Curated playlist
Italian popes
- Pope Paul IIINicolaus Copernicus dedicated his treatise on a sun-centered universe to Pope Paul III.
- Pope Julius IIPope Julius II told cardinals praising his health, "They are flattering me," and died months later.
- Pope Clement XIVPope Clement XIV signed the order that ended the Jesuits in 1773. He had been educated by Jesuits himself.
- Pope Leo XIIIPope Leo XIII stepped in front of a motion picture camera in 1898 and blessed it while the film ran. The inventor W. K. Dickson shot three short segments. In one, the pope sits on a throne. In another, he arrives in a horse-drawn carriage.…
- Pope Clement VIIPope Clement VII was born one month after his father was stabbed to death in a cathedral.
- Pope Paul VIPope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Montini, once tried to talk a room of cardinals out of electing him. On the 20th of June 1963, the second day of the conclave, Cardinal Gustavo Testa lost his temper. He demanded that Montini's…
- Pope Pius XIIPope Pius XII was elected on the 2nd of March 1939, which happened to be his 63rd birthday. The cardinals needed only one day and three ballots to choose him. According to rumour, he asked for one more ballot to be sure the result was…
- Pope Pius XPope Pius X spent the days before his election insisting that he did not want the office. Before the conclave of 1903, the man then known as Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto is said to have remarked, "rather dead than pope." In one of the last…
- Pope Pius VIIPope Pius VII was crowned in 1800 wearing a papier-mâché tiara. French forces had confiscated the real papal tiaras.
- Pope John XXIIIPope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, left Venice for the conclave of 1958 carrying a return train ticket. He never used it. On the 28th of October 1958, at the age of 76, he was elected pope. The cardinals who chose him seemed…
- Pope John Paul IPope John Paul I, born Albino Luciani, led the Catholic Church for only 33 days in 1978. When the cardinals asked whether he accepted his election, he answered, "May God forgive you for what you have done." Then he accepted. Before the…
- Pope Boniface VIIIIn 1303, soldiers paid by France's king broke into Pope Boniface VIII's palace. They held him captive for three days.
- Pope Gregory IPope Gregory I, later honored as Saint Gregory the Great, once forced a dying monk to die alone because the man had hidden three gold pieces. After the death, Gregory had the body and the coins thrown onto a manure heap, with the words…