Vatican conspiracy theories Vatican conspiracy theories Vatican conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that concern the Pope and/or the Roman Catholic Church. A majority of the theories allege that the Church and its representatives are secretly controlling secular society with a Satanic agenda for global domination. Pope John Paul I 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 wrote extensively about unsolved crimes and conspiracy theories, and in his 1984 book "In God's Name"
Legends surrounding the papacy is no solid evidence for any of these claims; in history, only one document has ever been attributed to Jesus himself, the Letter of Christ and Abgarus. Scholars generally believe that those letters were fabricated, probably in the 3rd century AD. Even in ancient times, Augustine and Jerome contended that Jesus wrote nothing at all during his life. The correspondence was rejected as apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I and a Roman synod (c. 495). Jewish legends related to the papacy include the Jewish pope Andreas and also concerning the fate of the Menorah, which some, including former Israeli Minister of