes it's a long period without a pope.
00:08:56
Speaker
Well, we'll save that for the second half because the first half of this episode, we're going to revisit our look at Catholic conspiracy theories in particular. Which are conspiracy theories about Catholics and conspiracy theories involving Catholics. Indeed. So when we talked about this last time, the first thing we talked about was the Know Nothing movement, which is not, to my disappointment, any sort of a reference to Game of Thrones. It dates back to the 1850s.
00:09:22
Speaker
Maybe game Game of Thrones is a reference to this. Oh, maybe it is. Were there anti-Catholics in Game of Thrones? Maybe they were. The Wildlings didn't seem very fond of organized religion, but who can say? No, and the and the the Faith Militant seemed like a form of the in Inquisition. I'm telling you, it's all just a giant thing to do. If instead of saying, you know nothing, Jon Snow, she was saying, you know nothing, Jon Snow, therefore identifying him as part of this movement. i mean That could change everything, but that's but and save that for the other podcast. um but i know what ah what What other podcast? Our secret Game of Thrones analysis podcast that we've been running in parallel to this one for the last 10 years. I thought we've everyone knew that. No, I thought we gave up on that after the disastrous last season featuring the Starbucks Cup.
00:10:11
Speaker
no no you want just to reshoic our our secret game of thrones podcast with me to not about i and indeed i assumed totally the surrender of goal i've just been myself I have never uploaded a single episode we have recorded of that podcast to the internet. yeah Just the dark web.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yes, along with the child pornography and the drugs. There exists a podcast that we record about Game of Thrones on the dark web. Yes. Anyway, the Know Nothings. Who were the Know Nothings? And did they literally know nothing? Were they Colonel Clink? No, not Colonel Clink, Sergeant Schultz. Yeah, so Sergeant Schultz. I know nothing. I know nothing. That would also completely rewrite the canon of Hogan's heroes as well.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah that would make it a very different show. A sequel to Game of Thrones. I mean Catholicism was very popular in Nazi Germany and one thing we didn't talk about back in episode 193 are all the conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church actually aiding and abetting the Third Reich which also isn't in our notes for this episode and this feels like we should be putting a placeholder in, maybe we should talk about conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church and Nazis at some future point as well. But going back to your original questions,
00:11:35
Speaker
The Know Nothing Movement was a movement operating in the US pre the Civil War, so around about the 1850s, and they were an anti-Catholic and also anti-immigrant organization, in part because 19th century America, particularly early 19th century America,
00:11:57
Speaker
There was a ah kind of feeling that the only good immigrants, the only good people to come to the continent of North America were those people who came from good old Blighty, and maybe some of the more Protestant European nations, but those Irish people Those Spanish people, those Italian peoples, they they weren't good decent Americans because they owed allegiance not to the government. They owed their allegiance to the papacy.
00:12:32
Speaker
So this was very much an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant organization that initially started out as a secret society, but actually ended up forming into a political party with, in retrospect, the rather awkward name, the Native American Party.
00:12:51
Speaker
later on known just as the American Party. And the reason why they were called the Know-Nothings was because of their origin as a secret society. When you asked them about it, they would say, I know nothing about the secret society you're asking me about, which means, of course, they ended up becoming the Know-Nothings because they claimed to know nothing about the secret organization that they belonged to.
00:13:17
Speaker
So they were Sergeant Schultz's, a whole lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. I feel a connected universe coming. Yeah. I think we have to do that. They Game of Thrones, Hulk into Heroes. A heroes connected universe. This is not the multiverse people wanted, but it is the multiverse people editing.
00:13:40
Speaker
yeah yeah Yes, no, so the know-nothings, they believed that Roman Catholics were conspiring to undermine their way of life or whatever, and and tried to organize good, good yeah I guess what they would call real Americans, which by which they mean American-born Protestants, um to protect their own way of life. i think Basically wasps. They were this is were the wasps, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
00:14:07
Speaker
I think this will be a common theme throughout. The the idea, and you see not just anti-Catholic, but lots of ones, the idea that there are people who with divided loyalties, they're not fully loyal to our country, they have some sort of loyalty to someone else in this case. the i mean was i mean It was actually worse than that, because it was the claim that if you were Roman Catholic, you didn't even have a divided loyalty, you were loyal to the papacy.
00:14:32
Speaker
So you might pretend that you were a Whig, or you might pretend that you were all about America, but really, you were about the Pope, and that was the only thing you thought about. Pope in the morning, Pope in the afternoon, bit of Pope at lunchtime, and Pope whilst you sleep. So these these no-nothings in the Native American party, apparently they did they did okay electorally in 1854, but then that their success did not last. um
00:15:06
Speaker
in in elections in 1856, their vote basically collapsed. they They had been popular to begin with because the Whig party had died out and they were the opponents to the then Democrats. And so I think the the the American party could step in there, ah but that didn't last. And um and and and there was there was the whole slavery issue. This that this this is um Yeah, because it turns out that being anti-Catholic isn't much of a unifying political force when it comes to other issues people might be concerned about. And it turns out you could be anti-Catholic and anti-slavery,
00:15:47
Speaker
Or you could be anti-Catholic and really, really pro-slavery. And I believe America had a bit of a a civil war about this whole sort slavery thing, which saw Catholics on kind of both sides of the divide, and also saw anti-Catholics on both sides of the divide as well.
00:16:04
Speaker
So it turned out that was the divine mission. You might be voted along anti-Catholic pro-slavery and suddenly going, well, they're actually the only people who are supporting me in my pro-slavery things in my particular region of the US are the other Catholic landowners. Oh, oh this is this is a bit awkward because I kind of hate you guys, but at the same time,
00:16:29
Speaker
You've kind of whisked me with the whole we are going to keep people as property thing or vice versa. I might really hate Catholics and really hate slavery. It's only the Catholics in my local village who are also anti-keeping slaves and going, oh, those those Protestants, they really like keeping slaves. And the only people who are turning up to the anti-slavery protest are the Catholics. This is is very awkward. But they they may not have done particularly well electorally, but um but they did a bit of damage. um there There was anti-Catholic riots, which did ah result in some deaths. There was there was a a riot in Louisville.
00:17:08
Speaker
in Kentucky on the 6th of August 1855. um So apparently 22 people were killed in this riot. It was to do with there's a race for the office of governor and it was hotly contested and and arguing over the the the the election turned into fighting and rioting, and which turned into deaths. um Similarly, in Baltimore, mayoral elections in 1856, 1857 and 1858 were all marred by what our notes refer to as violence and well-founded accusations of ballot rigging. Electoral politics in the US has always been a little bit of the old ballot stuffing.
00:17:50
Speaker
Apparently, no-nothings were associated with an actual tarring and feathering of a Catholic priest um in in Ellsworth in Maine in 1851, and no-nothings were blamed for the building of a Catholic church in Bath in 1854. So, I mean, this this wasn't just this wasn't just noise. This wasn't just people spouting rhetoric. They backed it up with violence, and for at least sometimes.
00:18:16
Speaker
Well, once again, politics in America, it's always had a certain character. And it's worth pointing out that if you've seen the film Gangs of New York with Daniel Day-Lewis, um the the American party features in that, and Daniel Day-Lewis's character himself is apparently based on a guy called William Paul, who was an actual leader of the Know Nothing movement.
00:18:38
Speaker
The other thing I remember about the Gangs of New York is it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long and boring. that that's that that That has the line that with the threat with, you see this knife? I'm going to teach you to speak English with this knife, which is one of the best threats of all time. But apart from that one line, I don't know the film has a lot to recommend it to me. No, no. Once again, it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long and boring.
00:19:11
Speaker
So at any rate, the Know Nothings and their American party didn't last particularly long, but anti-Catholic conspiracies ah continue in the States to this day and and in other places.
Catholicism in American Politics
00:19:23
Speaker
But that's where we've been looking at the moment. um So after after the Know Nothings, there was the American Protective Association. and The APA and the... Well, the problem with the APA is an acronym that gets used in America a lot. So there's the American Psychological Association, the American Philosophical Association, and also apparently the American Protective Association. I think there should be a moratorium on using APA as an acronym, actually just for all time now. There's also the APA referencing style, so it's very confusing. like
00:20:02
Speaker
But this this particular APA, the American Protective Association, their members would swear an oath to never vote for a Catholic, hire a Catholic, or join Catholics in organised labour. Now, of course, the KKK, the the one of the more famous bigot organisations in the States, they they they didn't like the Catholics too much either. They didn't like other people, but um they managed to fit in a bit of fit and time for a bit of Catholic hating also, didn't they? Yes, the k the k ah when when we think of the KKK, I think we quite rightfully think about cross-burnings, and we also think about really, really large-scale racism, including racist violence, including murder.
00:20:46
Speaker
But yeah, they weren't particularly keen on Catholics because the KKK is a Protestant-style organization. They have a very narrow conception of who counts as a proper American. And whilst most of their focus is on people with the wrong skin tone, some of their focus is on people with the wrong interpretation of Christian Scripture.
00:21:11
Speaker
And I mean, this is this is Nion 60 years ago now, but what is 68? When was JFK? He was mid 60s, wasn't he? so nineteen sixty great Well, I mean, he died in 1963. Yeah, our early 60s then. Yes. So that's one more than 60 years ago. ah That was a big deal. But 21st, 1963 was his death. his His election was a big deal at the time, wasn't it? America's first Catholic president. That was Yeah, I mean, the religion of your president in the US is a strange thing. So I mean, when Mitt Romney was running for president of the United States of America, people were very concerned that he was Mormon, he was the wrong kind of Christian. So even
00:21:55
Speaker
Even though it seems that to be a successful politician up until recently in the United States, you had to be Christian to the point where people like John McCain, who people thought was an an atheist during his presidential run, he had a Christian spiritual advisor. Donald Trump, who as far as people are aware, had never really set foot in a church prior to his second presidential run.
00:22:23
Speaker
suddenly he started talking very much about his favourite book, the Bible. And yeah, JFK being elected as a Roman Catholic must have, as the notes say, really, really made people go, whoopsie daisy, what's going on here? It's not literally what the notes say, but it's a good um a good approximation. The notes are a little more profane because That's what happens when we write stuff for only the two of ourselves to read. um so and And again, to this day, anything to do with abortion, euthanasia, reproductive technologies, anything like that, will often um religion will come into it. And it's an excuse for some people to indulge in in a bit of anti-Catholicism.
00:23:05
Speaker
Although that being said, so the modern anti-abortion movement in the United States actually can be traceed traced back to Catholics. So the the two people who are kind of, and ah I've completely blanked on their name now, the two people who were kind of instrumental in writing the textbook which said that sex education in schools is bad.
00:23:31
Speaker
and that abortion is bad were Catholic themselves. So the modern anti-abortion movement in the US is very much a Catholic thing, which is kind of then being generalized to Christianity in general. So the US has a very interesting relationship with Roman Catholicism.
00:23:52
Speaker
When it's easy to hate upon Catholics, they'll very happily hate upon upon them, but when it's easy to borrow the prejudice of Catholics, they'll also quite happily do that as well.
00:24:02
Speaker
Well, maybe we should move away from America then, because we have been concentrating fairly, fairly exclusively on on American anti-Catholicism, and indeed move away from anti-Catholic conspiracies in general to look at the other thing we looked about back in October of 2018.
Conspiracies by the Catholic Church
00:24:21
Speaker
In this episode, when we looked at conspiracy theories that were promoted by the Catholics themselves,
00:24:28
Speaker
um Now, most of these, sadly, are anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and the Catholicism certainly does not have any kind of monopoly on those. A bit of anti-Freemasons too, though. They like to spice it up a bit, those wakey Catholics.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah, so the Catholic Church has always been against what they take to be secret societies. society societies So a lot of, well, actually, I mean, there are two ways to talk about the genealogy of antisemitic conspiracy theories in the Catholic tradition. The first is the kind of virulent antisemitism based upon the notion of you killed our God. So the idea being you take a particular reading of the New Testament and some of the apocrypha associated with it and go, well, look,
00:25:11
Speaker
Jesus came to save all people, and the Jewish people, they they were the ones who gave Jesus up to Pilate. They were the ones who demanded that Jesus be crucified. They're the reason why our God died, despite the fact that the entire story of the Gospels kind of hinges on the idea that Jesus has to die to then forgive all sins. So you'd think that actually there's a ah functional role for Jewish people in bringing about the glory of Christianity. But there was an interpretation with, no, no,
00:25:41
Speaker
Even though that was what God desired, somehow we have to blame these people who were doing exactly what God wanted to do. But the other one is that any group or society operating within European nations that was in any sense secretive was the kind of thing that Catholics went, no, no, no, we've got the monopoly.
00:26:04
Speaker
on secretive and strange behaviour here you Jewish people with your strange and unusual religious activities you masons with your strange and unusual quasi-religious activities we've got your number you're doing something you don't want us to know about and it's not because we're bigots no no no no it's not because we're bigots you're doing something it must be must be very very wrong we're going to do as much as we can to quash you Yes, look at you gathering in secret places, wearing your fun outfits, conducting strange rites. That's our job, dammit. Yeah. So yeah, there's a fair bit of it. But we we we had more fun though, talking about the Cardinal Ciri thesis. If we start talking about Ciri, is your watch going to start talking to us again?
00:26:54
Speaker
I mean, as long as I don't use the name, it's fine. So even if I have to go Cardinal, I'll just point at the screen so I go Cardinal Siri. Right. Good thing and I have an ah an Android. So this is terrible. If you had an and ah Amazon device and there was a Cardinal Alexa, that would be very very awkward.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yes, fortunately, ah no. Now, the cardinal theory thesis is the theory that Giuseppe Seri, who was an arch-conservative cardinal from Genoa, was elected pope in 1958, but then unseated through the nefarious machinations of liberal cardinals and also Jews and Freemasons being a new doctor.
00:27:38
Speaker
um who who then replaced Ciri with Cardinal Angelo Roncullie, and he became the first quote-unquote false pope known to the world as John XXIII. And so so this is the idea that, it reminds me a little bit of the sovereign citizen stuff, I guess, the idea that due due to this thing that happened in the past, this this organization, this lineage is illegitimate, well was illegitimate, and therefore remains illegitimate to this day. Now from memory, when when when we talked about this back in 2018, the reason why people even came up with this thesis is that the Papal Enclave of 1958, where they were electing the new pope,
00:28:21
Speaker
there was an error in the smoke being coming out of the chimney after one of the rounds of voting. So historically, when the Papal Enclave has a vote and the votes are counted and the ballots are destroyed, they're burnt in such a way either to produce white smoke or black smoke.
00:28:41
Speaker
Black smoke says the election has been unsuccessful and there'll be another round of elections. White smoke tells you there has been a successful election. And in the 1958 Enclave, one of the round white smoke comes from the chimney above the Basilica and then it quickly turns black. So there was an error in the chemical being and added to the fire. The wrong chemical was added in which led to a what appeared to be a false vote and people have gone no no no I mean that's the excuse the church made but no no even though the right person was elected to the role there was a conspiracy amongst the Cardinals to rob the real Pope of their position and install someone more liberal in their place
00:29:33
Speaker
And then apparently, and so so Cardinal Ron Kelly becomes John XXIII. He died five years later in 1963, he dies. and And now the claim is that once again, Giuseppe Seri was supposed to have been made the pope this time, but once again was shafted in favor of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, who became now the second quote unquote false pope under the name of Paul VI.
00:30:03
Speaker
And Suri was supposedly at this point exiled to a monastery and told to keep his mouth shut about the whole thing. So according to this, we have not had a legitimate Pope since 1958.
00:30:14
Speaker
Now, there's a particular problem with this thesis in that a little bit like the Richard Pierce thesis of the first successful flight in the world. So non New Zealanders may not be aware of this, but some New Zealanders believe that the first person to achieve powered flights in the world wasn't the Wright brothers, but a New Zealand inventor by the name of Richard Pierce.
00:30:43
Speaker
And Richard Pierce was an inventor back home. He was working on powered flight around about the same time that the Wright brothers and other people were working on powered flight. And some people claim to have witnessed Pierce actually fly a plane before the Wright brothers had their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk.
00:31:05
Speaker
And the problem with the Richard Pierce theory is that whilst there are lots of New zealand who new Zealanders who believed Richard Pierce flew before the Wright brothers, there is one notable dissenter, which was Richard Pierce, who never claimed in his lifetime that he flew before the Wright brothers,
00:31:24
Speaker
and also claimed in his lifetime that he dabbled with powered flight, but was not successful before the Wright brothers were successful at Kitty Hawk. In the same respect, Guseppe Seri also... Oh, sorry, I thought it was Guseppe Seri, although it makes no point now, because I've... You've got away with it, you've got away with it.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, ah he at no point ever claimed to be Pope and in fact remained in full communion with the church throughout his life, celebrating post Vatican II masses. So the big thing that John XXIII brought in was the Vatican II reforms, which were liberal reforms in the Catholic Church. You would think that if an arch-conservative was the real Pope,
00:32:14
Speaker
They would be resisting any of the reforms and sticking with the Latin Mass and the like, but no, he remained in full communion with the church and also engaged in those reforms and defended the reforms at the time they were going through all the various councils, enclaves and the like.
00:32:36
Speaker
So yes, rather than having been shuffled off and told to remain silent, um he was in fact ah vocally defending the church that supposedly had done him dirty. So there really doesn't seem to be anything to this.
Catholic Church Scandals
00:32:49
Speaker
Paul VI was followed by John Paul I, who famously lasted a mere 33 days. yeah He just d just did not have it in him to be a a full-blown pope.
00:33:01
Speaker
no And that ah that observation, I think, and the conspiracy theories um around it is what took us into the next episode about dead Popes, although we did, of course, have to point out it's it's a bit bit of an elephant in the room situation here. If you're talking about conspiracies and you're talking about the Catholic Church, there is, of course, the the fact now that the Catholic Church has indeed conspired to cover up um many instances of child abuse happening within the church, which I mean, many almost sound as if it's kind of underplaying the scale of abuse within the church. It's not just child abuse, it's also the grooming of young men and women. The Catholic Church has had a very long and storied history
00:33:46
Speaker
of not only denying the abuse but being perfectly aware the abuse was going on and solving the problem of abuse simply by moving abusive priests from one parish to another where they engaged in abuse again and then moving them to another parish because for some reason the idea of actually punishing these priests for what they're they're doing was something the church never really considered was a possibility yeah So yes, we we we can't we can't carry on without mentioning that, but it is quite frankly a fairly depressing topic and one that's probably better known than everything else we're going to be talking about. Well yes, I mean it's a topic that if you are aware of the Catholic Church you are aware of the conspiracies by the Catholic Church to cover up the abuse that members of the Catholic Church have engaged in, you might not know about your cardinal theory or your know-nothings.
00:34:42
Speaker
So instead let's let's let's follow that segue on then to talk about dead popes because after episode 193 we went to episode 194 titled the dead popes society which almost worked as ah as a pun on dead poet society but not quite dead did did popes no it just doesn't not quite there but close we were close We talked about Debra, in particular, John Paul I. He's the big one. But um we do, of course, have to start by acknowledging the fact that in this day and age, at least, and maybe we'll we'll talk about an exception in the bonus episode to this episode, popes are old men, and um old men die. so So the death of a pope
00:35:28
Speaker
shouldn't shouldn't really be that big of a surprise. And yet sometimes um people have have found it to be ah exceptional enough to to generate conspiracy theories. And I guess, joel i sort of I sort of make one note here. So yes, historically, at least in the modern era, yeah, popes have typically ended up being old men. The thing which was interesting about John Paul II was he wasn't an old man. we taken off the No, John Paul the Second, so the success of John Paul the Second. Oh, I see. so So the idea of to going, oh, we've had a, our popes haven't been lasting very long, we'd better, ah better elect a young one. And there is a theory in Catholic thought here, and I'm speaking here as a former Roman Catholic who used to associate with bishops and things.
00:36:19
Speaker
There was a theory or a kind of view amongst some Catholics that the election of John Paul II was a bad idea because one of the benefits of having old popes is it forces the church to modernize. An old pope is not going to be around for particularly long, which means that you're going to get more generational changes in the course of the century.
00:36:45
Speaker
Having a pope who survives for 30 or 40 years actually ends up being a bad thing because it means you don't get much generational change. So yeah, maybe you don't want your pope to only last 33 days. It might not be long enough.
00:37:04
Speaker
But having your Pope survive several decades actually itself is a bit of a problem if you think the Church should be adapting to the times. And many people will point out that even though the Vatican II reforms started, they also stalled under Pope John Paul II.
00:37:26
Speaker
and they're really only being worked upon now under Pope Francis, which is quite a long time from 1978, up until when Pope Francis ended up taking on the reins after the very strange resignation of Pope Benedict, I look like Darth Sidious II.
00:37:49
Speaker
a Yeah, that's interesting, actually, because it's not something I really thought of. But yes, John Paul II was around for a long time. he was retro That's the thing. He he was appointed in 1978. At that time, I was two years old and didn't even know what a pope was. So John Paul II, he was the pope for a large chunk of my life. So I guess it never really occurred to me that i there's usually quite a quick turnaround of popes, because the only pope I knew for a long time was there for a long time.
00:38:18
Speaker
And you knew your Pope John Paul II. You knew him. You knew him well. Hard to avoid everywhere that Pope. Couldn't keep him down, except when they did. so but but But his predecessor, John Paul I, formerly Albino Luciani, ah so he was found dead on the morning of 29th of September 1978, having served as served as Pope for 33 days.
00:38:42
Speaker
um He was found in bed, he had had a book by his side, his reading light was on, ah the official finding was that he had had a heart attack around 11pm the previous night and was found when people came in in the morning. And apparently this is supported by the fact that supposedly he had been complaining of having chest pains that night and the evening before, but but didn't think it was a big deal and hadn't called a doctor.
00:39:05
Speaker
So that ah that sounds fairly ordinary, but um there there were conspiracy theories nonetheless. And one of the things driving them is something that we've seen seen many times in many different situations, simply the fact that there are discrepancies contradictions in the reporting of his death. So um since there were some reports that he had been found by his secretaries. There are some reports that had been found by the two nuns who were attending to him. There were discrepancies around which book it was that had been found next to him um that he had been reading before he died. ah There were apparently conflicting reports on whether or not an autopsy had been carried out. And it's it's it's the sort of thing that we've just seen so many times where
00:39:47
Speaker
It's probably just people making mistakes. It's just eras in the first case. um but People will pounce on these things and and try to talk them up into something bigger than it is.
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah, and and in some cases, particularly with deeply hierarchical institutions like the Roman Catholic Church, there also might be a case of, I mean, technically he was found by two nuns, but really, it probably should have been the papal Nuncio who was the one who actually declared the Pope to be dead. So maybe the nun said, oh my god, oh my god, the Pope is dead. In case of no cooldown, ladies,
00:40:24
Speaker
call your heels let's bring a man into the room and actually confirm this and thus you'll get conflicting stories of who actually made the claim they found the corpse it probably was the nun who went into a tent him but officially the Declaration would have been made by the Papal Secretary, the Nuncio, and thus you'll get this kind of conflicting story between the official story and actually the sequence of events that led to the official story becoming the official story.
00:40:56
Speaker
Now, some people have talked about the fact that that um John Paul I was a liberal pope, which is set from what I gather is in keeping with his his predecessors, as we just said, um ah John the 23rd was a liberal pope who, who according to the jausepi the the Pope's siri theory, had been had been brought in ahead of the conservative theory, and then supposedly Paul VI was the same. so um But
00:41:27
Speaker
possibly he John Paul I was more liberal than those others. Supposedly, he was more sympathetic to contraception than other popes had been. Apparently, he had no problem with artificial insemination. So so maybe there were there were theories there around the fact that ah that that people were worried he was taking the church in in the wrong direction and being too liberal. And that was a reason to bump him off. and As far as I'm aware, there's no specifics on exactly how he had been killed. But um these people had been.
00:41:56
Speaker
I'd say, I'd say Arsenic. I've read a lot of Agatha Christie. If you want to give someone a heart attack, Arsenic is the way to go. Well, there you go. That must be it. But if we can turn to actually another author, British crime author David Yallop. What was his theory? Well, his theory is that the Pope was killed to stop him from exposing corruption and free masonry in the Vatican.
Vatican Banking Scandals
00:42:22
Speaker
So he wrote a book called In God's Name, and this is basically an expose of corruption in the Catholic Church.
00:42:31
Speaker
whereby the Catholic Church was using the papal bank to essentially launder money across the world. And the thing is, there is something to this. There was a massive banking scandal in the late 70s and early 80s centering on the paint the papal bank. There also was associated with that banking scandal a scandal about a Catholic free Masonic order. Now technically Catholics are not allowed to be members of Freemasonry.
00:43:07
Speaker
It's not that Freemasons won't allow Catholic sin, it's more that the Church has always said, if you are Catholic, you cannot be the member of a Freemasonic Lodge. So it was a, you cannot join orders of this particular kind.
00:43:22
Speaker
in part because Freemasons are daists rather than theists, and if there's one thing a theist isn't going to tolerate, it's a daist in the room. So this is one of these things where there's at least some truth to what Yellup is putting forward. There were members of the Papal Hierarchy who were concerned about what the Vatican Bank was doing,
00:43:51
Speaker
The question is, were they so concerned that actually end up assassinating a pope to do it? So let's start with the Vatican Bank, which is the Estuto per la Operae Religiosi, and also the Italian Bank, which is Banco Ambrosano. They were the banks that dealt with paypal money, particularly money coming from areas of the church outside of Italy coming into the church coffers in the Vatican and then being redistributed for Catholic purposes elsewhere. And the bank's head for the Vatican was Bishop Paul Macincus? Macincus? Macincus?
00:44:39
Speaker
and for Benko Ambrosiano Roberto Calvi and we're going to talk a little bit more about Roberto Calvi because no matter what you think about the thesis that the Pope was killed because of his wanting to expose corruption in Freemasonry, Roberto Calvi's fate is a little bit hard to explain, to the point where it seems like there probably was a conspiracy somewhere. May not involve the Pope, but it definitely did involve the Vatican bank.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yes, so the the the Vatican bank, um Bishop Machinkis, who was the head of that, he he was indicted following the collapse of the other bank, Bunko Ambrosiano, that cost the Vatican bank around $250 million in I assume that's 1982 money. So that there was that side of it. And um then there was what happened to Roberto Calvi. He was a member of propaganda duet, which was an, as you say, a illegal Italian Masonic lodge. At this stage, it had become sort of a far right secret society. And he quote unquote, committed suicide.
00:45:53
Speaker
once this corruption came out, as did his secretary. There wasn't actually a bit in that sentence that I could have put quote marks throughout, but her her suicide was questioned also. So tell me about the death of Roberto Calvi. Why did people raise their eyebrows at that? All right, so he's a Vatican banker. So he's basically the liaison for the Vatican bank at Banco Aprosiano. And when this is all coming down, when it becomes quite clear that there is A bank collapse, there's widespread corruption, there's money being funneled into various illegal activities, including the funding of this illegal Italian Masonic Lodge. He flees Rome. So he flees Rome on the 10th of June, 1982, flies to Venice, and from there he hires a private plane to take him to London.
00:46:44
Speaker
On the 18th of June, a postal clerk who was crossing Blackfriars Bridge in London on a Friday morning notices Kelvie's body hanging from the scaffolding beneath the bridge.
00:47:00
Speaker
when the authorities come to cut Kelvie's corpse down they discover that he's hanging from the scaffolding a noose around his neck and he has five bricks in his pockets and has around about fourteen thousand US dollars in different currencies scattered around his pockets and this then leads to perennial inquests in the UK to go well up What's going on here? And the first recorded verdict was that of suicide. So in July 1982, the British authorities go, well, look, he's hanging from a noose beneath the bridge. It's suicide. He's got bricks in his pockets. He's done as much as possible to make sure that he dies committing suicide. Why did he commit suicide? Presumably because of the shame and scandal about the banking collapse, which made him flee Italy in the first place.
00:47:58
Speaker
but there's a second inquest a year later, and in this case, the court is unable to determine the exact cause of death, and this is because there are some problems with the story of his death by suicide. So the injuries to Calvi's neck were inconsistent with hanging, and it turns out that the bricks in his pockets do not have his fingerprints.
00:48:26
Speaker
which means that somehow he managed to stuff five bricks into his pockets, not wearing gloves, and leave no fingerprints behind. But possibly the most interesting inconsistency is that when his body was found the river tide Thames had receded with the tide but the scaffolding could have been reached by a person beneath the bridge in a boat at the time he was hung because you're able to work out
00:48:57
Speaker
when someone was panged by body, lividacy and the like. So the moment in time where he apparently drops from the noose, it is quite possible that someone could have taken his body to the bridge and left it there.
00:49:12
Speaker
And so it seems that if Kelvie committed suicide, he did it in such a way that there's no evidence of him clambering over the scaffolding to get to the point where he hung himself, and he managed to manhandle the bricks into his pockets, leaving no forensic evidence of that manhandling behind.
00:49:37
Speaker
And he did it at a time of night where someone actually could have got to the noose by boat, which means if he committed suicide that way, he didn't do it alone. And so at this stage, people are going, he may have committed suicide, but if he did, he did it with help.
00:49:57
Speaker
or given the fact that his neck wound are not consistent with hanging but are consistent with a kind of strangulation indicates that maybe he was killed and his body was left there instead.
00:50:12
Speaker
So yes, there definitely seems to be something to the theories around Kelvey's death. But when it comes to John Paul I, as part of this whole theory, um he named six men as being conspirators in the death of Pope John Paul
Theories on Pope John Paul I's Death
00:50:29
Speaker
I. Three of these men were in the church and three of them were sort of criminal mafia types.
00:50:33
Speaker
He believed so. So, um Archbishop Machinkis was one of these people who was also Archbishop John Patrick Cody of Chicago, um who, yeah, believes was about to be forced into retirement by the Pope.
00:50:45
Speaker
and Cardinal Jean-Marie Vio, who apparently had theological differences with John Paul I, and he believes that the reason why these people conspired with the Mafia to kill off the Pope is that um he was found, ah according to Yellup, with a piece of paper clutched in his hand which named various members of the Roman Curia as freemasons, corrupt, and or involved in money laundering with the Mafia.
00:51:10
Speaker
<unk> I'm not aware of of corroboration of this. And certainly apparently in in the book, he doesn't really talk about how they killed him. It's all just about what motive they would have had to have killed him. And indeed, after the publication of this book, I believe other people took a issue with his arguments.
00:51:31
Speaker
Yeah, so John Cornwell, another British author and journalist, published a book called A Thief in the Night. And this is basically a rebuttal of Yellup's points. So Cornwell says, well look, many of the discrepancies that Yellup actually talks about are just due to poor communications in the hours and days after John Paul I's death.
00:51:53
Speaker
So they its claim that the undertakers were called for at 5am which is before the body was discovered but actually that just appears to be an error in the documentation and the undertakers were actually called at about 5pm which is after the body has been discovered and the various rituals and things that occur when a pope dies because there's an entire elaborate apparatus of the Catholic Church that when a pope dies things have to be done in a particular way so The papal ring has to be destroyed, so you have to organise for someone to come and basically have a hammer and break the ring off the fe off the finger of the Pope. And when you have an unexpected death, that's going to be something you go, well, our ring breaker.
00:52:37
Speaker
yeah We don't know where they are or where the special hammer is. um There's a reason as to why you might wait for quite some time for the undertakers to come and take away the body. And so he basically goes through and looks at the so-called inconsistencies and goes, well, look, these aren't inconsistencies born of a conspiracy to cover up something.
00:53:02
Speaker
This is simply what happens when someone dies unexpectedly and communications kind of go awry. So he points out that the secretaries who were aware of the chest pains that John Paul I had been talking about in the days prior may have wanted to cover up the fact they didn't take his chest pains more seriously and force him to see a doctor.
00:53:29
Speaker
because there is this question is you know why if he's experiencing chest pains was there no medical relief actually offered there well you might want to cover that up because in retrospect what you thought was simply a case of indigestion turns out to be a medical emergency and that's pretty embarrassing, but that's not cover up of a conspiracy, that's cover up of incompetence instead. So yes, Cornwell's book basically is a rebuttal of Yellup's thesis and says, look, everything he puts down to conspiracy actually can be explained by cock up or incompetence.
00:54:08
Speaker
yeah But on the other hand, a man named Lucian Gregoire ah published a book called The Vatican Murders, and this one was a lot more recent. so When we recorded this episode originally in 2018, it was only a year old, um and therefore included a lot more information about the banking corruption that hadn't been available back in the 80s when those earlier books were written. His theory is that um that Yellup was right, that the the people he talked about did organize the death of Pope John Paul I, which was actually carried out by the CIA. And he claimed that the CIA didn't want ah the Pope to dismantle the Vatican as it was because the Vatican was, quote, subservient to the will of the USA.
00:54:50
Speaker
but ch the USA. Apparently that one got there. There's there's more free ice and stuff. References to the Fatima prophecies, which I'm sure we must have mentioned in the past, we've we've done a bit of prophecy. So there are three Fatima prophecies, two of which have been revealed, one of which I still believe is under Locke and Kay. And so many, there are many conspiracy theories about the content of that third.
00:55:21
Speaker
undisclosed Fatima prophecy and it's one of those things where because no one knows what's in it you can always go oh but the third one that is the one that talks about corruption in the church or the third one that is the one that talks about why Donald Trump is the second coming or the third one that's the reason why we have to bake a cake this weekend the third Fatima prophecy it explains everything yeah There are also claims that um the Pope had been killed because he was going to re-establish the Tridentine Mass. And I'm pretty sure you explained to me what that is and what it means last time, but I've forgotten completely. and Does it actually matter? It's the Latin Mass. So bringing back the Latin Rite, having the priest standing in front of an altar back towards the congregation, um chanting a away in a language that no one understands. Right.
00:56:14
Speaker
um And so the last thing we talked about when it came to dead popes, which is all of them, except for Frankie, is was Pope Paul VI. So he was John Paul I's predecessor, who only lasted what? fight No, hang on, it was the one before him lasted five years. He might have been a little bit longer.
00:56:30
Speaker
At any rate, there didn't seem to be anything overly conspiratorial about his death, although he did appear apparently there were conspiracy theories around ah his his opinions and practices. yeah Apparently one time he gave a homily condemning homosexuality, which does not seem to be out of character,
00:56:50
Speaker
No, I mean that's very in character for the Catholic Church. but um But after this he was accused of being gay himself by a French writer and diplomat called Roger Perfete.
00:57:04
Speaker
ah And that that seemed to be the most kind ah conspiratorial thing we found out about him. Yes, I mean that was an episode that kind of ended with a whimper. It did a little bit. Maybe it would have ended a little bit better if we had instead talked about Pope Joan, but we're not going to talk about Pope Joan this episode either. We're going to save her for the bonus episode.
00:57:26
Speaker
We are, yes, because it it occurred to me when I was looking over our notes of the previous episodes, one of the most famous cover ups by the Catholic Church is the cover up of the alleged woman Pope, Pope John.
00:57:41
Speaker
And we didn't mention her at all in our previous discussion. And so I wrote up some notes saying well we can add that and went by golly, by jingo, by pokey, jolly, jingo, golly, jingo, by. That's a bonus episode topic. So in the bonus episode, we're going to talk about Pope Joan, the woman pope who was or wasn't.
00:58:03
Speaker
And if you'd like to know which one it is, ah be a patron. If you are a patron, good job. that or even Or be a Pope Joan. Or be Pope Joan. Patreon Patreon? Papled on? Papal on Joan? Something I don't know. We'll make a book. I actually don't think we will. No, probably not.
00:58:25
Speaker
But we've never made it work in the past. Why do you think we'd start making it work now? Exactly. But what will work is you going to patreon.com, searching with the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and signing yourself up to be a patron. And then you get to listen to that episode. It'll be great. I probably won't even force you physically to listen to it this time. moment what i Sorry. You force people to listen to it last episode. Why do you not want them to listen to the Pope Joan episode this fortnight?
00:58:53
Speaker
i'm I'm mellowing in my old age. and I'm live and let live, man. i'm just i I think you're very inconsistent about the violence that you commit upon our our Patreons. No, that's the way they like it. Or Patrons. i mean Do we call them Patreons or Patrons? I mean, it's called Patreon and I've never known why.
00:59:12
Speaker
But they're patrons, right? They're not patriots. I consider them our patrons and the best and finest of all people. They are the shiniest, most glowy people in the world. And most most of you are fine. So you should probably get that checked out because you've probably been too close to a radiation source.
00:59:29
Speaker
But anyway, that's the end of this main episode. We'll go record a bonus one in a sec. But for now, to our blessed patrons and to all of the rest of our listeners who we're quite fond of. Also, I'm just going to say goodbye. Goodbye. Or as a a pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church might say, goodbye. But in a comical Italian accent.
00:59:51
Speaker
Good, the bye. No, that's straight to the end. They just say ciao. No, they would. Ciao. Which is a very useful term because it's both hello and goodbye. You say hello, I say goodbye. In Italian, you say ciao, I say ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao.
01:00:16
Speaker
You've been listening to a podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Ederson and Imdentive. If you'd like to help support us, please find details at our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.
01:00:48
Speaker
Marty, we gotta go back to the conspiracy.