Popes Who Were Actually Terrible People

Since the founding of the Roman Catholic Church almost 2,000 years ago, 266 men have held the office of the pope. They were — and in the case of Pope Francis, are — the leaders of the Church and the shepherds of its believers, and have wielded an incredible power, both spiritual and worldly.

Unfortunately, well, you know what they say about power, and it turns out that not every pope has been incorruptible. Dive deep into the history of the papacy, and you might find out that a handful of Holy Fathers were a little less holy than we would've liked. That's the kind of thing that happens when you have such a long history, but it maybe didn't have to get this ugly. From the bizarre desecration of a corpse to toasting the Devil and the one guy who managed to take St. Peter's throne three different times, here are several popes who were actually kind of terrible.

Of all the Holy Fathers to be notable for their less than sterling morality, Alexander VI is unquestionably the most famous, to the point where he's literally on the cover of a book by E.R. Chamberlain with the rather blunt title of The Bad Popes. This is probably not the legacy he was hoping to leave, but in his nine years as pontifex, Alexander VI was accused of murdering his political enemies with poison, unchecked nepotism, and various other things that popes are definitely not supposed to do, which occasionally resulted in children. That caused plenty of problems, especially when Alexander issued two conflicting official papal decrees about the parentage of the infamous "Roman Infant" who may have been his son, grandson, or both, depending whom you ask.

As for why he's so notable, you really only need to look at his name. Before ascending to the papacy, Alexander VI was Rodrigo Borgia. On the off chance that the name doesn't ring a bell, the Borgias were one of the most powerful families in Rome during the Renaissance and were so well known for their criminal exploits that Showtime made a prestige drama about them that ran for two seasons. Alexander VI in particular was considered so power-hungry and evil that he's literally the final boss of Assassin's Creed 2, one of the only video games we can think of that ends with the hero getting into a fistfight with the pope.

Of course, that all may have been exaggerated — and not just the video game stuff about the secret alien artifacts underneath the Vatican. As powerful as they were, the Borgias had plenty of equally powerful enemies, including Alexander's successor, Julius II. Most of Alexander's bad reputation comes from "evidence" gathered by Julius, who, if you believe modern pop culture interpretations, may have extracted it by torturing Alexander's servants and who probably belongs on this list as much as Alexander himself does.

In 1942, historian and filmmaker John Farrow wrote that "there is little brightness to record in the dismal and disgraceful reign of this servile Pope," and believe it or not, that's actually one of the nicer things people have said about Sergius III.

Sergius came to power in a time when the Catholic Church in general and the papacy in particular were so legendarily afflicted with corruption that it has since become known as the Saeculum obscurum, or Dark Age. There is, however, a more colorful name given to the period that might give you a hint as to what Sergius' main interest was: In the 19th century, German philosophers referred to his tenure as the start of the "pornocracy." To be fair, this might just be a reaction to the fact that several women rose to power in Rome at the time, who were likely no more or less corrupt than their male counterparts, but that's the kind of name that sticks out in history books, and not exactly in the best way.

Even apart from whether this particular six decades — only nine years short of being the perfect length of time for its name — lives up to its reputation, Sergius himself is considered uniquely bad among popes, which is probably because he maybe ordered the murders of two of them himself. If that weren't bad enough, he was also a big fan of Stephen VI and upheld his conviction of Formosus, and when you're really into putting dead bodies on trial, pretty much everything else you do is going to be a little suspect, too.

Today, no one expects the Inquisition, but in the 13th century, people were far more familiar with it. In an effort to suppress teachings and beliefs that ran counter to the official, canonical teachings and practices of the Catholic Church, Inquisitors were tasked with rooting out heretics and getting them to confess. Unfortunately for the Inquisition, getting someone to admit to doing something that will likely have them burned at the stake is notoriously difficult.

That's why Pope Innocent IV issued a decree called Ad extirpanda, in which he authorized the use of torture to extract confessions. That might sound a little weird for the leader of a religion built around someone who is himself one of history's most famous victims of being tortured for allegations of heresy, but hey, it's not like Innocent IV went wild with it. He specifically forbade Inquisitors from torturing people to death, cutting off limbs, or using torture more than once.

So, you know, it was just a little torture. Jesus would probably be fine with that, right?

While Rome has been the traditional home of the Catholic Church since about 33 A.D., there was a period of about 70 years in the 14th century where the popes ruled from Avignon, France, instead, owing to political conflicts with France and the Holy Roman Empire. Eventually, however, Gregory XI decided that he wanted to regain control of the Papal States, which kicked off the truly Game of Thrones-sounding War of the Eight Saints against Florence.

Sadly, this particular conflict did not involve the Mother of Dragons. Instead, Gregory relied on some equally nontraditional tactics, including excommunicating every member of the Florentine government and banning all religious services in the city. When the Florentine citizens continued to hold religious services, Gregory instead authorized his armies to both seize their property and enslave the citizens themselves until his successor, Urban VI, signed a treaty that finally ended the war and restored the papacy to Rome. Uh, don't get too excited about Urban, though. He's not exactly the good guy in this scenario...

If this list has shown anything, it's that despite their high office, popes aren't immune to the flaws the rest of humanity has. Really, though, they're just following in the footsteps of the very first pope, St. Peter, who was given the keys to Heaven and Earth by Jesus himself.

While he wasn't the worst of the apostles by a long shot — Judas Iscariot has that one in the bag — Peter is famously the one who promised that he would never deny Christ and then proceeded to do exactly that not once, but three times. Also, if you've ever heard the phrase "get thee behind me, Satan," that's not Jesus talking to the Devil. He's talking to Peter. Technically, though, that's all before he became the first pope. If you count his tenure as beginning after the Crucifixion, however, then his papacy includes calling down the Holy Spirit to strike two people dead for not giving all of their money to the Church, and (apocryphally) trying to get out of his own martyrdom until Jesus appeared to him and shamed him into going back to Rome by saying that if he didn't, Jesus would be crucified again in Peter's place.

All that said, plenty of theologians over the centuries have acknowledged Peter's flaws, and even suggested that was why he was what Jesus called the rock on whom he would build his church. His flaws made him human, which in turn made him a perfect candidate to be God's human representative on Earth. If he could be forgiven, maybe the rest of us can be, too. Except John XII, though. That dude was pretty rough.