HARD FACTS
One of the many struggles former Catholics had with leaving the faith is finding out about some of the harsh history of the church. This history is not intended to offend, but to open peoples hearts and eyes to some of the dark truths of the Catholic Church.
Please click link below each fact to learn more.
MURDERS, INQUISITIONS, ETC.....
1209 - The Albigensian Crusades in southern France. Roman Catholic crusaders slaughter approximately 20,000 citizens of Beziers, France on July 22, 1209. Both Albigensian Christians and Catholics were slain. By the time the Roman Catholic armies finished their crusade, almost the entire population of southern France (mostly Albigensian Christians) has been exterminated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers
http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/07/22/1209-albigensian-crusade-cathars-beziers/
1236 - Roman Catholic crusaders slaughter Jews in the Anjou and Poitou regions of western France in a severe wave of persecution
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anjou
1481 - - At the direction of the Roman Catholic inquisitors, authorities torture, burn and slaughter tens, even hundreds of thousands of people during the Spanish Inquisition (Jean Antoine Llorentine, History of the Inquistion; as cited in R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power (New York, 1876); as cited in Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast).
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=woman+who+rides+the+beast
1540 - 1570 - Roman Catholic armies butcher at least 900,000 Waldensian Christians of all ages during this 30-year period (source: Halley's Bible Handbook).
1553 - 1558 - Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England (aka bloody Mary) attempts to bring England back under the yoke of papal tyranny. During her reign, nearly 300 men and woman are burned to death at the sake. Her victims include bishops, scholars, and other Protestant leaders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_England#Religious_policy
1572 - St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. French Roman Catholic soldiers begin killing Protestants in Paris on the night of August 24, 1572. The soldiers kill at least 10,000 Protestants during the first three days. At least 8000 more Protestants are killed as the slaughter spreads to the countryside
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre#Death_toll
1618 - 1648 - The Thirty Years War. This bloody, religious war is planned, instigated, and orchestrated by the Roman Catholic Jesuit order and its agents in an attempt to exterminate all the Protestants in Europe. Many countries in central Europe lose up to half their population (see Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII).
1641 - 1649 - Eight years of Jesuit-instigated Roman Catholic butchery of Irish Protestants claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of Protestants (see Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII).
1685 - French Roman Catholic soldiers slaughter approximately 500,000 French Protestant Huguenots on the orders of Roman Catholic King Louis 14 of France.
1941 - 1945 - The Roman Catholic Ustashi in Yugoslavia butchered Hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav citizens, Serbs, Jews and Roma. And Hundreds of thousands were forced to convert to Catholicism. (link, link, link)
http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/yugoslavia_catholic_church.htm
http://www.reformation.org/holocaus.html
https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Time-to-confront-Croatias-hidden-Holocaust-314896
1949 - 1953 - With the support from the Columbian government, the Roman Catholic Church had 60,000 Protestants and non-Catholics shot, drowned and emasculated. Pope Pius XII awarded the Columbian President with one of the highest awards the church can give.
During her full reign of terror, the Papacy had caused the cruel death of at least 50 MILLION people. The following are quotes from the few available history books concerning Papal persecutions.
"Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France." (Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403)
"The Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229), under Popes Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX., was one of the bloodiest tragedies in human history ... The number of Albigenses that perished in the twenty years war is estimated at from one to two millions." (Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XIV)
"Need I speak to you of the thirty years war in Germany, which was mainly instigated by the Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protestants of the right of free religious worship, secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? Or of the Irish rebellion, of the inhuman butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by the Spanish papists? In short, it is calculated by authentic historians, that papal Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight millions of the human race in order to establish her unfounded claims to religious dominion." (The Glorious Reformation by S. S. SCHMUCKER, 1838 -- citing Dr. Brownlee's 'Popery an enemy to civil liberty', p. 105)
"This was the century of the last religious wars in Christendom, the Thirty Years War in Germany, fomented by the Jesuits, reducing the people to cannibalism, and the population of Bohemia from 4,000,000 to 780,000, and of Germany from 20,000,000 to 7,000,000, and making Southern Germany almost a desert." (Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII)
"In one word, the church of Rome has spent immense treasures and shed, in murder, the blood of sixty eight millions and five hundred thousand of the human race, to establish before the astonished and disgusted world, her fixed determination to annihilate every claim set up by the human family to liberty, and the right of unbounded freedom of conscience." (W C Brownlee, Popery an enemy to civil liberty, 1836, pp. 104-105)
"There perished under pope Julian 200,000 Christians: and by the French massacre, on a moderate calculation, in 3 months, 100,000. Of the Waldenses there perished 150,000; of the Albigenses, 150,000. There perished by the Jesuits in 30 years only 900,000. The Duke of Alva destroyed by the common hangman alone, 36,000 persons; the amount murdered by him is set down by Grotius at 100,000! There perished by the fire, and tortures of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy, and France 150,000 ... In the Irish massacres there perished 150,000 Protestants! To sum up the whole, the Roman Catholic church has caused the ruin, and destruction of a million and a half of Moors in Spain; nearly two millions of Jews South America in Europe. In Mexico, and , including the islands of Cuba and St. Domingo, fifteen millions of Indians, in 40 years, fell victims to popery. And in Europe, and the East Indies, and in America, 50 millions of Protestants, at least, have been murdered by it! Thus the church of Rome stands before the world, 'the woman in scarlet, on the scarlet colored Beast.' A church claiming to be Christian, drenched in the blood of sixty-eight millions, and five hundred thousand human beings!" (W. C. Brownlee, Letters in the Roman Catholic controversy, 1834, pp. 347-348)
"Alexander Campbell, well known religions leader of the nineteenth century, stated in debate with John B. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati, in 1837 that the records of historians and martyrologists show that it may be reasonable to estimate that from fifty to sixty-eight millions of human beings died, suffered torture, lost their possessions, or were otherwise devoured by the Roman Catholic Church during the awful years of the Inquisition. Bishop Purcell made little effort to refute these figures." (Citing A Debate on the Roman Catholic Religion, Christian Publishing Co., 1837, p. 327.) ... (The Shadow of Rome, by John B. Wilder; Zondervan Publishing Co., 1960, page 87)
"Let us keep a sense of proportion. The record of 'Christianity' [Roman Catholic] from the days when it first obtained the power to persecute is one of the most ghastly in history. The total number of Manichaeans, Arians, Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathari, Waldensians, Albigensians, witches, Lollards, Hussites, Jews and Protestants killed because of their rebellion against Rome clearly runs to many millions; and beyond these actual executions or massacres is the enormously larger number of those who were tortured, imprisoned, or beggared. I am concerned rather with the positive historical aspect of this. In almost every century a large part of the race has endeavored to reject the Christian religion, and, if in those centuries there had been the same freedom as we enjoy, Roman Catholicism would, in spite of the universal ignorance, have shrunk long ago into a sect. The religious history of Europe has never yet been written." (The Story Of Religious Controversy Chapter XXIII by Joseph McCabe (an atheist) who lived from 1867 to 1955)
"Mede has calculated from good authorities 'that in the war with the Albigenses and Waldenses there perished of these people, in France alone, 1,000,000.'" (Christ and Antichrist, by Samuel J. Cassels, 1846, page 257)
"Who have their dungeon cells under their cathedrals, in which they claim, as inquisitors of their own diocese, to imprison free men in our republic? Foreign popish bishops! And the facts respecting a man being so confined and scourged, in the cells at Baltimore [AMERICA], until he recanted, have been published, and not to this day contradicted! ... Who are in the habit of uttering ferocious threats to assassinate and burn up those Protestants who successfully oppose Romanism? The foreign papists! I have in my possession the evidence of no less than six such inhuman threatenings against myself." (W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, p.210-211)
"It is reckoned that during the reign of Justinian, Africa lost five millions of inhabitants; thus Arianism was extinguished in that region, not by any enforcement of conformity, but by the extermination of the race which had introduced and professed it. - History of the Christian Church, J.C. Robertson, Vol. 1, p. 521." (Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, p. 101)
[footnote, speaking of Pope Innocent VIII] "Yet on the papal throne he played the zealot against the Germans, whom he accused of magic, in his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, etc., and also against the Hussites, whom he well nigh exterminated." (Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian's History of the World, vol. 8, p. 643)
"The inquisitor Reinerius, who died in 1259, has left it on record: 'Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, observe, that there have been more than seventy: all of which, except the sects of the Manichaeans and the Arians and the Runcarians and the Leonists which have infected Germany, have through the favour of God, been destroyed." (Broadbent, E.H., The Pilgrim Church, Gospel Folio Press, 2002, p. 90 (originally published in 1931)
"An edict was issued under the regency of Theodora, which decreed that the Paulicians should be exterminated by fire and sword, or brought back to the Greek church ... It is affirmed by civil and ecclesiastical historians, that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death." (Andrew Miller, Short Papers on Church, London, Chapter 16)
"The whole number of victims who have been offered up in Europe since the beginning of the Reformation? Partly by war, partly by the Inquisition, and a thousand other methods of Romish cruelty? No less within forty years, if the computation of an eminent writer be just, than five and forty millions!" (John Wesley, 'Doctrine of Original Sin', Part I, section II.8, 1757, Wesley's Works, edited by Thomas Jackson, vol. 9, pp. 217-19)
"The inquisition, which was established in the twelfth century against the Waldenses ... was now more effectually set to work. Terrible persecutions were carried on in various parts of Germany, and even in Bohemia, which continued about thirty years, and the blood of the saints was said to flow like rivers of water. The countries of Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, were in a similar manner deluged with Protestant blood." (Buck, Charles, A Theological Dictionary, containing Definitions of All Religious Terms; ..., Philadelphia, Thomas Cowperthwait & Co., 1838, article 'Persecution')
"Those who were not put to death suffered imprisonment, had their houses pulled down, their lands laid waste, their property stolen, and their wives and daughters, after being ravished, sent into convents ... If any fled from these cruelties, they were pursued through the woods, hunted and shot like wild beasts...At the head of the dragoons, in all the provinces of France, marched the bishops, priests, friars, &c. the clergy being ordered to keep up the cruel spirit of the military. An order was published for demolishing all protestant churches." (Southwell, Henry, The new book of martyrs; or complete Christian martyrology. Containing an authentic and genuine historical account of the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ, in all parts of the world, ... Imprint London : printed for J. Cooke, [1765?] page 108-109)
"In Bohemia, by 1600, in a population of 4,000,000, 80 per cent were Protestant. When the Hapsburgs and Jesuits had done their work, 800,000 were left, all Catholics ... In Austria and Hungary half the population Protestant, but under the Hapsburgs and Jesuits they were slaughtered ... In Poland, by the end of the 16th century, it seemed as if Romanism was about to be entirely swept away, but here too, the Jesuits, by persecution, killed Reform. In Italy, the Pope's own country, the Reformation was getting a real hold; but the Inquisition got busy, and hardly a trace of Protestantism was left." (Halley's Bible Handbook, p.798)
"The Horrors of the Inquisition, ordered and maintained by the Popes, over a period of 500 years, in which unnumbered millions were Tortured and Burned, constitute the MOST BRUTAL, BEASTLY, and DEVILISH PICTURE in all history." (Halley's Bible Handbook, p.732)
LIST OF BAD POPES... These are just a few.
Pope Benedict IX
Benedict IX was Pope from 1032 to 1044, again in 1045, and finally from 1047 to 1048, the only man to have served as Pope for three discontinuous periods, and one of the most controversial Popes of all time.Benedict gave up his papacy for the first time in exchange for a large sum of money in 1044. He returned in 1045 to depose his replacement and reigned for one month, after which he left again, possibly to marry, and sold the papacy for a second time, to his Godfather (possibly for over 650 kg /1450 lb of gold). Two years later, Benedict retook Rome and reigned for an additional one year, until 1048. Poppo of Brixen (later to become Pope Damascus II) eventually forced him out of Rome. Benedict’s place and date of death are unknown, but some speculate that he made further attempts to regain the Papal Throne.St. Peter Damian described him as “feasting on immorality” and “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest” in the Liber Gomorrhianus, a treatise on papal corruption and sex that accused Benedict IX of routine homosexuality and bestiality.
POPE INNOCENT III
While Pope Innocent III didn’t reach the epic numbers of slaughters that his predecessor Urban II had, he still aided and abetted in the murder of well over one million people during his papacy between 1198-1216. His were words of war: he rallied military support in favor of the Inquisition after excommunicating Philip II of France and had put both France and England under interdict which was the Pope’s granted power of punishment. What was unique was that the Crusade he waged after supporting the Inquisition was not against heathen scum following a far carried faith – he went from the Vatican directly to England and had his military might wage war against European brothers. He had also began a Crusade against the Albigenses where upon his military constituents were ordered to butcher them by the tens of thousands in horrid and unholy ways. Pope Innocent made Transubstantiation official doctrine in 1215 ad.
Pope Sixtus IV
Pope Sixtus IV financed his wars by selling church offices to the highest bidders. He used the papacy to enrich himself and his family, for no less than eight cardinals were his nephews, some being given the position of cardinal even as a boy.
Pope Pius II
Pope Pius II was said to have been the father of many illegitimate children. He spoke openly of the methods he used to seduce women and he encouraged young men to also seduce women and even offered to instruct them in methods of self-indulgence.
3Pope Sergius III:
Ordered the murder of another pope and started the “pornocracy”. Sergius III was Pope from 897 to 911, and has been the only pope known to have ordered the murder of another pope and the only known to have fathered an illegitimate son who later became pope; his pontificate has been described as “dismal and disgraceful.”The pontificate of Sergius III was remarkable for the rise of what papal historians call a “pornocracy,” or rule of the harlots, a reversal of the natural order as they saw it, according to Liber pontificalis and a later chronicler who was also biased against Sergius III. This “pornocracy” was an age with women in power: Theodora, whom Liutprand characterized as a “shameless whore… [who] exercised power on the Roman citizenry like a man” and her daughter Marozia, the mother of Pope John XI (931–935) and reputed to be the mistress of Sergius III.
Pope John XII
John XII was Pope from 955 to 964. On 963, Holy Roman Emperor Otto I summoned a council, levelling charges that John had ordained a deacon in a stable, consecrated a 10-year-old boy as bishop of Todi, converted the Lateran Palace into a brothel, raped female pilgrims in St. Peter’s, stolen church offerings, drank toasts to the devil, and invoked the aid of Jove, Venus, and other pagan gods when playing dice. He was deposed, but returned as pope when Otto left Rome, maiming and mutilating all who had opposed him. On 964, he was apparently beaten by the husband of a woman with which he was having an affair, dying three days later without receiving confession or the sacraments.
Pope John XXII
Pope John XXII was said to have seduced and violated three hundred nuns. He must have had a strong and insatiable libido for he kept a harem of no less than two hundred girls. He was called "the most depraved criminal who ever sat on the papal throne." A Vatican record says this about him, "His lordship, Pope John, committed perversity with the wife of his brother, incest with holy nuns, intercourse with virgins, adultery with the married, and all sorts of sex crimes... wholly given to sleep and other carnal desires, totally adverse to the life and teaching of Christ... he was publicly called the Devil incarnate."
Pope Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI won the election of the papacy by bribery. He lived with a woman with whom he had a daughter; whom afterward he committed incest with and produced five children. He also lived in public incest with his two sisters. He conducted a sex orgy in the Vatican in which he had a banquet featuring fifty nude girls who danced and serviced the guests – and even offered prizes to the man who could engage in sexual intercourse the most times.
Pope Leo X
Leo X was Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He is known primarily for the sale of indulgences to reconstruct St. Peter’s Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther’s 95 theses.
According to Alexandre Dumas, “under his pontificate, Christianity assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners, gives to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus.”When he became Pope, Leo X is reported to have said to his brother Giuliano: “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.”
His extravagance offended not only people like Martin Luther, but also some cardinals, who, led by Alfonso Petrucci of Siena, plotted an assassination attempt. Eventually, Pope Leo found out who these people were, and had them followed. The conspirators died of “food poisoning.” Some people argue that Leo X and his followers simply concocted the assassination charges in a moneymaking scheme to collect fines from the various wealthy cardinals Leo X detested.
Pope Alexander VI
Alexander VI was Pope from 1492 to 1503. He is the most controversial of the secular popes of the Renaissance, and his surname (Italianized as Borgia) became a byword for the debased standards of the papacy of that era.Originally Cardinal Borgia from Spain, Pope Alexander’s claims to fame were taking over much of Italy by force with the help of his son Cesare (yes, his son), a racy relationship with his daughter Lucrezia (some say her son was his), and his affinity for throwing large parties, bordering on orgies, that usually culminated with little naked boys jumping out of large cakes.
Pope Innocent IV
Innocent IV was Pope from 1243 to 1254.Certainly the Inquisition represents the darkest of Roman Church history, and it was Innocent IV who approved the use of torture to extract confessions of heresy. He aggressively applied the principle that “the end justifies the means.” It is shocking to learn about the deranged instruments of torture that were used on so many innocent people. One of the most famous people to suffer at the hands of Roman inquisitors was Galileo. The church condemned Galileo for claiming that the earth revolved around the sun.
Pope Urban VI
Urban VI was Pope from 1378 to 1389. He was the first Pope of the Western Schism (which ultimately lead to three people claiming the Papal throne at the same time). Once elected, he was prone to outbursts of rage. The cardinals who elected him decided that they had made the wrong decision and they elected a new Pope in his place, so he took the name of Clement VII and started a second Papal court in Avignon, France. Later he would launch a program of violence against those he thought to have been conspiring against him, imprisoning people at will and mistreating them brutally. Later historians have considered seriously that he might have been insane.
The second election threw the Church into turmoil. There had been antipopes, rival claimants to the papacy, before, but most of them had been appointed by various rival factions; in this case, the legitimate leaders of the Church themselves had created both popes. The conflict quickly escalated from a church problem to a diplomatic crisis that divided Europe. Secular leaders had to choose which pope they would recognize.The schism was repaired forty years later when all three of the (then) reigning Popes abdicated together and a successor elected in the person of Pope Martin V.
Pope John XV
John XV was Pope from 985 to 996. The Pope’s venality and nepotism had made him very unpopular with the citizens, as he split the church’s finances among his relatives and was described as “covetous of filthy lucre and corrupt in all his acts.”
Pope Boniface VIII
Pope Boniface VIII maintained his position through lavish distribution of stolen money. He was quoted saying, "to enjoy oneself and lie carnally with women or with boys is no more a sin than rubbing one's hands together."
Pope Clement VII
Clement VII was Pope from 1523 to 1534. A member of the powerful Medici family, Clement VII possessed great political and diplomatic skills – but he lacked the understanding of the age necessary to cope with the political and religious changes he faced. His relationship with Emperor Charles V was so bad that, in May 1527, Charles invaded Italy and sacked Rome. Imprisoned, Clement was forced into a humiliating compromise which forced him to give up a great deal of secular and religious power.Eventually, Clement became ill and never recovered. He died on September 25, 1534, hated by the people of Rome, who never forgave him for the destruction of 1527
Friends, please open your eyes to this antichrist church. This is not God's church whatsoever. It is an apostate church and history PROVES her status as the main Bible 'antichrist' system. The pope thinks he sits IN PLACE OF Christ, acting as if he is God, which is what antichrist actually means in the original language. Someone who puts himself IN PLACE OF Christ. And the doctrines of this church are an abomination to our Holy Heavenly Father. Heed the call today! COME OUT OF HER MY PEOPLE! (Revelation 18:4). Visit www.romancatholicism.com
SEXUAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE.....
In addition to the below list, please see the following article.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/vatican-crimes-children.pdf
6,000+ Catholic priests abused 16,000+ (known) children since 1950 in America
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/357127/good-riddance-sex-abuse-victims-tell-pope
500,000 children taken from families, forced into Catholic institutions and abused in Australia from 1930 to 1970
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8360150.stm
4,000+ children sexually abused in Australia since 1980
https://www.rt.com/news/376447-australia-catholic-child-abuse/
Hundreds of thousands of children abused in Catholic and Protestant 'care homes' in Germany between 1950 to 1970
Pope John Paul II ignored the abuse of 2,000 boys in Austria over decades and covered up 'innumerable' cases of abuse
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/former-pope-john-paul-ii-ignored-abuse-of-2000-boys-prrb6bgt0zs
700,000+ men women and children in Croatia tortured and killed by Catholic Church in 1940's
http://seawaves.us/na/web4/VaticansHolocaust.html
20,000+ children abused by Catholic Church since 1945 in Netherlands
150,000 children abused and killed in government and Catholic (plus Anglican) run institutions in Canada from 1876 to 1996
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/canada-dark-of-history-residential-schools
1,700+ Catholic priests accused of abuse in Brazil
http://www.eurekaencyclopedia.com/index.php/Category:Black_Collar_Crime_in_Brazil_General
Catholic Church sends paedophile priests to South American churches
Tens of thousands of children abused by Catholic priests in Ireland between 1930 to 1990
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/europe/21ireland.html?_r=0
10,000+ women abused in Catholic institutions in Ireland between 1920 to 1996
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/05/magdalene-laundries-ireland-state-guilt
Hundreds of Catholic priests abused children in the Philippines between 1980 to 2000
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2116154.stm
800,000 people massacred in Rwanda, with support from Catholic Church in 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfSK-_fT368
Thousands of children and adults abused in Catholic 'care homes' in Scotland in the 60's and 70's
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21645028
300,000 babies stolen from mothers by Catholic Church in Spain between 1930 - 1990
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15335899
Thousands of children tortured and abused in Catholic schools in Switzerland between 1930 to 1970