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"
Reformation Papacy or Counter Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church. Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptists, and Methodists all included references to the Papacy as the Antichrist in their confessions of faith: Smalcald Articles, Article four (1537) Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537) Westminster Confession (1646) The Catholic Church did not mount an organized and deliberate response to the Protestant Reformation until the election (1534) of Pope Paul III, who placed the papacy itself at the head of a movement for churchwide reform. Pope Paul III established a reform commission, appointed several leading reformers to the College of Cardinals, initiated reform