18. History’s Most Degenerate Pope Died While Strenuously Loving Another Man’s Wife
More than a millennium before Jude Law played a scandalous pope in TV’s The Young Pope, the actual youngest Pope ever, John XII (937 – 964), presided over an even more scandalous real-life papacy. History’s real Young Pope was elevated to the Holy See in 955 at age seventeen or eighteen.
In what should have surprised no one, making a callow teenager Holy Father was not a good idea. John XII’s years as pope were as farcical and venal as one could expect from a person thrust into a position of power and influence for which he was clearly unprepared and unqualified. The young pope was violent, vicious, dangerous, and a degenerate fiend to boot. Somewhat aptly, he died while loving up another man’s wife.