Vatican Secrets Revealed - Forbidden History - S04 EP02 - History Documentary

it's one of the most famous and historical religious sites in the world but what secret does the Vatican really have in recent decades it's been rocked by Scandal after Scandal the Vatican Bank child abuse and more recently serious accusations against Pope Benedict XVI and his number two Cardinal Bertoni so what has been going on here behind closed doors and what does the future hold for the Vatican hidden in the Vatican they have huge amount of Secrets it is possible they would have the Ark of the Covenant nobody knows where it went the theoretical pieces of

art music documents that's the boring stuff it's the real Secrets those are relics things that would cause history to be Rewritten there's been no doubt that the Vatican despite promoting kindestable man and Christianity also has its dark side over the century is the church have accumulated donations and buildings and nobody knows how much money the church has got least of all the church corruption and pedophilia has left such a mark on The credibility of the church I think the Vatican Bank could actually bring down the Catholic Church [Music] thank you [Music] has the Vatican covered

up secrets for centuries or is it all just noise created by its many enemies the Vatican firmly say it's the latter but are they telling the truth tens of thousands of children worldwide have been abused systematically for years within the Catholic church finance has done from centuries of intrigue mysterious deaths made headlines around the world recently when he said the devil was present in the Vatican for decades now the Vatican has been under constant attack from newspapers authors historians and critics who claim that it's corrupt and riddled with Twisted priests who live immoral and sinful

lives behind its walls although it vehemently denies it over the years it's been accused of storing Nazi gold bullion laundering Mafia money child abuse and even running slave labor institutions with prostitutes and single mothers in Ireland at so-called Magdalene laundries some have even accused it of harboring satanic worshipers indulging in Black Magic and hiding relics such as the body of Jesus itself it might sound a little far-fetched but its accusers are adamant [Music] there's no doubt that the Vatican has an enormous amount of Secrets big the reason it has been hundreds and hundreds of years

and at the Nexus of politics religion it's Center of so much of human behavior over that time and there's no doubt that there have been you know more than its fair share of financial Scandal more than its fair share perhaps of abuse there's a lot about the Vatican that needs cleaning out I mean on the outside you look at the Vatican it looks a very very austere very religious uh fantastic place but to be honest with you it's nothing but the house of Funk even before it was built the still underneath there are bath houses

brothels and and the same thing applied with the Vatican you have to realize this is the wealthiest nation and Planet they could have built their headquarters their Capital anywhere they own so much land but they chose this spot which is directly over ancient Pagan temples Mithra temples I can't believe for a second that it's an accident that Vatican City is situated where it is I think any in managed to amass the kind of wealth the kind of power the kind of history and mythology that the Vatican has hasn't done so by giving away all of

its secrets [Music] one of the great Mysteries of the Vatican is just what is inside it's Infamous secret archives that was not revealed when they were officially opened last decade journalist Philip Willen has been a Vatican journalist for over 30 years is reported on three popes numerous scandals and knows the Holy See like the back of his hand [Music] so Philip what is in the so-called secret archive the secret archive is basically the Pope's personal archive so the documentation that's generated in the course of running the Affairs of the international Global Church once they're no

longer needed for immediate access and action they are moved aside and stored in this enormous archive which of course goes back centuries and tells the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy and throughout the world [Music] for a start the Vatican Library the secret Library wait for it 53 kilometers of documents now they say the oldest one goes to the 8th Century but are we supposed to believe that really 53 kilometers of secret documents imagine the truths that are hidden in those of course this sounds so exciting to conspiracy theorists because they go wow

a secret archive what's in there now you've got to first of all think the Vatican secret archive in Latin has the word secretum in it which is translated by sama's secret you can just translate that as private and actually that is a more accurate translation of the Latin word secretum it means it's a vatican's private archive [Music] does the Catholic Church have something to hide in there almost certainly there are things that uh secrecy applies to very conveniently and the Vatican does have considerable confidence in its ability to maintain Secrets particularly maintain control over these

archives so one could keep embarrassing documents in there in The Confident knowledge that no one else is going to get access to them so there could be all sorts of things that we don't know about and of course that leads to a lot of speculation as to what might be in there no one really knows what's in the secret archives but certainly one would assume that there's something to do there with things like the Ark of the Covenant or um the the rating by the Templars of King Solomon's Minds you know there's always contention around

Jesus's bloodline one wonders if there's something in there around that so certainly all of those kind of key themes that the church is based on all of the stories that have been told people wonder and it's not surprising people wonder if there's anything in those secret archives that might go against what people have been taught and told all these years [Music] Andrew Goff has studied the history of the Vatican for many years he believed that there is a basic problem at the heart of Christianity that has affected all its actions for well over a millennium

that perhaps it's all nothing more than a myth I've heard all the different rumors but what do you think is hidden in the so-called secret archive there's basically two camps of Secrets there is the conventional ones which are interesting you know sort of the uh letter from Henry VIII requesting an annulment through his marriage uh the letters about Galileo and his heresy but there's also going to be relics you would think yeah that could be the treasurer Solomon uh the menorah but how about the Ark of the Covenant how about the Holy Grail you know

would you want that stuff exposed maybe maybe not they probably have their reasons it is more than possible that there are so-called relics uh within the Vatican most big Catholic churches throughout Christendom have always had relics so why wouldn't the Vatican have them perhaps mummified bodies even of great church fathers it is rumored that they have their you know the mysterious veil of Veronica hidden in one of the great pillars under the Vatican so you're telling me that the archive is not a a reference library to illuminate you think it's a depository for hidden items

is that what you're seeing you could argue if there's anything that's deflammatory that would that would be not in her best interest if it was brought to life then why wouldn't you destroy it but if it's private if it's secret there's probably an even stronger case for keeping it but keeping it really locked up and we're talking you know real biggies like look around here every church every Basilica in this city beneath it you have Pagan temples and not just Pagan temples but temples of Mithra Islam and what do we know about Mithra born on

December 25th died was resurrected three days later he was called the savior he performed Miracles during his lifetime he had 12 Apostles does that sound familiar but that was way before Christ so they're kind of suppressing that because it was a bit dark you know they'd Slaughter Bulls there was a sexual element to it so Christianity kind of cleaned it up and polished the myth and told us it was true and I think that is a biggie that they've lied about the story because it's allegorical it's not real [Music] foreign things about Rome is that

the city we see today including parts of the Vatican lie right on top of the more ancient Pagan City from well over 2 000 years ago and some say that the old worship sites still play a secret but important role at the very highest levels of the church today [Music] perhaps their very earliest people wanted to show the pagans look we're in charge now we're building on top of the ruins of your religion okay so that's as far as most traditionalists would go but maybe there's also an element of we are absorbing the power it's

believed by many people for example that churches were built on power lines or Ley lines and that these in themselves had power in the land the the craft of of the wise we believed in in Mother Earth and and that we go back to Mother Earth and and it's not really a bad thing at all and they nicked all of the ideas that all of the the Pagan sights and christianized it and splashed holy water on it and and nicked all of the the religious relics and things that were inside and I would imagine they're

probably still tucked away somewhere underneath the Vatican church is not a a holy benevolent organization it's actually satanic and there's black masses and rituals and they situated their city and the country above Pagan temples below and in fact they're still venerated Isis becomes Mary Magdalene you have Osiris becoming Jesus and so on so the fact is it's a really really dark place [Music] this is San Clemente Church in Rome it's run today by an Irish order of Dominican monks it was founded over three and a half centuries ago and houses one of the last remaining

entrances down into the ancient pre-christian remains of the city Vatican historian and local guide Rob Allen is an expert on Subterranean Rome and agreed to show me the remains of a 2 000 year old Temple which in its day was actually at ground level the amazing thing is that we're walking down to the First Century A.D now and we're walking in to a house of brick that 100 years later after it was built was made into what was known as a mithram okay for the cult of the Pagan God mithras and if you can look

over here you can see a plaque because when they excavated here in the 19th century they had a problem it's showing you the water level because this whole place started to flood there was a natural spring under here and if you're quiet enough and here the pump is still running it's still pumping out water today now we're going to be going inside where they had the religious practices [Music] mithram was a pagan cult it wasn't a state cult it was a mystery cult so that doesn't mean that people didn't know of its existence but people

didn't know of all these important rituals about how to get involved in this kind of secret society cult a cult that was exclusively for men for soldiers for administrators and here is the culmination of the life of mithras this God right here see the god mithras in this phrygian Camp all right he is a representation of the Sun and he is slaying a bull which it is considered that uh it is the moon okay do you see that he's he would have been impressed because we see him uh painted white okay so it is like

a crescent moon you can even see his tail it's right at the moment that he's being killed and he has these creatures that are accompanying him because this is all an allegory to a rebirth so you have here it's hard to decipher but we have a dog we have a serpent and right where the the knife is stabbing the blood is pouring out there drinking of it and also you have a scorpion stinging him in the testicles because this is all they're they're taking the life force out of the bowl sometimes it's even depicted that

there are corn husks coming from his tail [Music] you know for decades you know hundreds of years there's been rumors from priests from Cardinals from reputable people that there's a small sort of sect within the church who conduct sacrifices and and rituals that are very very dark indeed so you have to wonder then is it any accident that they've situated their capital and their country right on top of these temples I think not [Music] any other Christian sites was built on an existing place of worship it's the form of the church saying we're in control

of religion now so your Pagan sight now becomes a Christian site so this is what happens um in Rome Nevada can yes there are remnants of old religions there that were probably a little bit darker than what Christianity is supposed to be but the idea of extrapolating from an architectural accident or an architectural sort of you know conjunction to saying that the leaders of the Catholic Church within the Vatican are a bunch of satanica cultists is nonsense of the highest order the Catholic church or should I say Christianity in general hijacked paganism um that was

before then the True Religion if you like and and they just nicked all of the sites all of the uh ideals the ideology behind it and and took it on for them for themselves you know there's a reason why you have a very important religious sites Christian sites being built on top of the three Pagan sites and that's because you know these sites had some sort of power and and you know they wanted to be co-opted by this new religion and if you look at most monotheistic societies they more or less say all the same

things kind of like a smorgasbord of what's gone on before which is why you see you know whether it's paganism or Christianity these kind of same things being enacted over and over again to the point that even some of the names are similar thank you author Rob Howells has been studying and researching the Vatican and its secrets for over two decades he believes that it does protect very important objects documents and other secrets [Music] so Rob what is the Vatican keeping Secret for the entire time that they've existed they've collected manuscripts and Relics and items

from either campaigns or Crusades not only for their own research and to support their ideas but also to prevent anything coming out because they need to control the information around biblical issues and the biblical Dogma they can't allow alternative views to become public become disseminated [Music] kind of what kind of things exactly are you talking about in terms of documentation they've got 52 miles of shelving of books and manuscripts alone so that will be everything from early first century fragments to entire potentially entire alternative Gospels and why would that be damaging to the Catholic church

because it there's a potential for alternative views to emerge there were lots of different books originally that were is set to go in the Bible and it was only through a process of politics mainly the the final books were chosen there are also ideas that there's a book of Q uh the academics have termed a book that would have been the source material for the main gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John because the main gospels are written after long after the time of Christ so if they've got something like a book of q that

would undermine everything else [Music] um it has secret archives and people say oh well the word secret it just means private well technically it does but let's be honest it means secret with knobs on they are not letting their average person look at them you can't you can't photocopy anything I've heard it on very good authority that there's said to be the Vatican within the Vatican which is they have enormous pillars enormous pillars you can get you know quite almost like Ballroom sized pillars and in there are the secrets of the secrets um said to

be the veil of Veronica and all sorts of relics [Music] the heretical pieces of art music documents that's the boring stuff the real biggies the real Secrets those are relics devices things that would cause history to be Rewritten like what well the fact that the church is based upon pagan origins not holy foundations that's the biggest secret [Music] yeah traditionally archives are kept to illuminate to you know to show people different things and in this case it seems different yeah you'd expect an archive to be a public record that's made available but because there's the

potential for controversial material you're not allowed access you can get access to the secret Arc of nevatican only if you know exactly what you're looking for no one's allowed to browse and there is this other issue that they have potentially tens of thousands of documents that are still uncataloged because they don't have an army of researchers in there they've got a few Librarians so there could be documents they've got no idea of the importance of that they've just got stored [Music] and is it just documents or the relics and other objects there's definitely relics we

know that um from the Holy Land certain items room returns from quite extreme items the foreskin of Christ is one of them that's said to be in the Vatican even the umbilical cord was supposed to have been kept whether they're real or not is very questionable but many many items were recovered supposedly and returned to the Vatican at various points in history talk about conspiracy theories and how these are really far far-fetched but actually if you look at the Arch of Titus in Rome it does depict you know people's sort of pillaging places like Jerusalem

bringing back relics so you know what's to say in effect that those relics aren't some of the things that these conspiracy theorists are saying that you're under there whether they're chalices or shrouds or whatever they are now of course because there's this huge distrust about what so many uh former popes and Senior figures in the Vatican have got up to therefore a lot of people think there must be all sorts of sort of evil stuff lurking in there or indeed fantastic stuff like the holy grail and the Ark and the Covenant I mean this is

just clearly nonsense you know if the Vatican had the Ark of the Covenant kicking around oh look what's that you know of course they're displayed so I think there's some fanciful theories about what's in this archive and I think they are largely [Music] thank you very few people today are aware of the vatican's dark history the most controversial pope of modern times was Pius XII who took over in 1939 and was labeled Hitler's Pope by those who accuse him of turning a blind eye to reports of the Holocaust further back there was Pope Leo the

13th who in the closing years of the 19th century dashed fledgling hopes of reconciliation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome by declaring that all Anglican ordinations were null and void a judgment which still stands foreign Pope Stephen VI decided to exhume the corpse of his predecessor but one formosis so that it could wait for it stand trial dressed in the papal vestments it unsurprisingly offered no adequate defense and was condemned to be mutilated and thrown into the Tiber and in what was a low point for the sexual morals of the papacy

in 954 the 18 year old John XII the son of a previous Pope took office and turned the latter and the papal Palace before the Vatican into a brothel he was ultimately murdered a decade later by an outraged cuckold who found him in bed with his wife in fact over a thousand years later rumors and accusations still swirl around this Holy City in 2003 the so-called Magdalene laundries came to light where it was proved that single mothers and prostitutes were forced into slave labor houses in Ireland overseen by Catholic nuns a 43 million dollar settlement

was paid to survivors 2009 it was revealed that the Archdiocese of Boston had covered up the sexual abuse of thousands of children by 70 priests that figure has now increased to over 3 000 Catholic priests around the world accused of allegedly conducting systemic abuse of tens of thousands of children the Catholic church is facing scandals and being forced to pay millions of millions accused of molesting and raping boys as young as four years old over a period of 34 years two-thirds of Bishops protected priests accused of sexual abuse for victims of the Catholic Church May

sue the Vatican for access to material they say may shed light on the dialogue between Rome and American Bishops to see if there was any official hush policy do you think that the Catholic church has known for some time about the problems that they have with child abuse and have been reluctant to go over there absolutely they've been covering it out for years there were cases of priests being caught and being found guilty um internally within that you by their peers and be moved to other locations before Scandal could break so there has been a

history of cover-ups and the cover-ups has just done more damage because as soon as they're discovered it's it's no longer an issue of one priest acting on his own it's the whole organization gets called into question for being that corrupt an evil empire whenever they [Music] they face up to yet another example of child abuse first of all they always deny it second of all when when forced to accept it they say oh well it's just you know the odd rotten apple in a barrel there's an awful lot of rotten apples there is obviously a

network there's no doubt that throughout its history there have been a lot of bad apples in the Vatican there's no doubt that there are Catholic priests at all levels of the Vatican have done bad things you know we we've seen it in in Ireland so many child abuse cases carried out by by Catholic priests but I don't see the Vatican as being in itself this kind of Center of evil that you know is responsible for bad things happening in society throughout the ages I see it as being as venal and corrupt as any other flabby

overly large institution that's not really held accountable one of the more bizarre services offered by the Vatican is the removal of devils and demonic spirits or exorcism as it's more commonly known for centuries now Vatican trained priests have gone out to combat evil and rid its followers of evil forces armed only with a crucifix a Bible and some holy water and yes it is still going on today in fact the vatican's head Exorcist for the last 30 years father Gabriela amorth recently died he claimed to have overseen over 180 000 exorcisms in his life he

famously hated the Harry Potter novels and even yoga saying practicing yoga is satanic it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter it is interesting interest the Vatican does wholly believe in demons as an entity and they've got more exorcists now than ever pretty much every diocese has an assigned Exorcist within their region that they can call upon they perform the right of exorcism which is a huge kind of document full of littonese and Latin and invoking the Saints and basically trying to expel the demon there are now over 200 of them employed by the

Vatican their job is to cast out demons that possess their flock that take them over body and soul and this of course goes back to the New Testament and earlier uh where you read about Jesus casting out demons and of course this is very much in that tradition it seems extraordinary that even today you know relatively well into the 21st century that the Vatican is still has some of its priests performing exorcisms it shows that there is still this huge belief in what we'd associate with being a very ancient ideas of evil spirits and demons

these are kind of biblical Concepts now from the Old Testament Padre fortea from Madrid in Spain is one of the Catholic Church's most prolific exorcists he says it's all very real my my long life studying all the phenomena related to Demons I may say with all security that I believe there are evil spirits and those evil spirits much perfectly with the characters that appear in the Bible as demons I can say by my own experience that I receive people every day from Monday to Sunday every day I receive people coming from from all around Spain

every year two new cases of perfect demonical possession were discovered the church predicated on the belief that there's good and evil and you can't have one without the other and if you believe that then it's not surprising that you will believe in in the you know in demons and evil spirits the church is also predicated on the idea that nothing ever changes right so it is so strong in a way because nothing is ever questioned therefore the exorcisms become part and parcel of this understanding the only only thing that we need for an actual season

is faith an expertise and can be done with a ritual or not we may use holy water across everything sacramentals blessed objects are very useful we we see how the demons react then because they represent something related to God but the only only thing that is needed is faith [Music] the interesting thing is the church does not deny that there are demonic energies the fact that the right of exorcism and the number of people trained in that is actually increasing year on Year and that is an arbitrary sort of ritual that's a 84-page Latin document

that says this is how we do it so the fact that they acknowledge evil just makes this sort of Rumblings about the fact that they are evil much more interesting [Music] the expertise is one of the few ones that we have the opportunity to hear our demons speaking through a human person they speak most of the times with a very ugly voice sometimes with a lot of intelligence or a great great knowledge of theology we know sometimes there is a demon there because a few times we had the proof that that person could not know

a little part of the Bible or the theology several times I was surprised they knew perfectly well something it was almost impossible [Music] basically the church invented the devil because there was God they had to invent evil because there was pluses they had to invent minuses and demons became Little Devils and possessed people and anyone that was hearing voices in their heads perhaps a little bit mediumistic or sensitive oh no it was a demon whispering in their ears he didn't Exorcist to get rid of them be gone evil demon [Music] rumors of banking scandals have

swirled around the Vatican for years today the Holy See Saw Three arrests five priests have been indicted over an embezzlement case in the Northwestern City Vatican departments had almost free hands with the finances churches money scandals stretch back decades Financial scandals have swirled around the Vatican ever since the death of Roberto Calvi back in 1982. Calvi was the head of the Vatican bank and he was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge [Applause] John Dickey is an investigative author who has looked long and hard into the secret world of Vatican finances his books have included kosa Nostra

blood brotherhoods and darkest Italy according to Dickey vast sums of money have been stolen and misappropriated by the church in recent years the church has got a long history of cohabiting with the Mafia the aspect that most people know about or suspect relates to the sort of God's Bankers story from the 1980s that ended up with one Banker working for the Vatican Roberto Calvi being strung up underneath Blackfriars bridge in London we still don't know exactly why although one likely reason is that he was laundering Mafia drug money through uh various Banks including the Vatican

Bank the finances of the Catholic Church are an absolute Labyrinth because you're not just talking about one pot of cash under the control of the Pope you've got parishes diocese you've got uh the Holy See which is like the Pope's mission to the world you've got the Vatican City which is a mini country and you've got the churches of all of the different countries and then you've got all of the different religious orders now over the centuries all of these bodies have accumulated donations and buildings and churches and nobody's kept tabs on this stuff nobody

knows how much money the church has got least of all the church for centuries you would have one Pope who would spend everything empty the coppers and our next Pope that would come in and tax and rebuild and put all the money back in and the next Pope would come in and start building lavish works and buildings and that still appears to go on and the current pope is very humble and is very against spending and lives in a sense of with a sense of humility problem the vatican's got itself into which is one of

the reasons I think they chose the current pope is it has become completely incongruent with Christian values basic Christian values of humility and love and poverty and and the way Jesus acted and behaved he never kept any money gave everything to the poor and then you look at the Vatican and the billions of pounds worth of works of art the statues of documents of all this wealth and lavishness so what are we to make of that Pope Francis is on doubt and he came in on a brief to introduce Financial transparency and he's certainly done

that at the central level particularly at the level of the Vatican Bank the i o r which for a long time was like an offshore Bank you know there were political bribes being laundered through the Vatican Bank in the 1990s Mafia money uh Mafia drug money as well scandalous and A lot's been done to make the Vatican Bank much more transparent but Pope Francis has got a big big job ahead of him it would probably take 10 reforming popes and not just one to really get to the bottom of all of the Meandering underground rivers

of money uh within the church in the broad sense every new pope including the current one claims that they are going to reform the Church yeah right this is the wealthiest institution that's ever been they answer to no one there's no transparency about their actions so I like the fact that he's trying but good luck to him [Music] so today the Vatican is still facing serious allegations on a number of fronts as it has for much of its Thousand-Year existence in each case the Vatican has been forced time after time to apologize and pay huge

fines in compensation yet continues to court new controversy however what is still unclear is what was not discovered or not revealed in the various archive openings many continue to believe that the heavily guarded faults under the Vatican contain heretical material including alternative Christian gospels captured texts from other competing religions and even core relics such as the Ark of the Covenant and the human remains of Jesus himself the irony of course about the Vatican and indeed the whole Roman Catholic Church is this is the institution responsible for one of the most tyrannical and bloodthirsty episodes in

history which of course was the Inquisition and while the Vatican and the Catholic church has been very good at you know forming inquiries and inquisitions against people outside it's been very bad and inquiring in itself is never you know had an inquisition an internal Inquisition with quite the same rigor and indeed blood thirstiness as it may have needed and I I think that what we're looking at today is that it is slowly entering into 21st century in which it's being held to account more I think people are more cynical they are less trusting and even

people who are devout Catholics look at the Vatican and go you know is this representing what I want in an institution that is there to promulgate and further my faith and these are reasonable questions to ask there's a lot about the Vatican that that's really when you look at it quite archaic if you think about it this feeds into one of the core Notions of of religion in general you do not change you know you got it right you know when the Messiah came and said this is how it was and you don't question and

you don't change because if you change one thing then everything begins to be questioned and I guess this is very much what they live by the whole Jesus story is made up and everything from the Ten Commandments the seven deadly sins four mortal sins Purgatory Hellfire damnation bills of a Baphomet ball the devil demons the Antichrist and witches are all made up to keep us under control through fear [Music] thank you it's been mired in scandal after Scandal for the last 30 years or so money laundering theft bullying child abuse no matter how much is

thrown at the Vatican it seems to shrug it off and remain as strong as ever it's critics have written it off a decades predicting his collapse and yet in some parts of the world the Catholic church is actually growing the new Pope Francis is said to be cleaning up but whether he will succeed well that's too early to say one thing's for certain the next chapter in the vatican's history is going to be an interesting one I'll see you next time thank you [Music] [Applause]