22. A Pope Who Saved the Catholic Church Despite Being a Great Pervert
Paul III was pope from 1534 until his death in 1549, during one of the Roman Catholic Church’s roughest stretches. When he ascended the papal throne, the papacy was at a nadir. It was mired in corruption, faced a vigorous challenge from the Protestant Reformation, and Rome itself had been recently sacked by an army of the Holy Roman Emperor. Paul III encouraged reforms that saved the church.
The irony is that he saved the church despite being a corrupt pervert. Born Alessandro Farnese, he began his career as a protege of Giovanni de Medici, the future pope Leo X. He ended up in Rome, where he pimped out his sister to become the mistress of the corrupt cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, the future Pope Alexander VI. When Borgia made him a cardinal, Farnese was mocked as “Cardinal Fregnese” (Cardinal Cunt), while his sister was mocked as “the Bride of Christ”.