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December 29, 2005

Pope Joan

ABC News is doing a special on Pope Joan right now, so I figure this warrants a response.

1. It has always been mere speculation. All there the evidence they have is clues, there is no hard facts.

2. It would seem rather hard to me for someone to go through their ENTIRE life pretending to be another gender. I suppose there are always those people where you have to second guess yourself, but it would be pretty hard to fool EVERYONE.

3. There is the problem that during the times she is supposed to have reigned that another Pope was reigning. (Pope Benedict III, who signed documents during his reign when Pope Joan supposedly was Pope)

4. The Statues in Bernini’s Baldacchino would have come 700 years after Pope Joan. Hardly proof for the existence of Pope Joan. It said that they were faces of the Pope's niece, which is highly possibly because artists did these things. Just look at the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo painted his own face and the face of a Cardinal on the walls.

5. There is the issue of this route the Pope would take from Saint Peter's to Saint John Lateran since like the 1100's. This route would not necessarily make sense however, since the Pope's lived at the Lateran until the end of the Avignon Papacy in the 14th Century. Unless the route was to take the Pope to and from Saint Peter's, but before the Pope moved to the Vatican there was no real reason for him to really be there. Afterall, even today, Saint John Lateran is the Cathedral of Rome and the Pope's, as Bishop of Rome, Cathedral.

6. There is no reason why Pope's may not have believed such a legend. This could explain some odd things, such as the chair. That chair they showed doesn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pope Joan existed. It shows that at one time Pope's believed she may have existed, or that they were just highly paranoid. Even then, how does a chair prove gender? There seems to be an easier way to prove the gender of the Pope then some chair IMHO.

7. In the end, even if there was a Pope Joan she would not have been Pope. It would have been a lie and a fraud. For those of faith this is impossibile, and for those of reason it should seem ridiculous.

In conclusion, is this something that people need to really be worrying about? It seems to me that there are far more important things to worry about... It seem that ABC could spend there time on better issues.

Posted by cr3do1 at December 29, 2005 10:24 PM

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