Saint Peter's Basilica facade, Rome, Italy

Vatican conspiracy theories are

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * * * * The term has a nega ...

that concern the

Pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

or the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. A majority of the theories allege that the Church and its representatives are secretly controlling secular society with a Satanic agenda for global domination.

Conspiracy theories

Pope John Paul I conspiracy theories

Pope John Paul I Pope John Paul I ( la, Ioannes Paulus I}; it, Giovanni Paolo I; born Albino Luciani ; 17 October 1912 – 28 September 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 26 August 1978 to his death 33 days later. Hi ...

died in September 1978, only a month after his election to the papacy. The timing of his death and the Vatican's alleged difficulties with ceremonial and legal death procedures have fostered several conspiracy theories. British author

David Yallop David Anthony Yallop (27 January 1937 – 23 August 2018) was a British author who wrote chiefly about unsolved crimes. In the 1970s, he contributed scripts for a number of BBC comedy shows. In the same decade he also wrote 10 episodes for the I ...

wrote extensively about unsolved crimes and conspiracy theories, and in his 1984 book ''In God's Name'' suggested that John Paul I died because he was about to uncover financial scandals allegedly involving the Vatican. John Cornwell responded to Yallop's charges in 1987 with ''A Thief In The Night'', in which he analyzed the various allegations and denied the conspiracy. According to Eugene Kennedy, writing for the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, Cornwell's book "helps to purge the air of paranoia and of conspiracy theories, showing how the truth, carefully excavated by an able journalist in a refreshing volume, does make us free."

Pope John Paul II's 1981 attempted assassination

Various theories have been brought forward in regards to the attempt by

Mehmet Ali Ağca Mehmet Ali Ağca (; born 9 January 1958) is a Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979, and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison. After serving ...

to kill

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

. Those theories have involved the

Grey Wolves The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

, the Bulgarian Secret Service,Paul B. Henze. ''The Plot to Kill the Pope'', Holiday House, 1985. and others.

Know Nothings

The Know Nothings were an anti-Catholic political group in the United States, in the 1840s and 1850s, who claimed that the Irish and other Roman Catholic immigrants to the United States would be controlled by the Pope for anti-American purposes.

Secret Archives

There are several theories about the contents of the

Vatican Apostolic Archive The Vatican Apostolic Archive ( la, Archivum Apostolicum Vaticanum; it, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano), formerly known as the Vatican Secret Archive, is the central repository in the Vatican City of all acts promulgated by the Holy See. The Pon ...

s: some theories claim that they contain secret information about the

Priory of Sion The ''Prieuré de Sion'' (), translated as Priory of Sion, was a fraternal organization founded in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard in his failed attempt to create a prestigious neo-chivalric order. In the 1960s, Plantard began claiming that ...

, proof that Jesus had a wife and descendants, secret information about the third secret of the Fatima, the real

Spear of Destiny A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastene ...

, secret information about the

Holy Grail The Holy Grail (french: Saint Graal, br, Graal Santel, cy, Greal Sanctaidd, kw, Gral) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miracu ...

and/or the Ark of the Covenant, a supposedly-real Chronovisor machine, and many other secrets. There are also theories that claim that the Vatican has information about the

Illuminati The Illuminati (; plural of Latin ''illuminatus'', 'enlightened') is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name usually refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on ...

, and even secretly contains the world's largest collection of porn.

Jesuit conspiracy theories

COVID conspiracy theory

A 2022 film called ''Watch The Water'' alleged that the Catholic Church created

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

and that the virus was actually a modified form of snake venom designed to turn people into demonic hybrids by altering their DNA. The film received over 640,000 views within two days of its release and the claims became a trending topic on Twitter.

References

{{Reflist Conspiracy theories involving religion Anti-Catholicism