Doomed to Fail - Ep 194: The Vatican State: How did it come to be?

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Discover the rich history of the Papal States and the evolution of the Catholic Church in our latest episode! Learn about the intriguing interplay between politics and faith from Jesus to Napoleon. Don’t miss out on this deep dive into history! #PapalStates #CatholicChurch #HistoryPodcast Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life!  patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPod We would love to hear from you! Please follow along!  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod   Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod  Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom, we are back, Taylor Indy Club. How are you? How are you? I'm doing well.

I'm doing very, very well. I'm laughing. As far as this light is, like, giving club vibes right now. It's clearly daytime, but your light. is like changing colors and I like that I like that for you uh I have to have it because for some reason whoever designed this room did not put any lights in it and so sunlight in this rave light are the only avenues I have unfortunately so I mean you could buy a regular lamp whatever but I like you're like it's like I'm like there's no light in my room either I guess

but I added lights like do you want me to save you a rave send you a rave light maybe no I don't know. Do I need one? You don't know you miss it until you don't have it. It's true. It's true. Cool. Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. I am Taylor joined by Fars. I am Fars. I'm here and I'm ready to dive in.

Am I fair? I assuming I go first today? I think so, yeah. Okay, I'm going to do a little bit of a premise part here. Okay. That's to him. I watched Conclave. I have not watched it yet, but I get why you did. Apparently, it's like streaming like 3xed, like right after Francis died.

What a good idea to put out of a movie. How serendipitous? How much luck was you have to have done that? I mean, like, probably not that much luck because he was like 80 years old. And so you're like, in the next couple years, he was definitely on the out of here team for a long time. I mean, fair. I don't pay attention to this stuff very much. So, like, I mean, I, if you were paying attention, you probably already knew that.

Yeah. But fun, but I haven't watched it yet, but I want to continue. It is awesome, Taylor. Do you want to say what it's about first quickly? Are you going to talk about it? Well, so basically, conclave, it's just, it's about the Pope dying. And then when the Pope dies, the Vatican, the Cardinals all get together. The ones were under 80, and they vote in a thing called a conclave on who should be the leader.

It's very interesting because it's also like political, but it's like political on like a grander scale. You know, like in the U.S. when we talk political, it's like the economy or immigration. And in their case is like the entirety of like the Catholic church and faith and like do we want to go this direction? Do we want to go that direction? I also learned there's a concept called fat pope, thin pope. And the theory behind it is that usually who at whatever personality type guided the church during like, you know, with one pope. they try to pick like a different version of that so that so like in a some simplify it by saying that if you have a fat pope you got to get a thin pope you got a fat one next i mean you got a thin

pope you got a fat one next got it i think what was talking about this and i did mention that we are living in the era of the least hot popes because they're like when like jude law was the pope the pope sexy you know i forgot when he was like the real pope i feel like it's well i feel whenever i watch like old things about the pope i mean or whatever know about the pope like you know they used to have like a bunch of kids and like you know there's so much so that's kind of the premise of this i watched concave and i got like obsessed obsessed with the catholic church which we've talked about before because it's like kind of like a sexy religion you have like exorcism and like it's like there's a lot of fun gothic mythology to it the history

of it is so fascinating um i've just been like super obsessed and like at some point i want to do one of like the top five most interesting popes because there's so much fun stuff that goes on there, especially only the olden days. Not so much now, but like back then. Right, that's what I mean. Like, it was weird for a while. And remember we talked about like the great schism where there's two popes? Well, there's an anti-pop.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that job. But, um, but what I wanted to cover today, because like I had like 500 topics because I should see the taps I have open right now. There's like so many different directions you can go with on this topic. Sometimes I'm like, I have no more ideas. And some days I'm like, I have too many ideas.

I know. And those days are back to back for some reason. I don't know why I don't have just like I have a normal amount of ideas, but I don't know. It's like bounce between fat idea having, thin idea having. Exactly. So what I wanted to cover today was the papal state, the Holy See. That is the sovereignty of the Catholic church under the Pope. And man, if I knew how thick.

in like deep this topic was I might have reconsidered it because it is so I was talking to Rachel earlier and she was like where are you at now I was like well I started at 33 AD I think I'm at 500 AD and I got about another 1,500 years to go but there's so much that happens with it it's interesting because the church has like been part and parcel with like so many things throughout world history when I was researching that. this all these different topics came i was like oh that guy was attached that's why this guy a lot of the names you're going to hear in this are going to sound familiar um and it's because it's just a deep cross section of like the entire um history of the church but i'm going to start

pretty early on on this also i should note like obviously like i'm not catholic um and i'm sure there's a ton of folks who are listening who are catholic who probably have like ideas or maybe I misstate something or thoughts or they heard a different version of this because so much of this stuff is like ancient history and like I know it's cool changes and like people will have a different interpretation of it's like write to us if I if I get something wrong or if I didn't include something that I should have please please write to us at dunefulpottajum.com thank you so I'm going to go back a ways okay again I'm starting I'm ready dude I'm excited so let's go all the way back to a guy named Jesus cool and his relationship

to a guy named Peter. So this is the Peter that we currently call St. Peter, whose real name was Shimon Barjona. He was born in Beth Seda, which is modern day Golan Heights, which according to Wikipedia, I'm only quoting Wikipedia. I'm not getting to geopolitics here. It is called the Syrian territory that is currently occupied by Israel. That is what it is known for internationally.

Known as today. He was a fisherman by trade and he met Jesus who convinced him that he was the son of God and Peter became one of his followers and eventually became one of his 12 disciples, one of the ones that he would have the famous Last Supper with. Also, to tell you the other thing, the artwork and imagery

that's like contained within the Catholic Church, it's like, it's like, the Sistine Chapel has, yeah, anyways. I took like an entire class on the Sistine Chapel, but yes, have you seen it? I have never. So I actually was really interested

to have this conversation with you because you have, like, the you've seen all this stuff like i can only picture it through the words i read but like you actually been there which is really cool it's very crowded um what was i going to say oh have you seen jesus christ superstor no it's so good do you know what it is i'm assuming it is a play yes it is i think it's Andrew lloyd weber it's a musical um and basically they're like it's all of his friends like trying to figure out what the hell's going on and it's very 70s like that you can watch like a 70s version film of it it's just it's phenomenal yeah i'm sure

i'm sure we'll we'll bounce to that after all my other topics are exhausted after all the other little tabs or closed i'll go over that one yeah um so okay like going back to jesus so he was obviously crucified in the year 30 or 33 uh i couldn't find anything definitive there and that was done outside of jerusalem and this is where it gets deep okay so it was It was done by Pontius Pilate. He was a Roman governor. So you're like, hmm, Roman governor. What's he doing in modern day Jerusalem?

Do you know this history or like? Isn't Rome just expanding? Yeah. But do you know the whole, it's just so hard to figure out all this stuff. How this guy got to Jerusalem to find Jesus to Jerusalem. It's like how Pontch's pilot got there. I don't know how he got there. So we're going to get into it.

So Rome, what you just said, Rome is part of the global expansion that they had. We're trying to gain control basically like. this part of the world and they basically invaded this part of the world like you are now part of the Roman Empire and it was mostly peaceful except for a handful of Jewish revolts against Roman rule again this goes in like super super deep territory Rome had a pretty hands-off approach on controlling people's religion except that they had to in addition to whatever their own beliefs were acknowledge Roman gods which were which like for a monotheistic religion religion it's like sacramony so romans didn't like that that was their big beef um many jews were

expelled from jerusalem due to their beliefs and with jesus's crucifixion their problems were only rising the romans problems were rising because christianity started taking root in the area as well so now you're battling the jews and now you have the christian christianity picking up and that's uh that's kind of the situation they found themselves in there's a song in jesus christ super star that goes when do we ride into jerusalem when do we ride into jerusalem so that's what I think of an, I just say again, I'm seeing that to myself. There's the only words I know that are in that song. I hope we're not copyrighted on that.

When to be read to trust. You're going to get this copy. I don't think anyone thought that that was the actual song. I think we're fine. So now essentially you have these two monotheistic religions and also the problem with Christianity was many of its practices were completely opposite Roman ideology. So for example, the Roman leader was divinely ordained by Roman gods. So if you oppose Roman gods, you oppose the Caesar, which wasn't a good luck.

They were also. So they wouldn't fight for the Roman Empire. So they would seem disloyal. And there was like a dozen other things that ultimately resulted in Romans launching like a campaign to quail Christianity. By this point, St. Peter left his hometown and went to Rome as Christianity was gaining traction. But it was being spread secretly like on the down low. In 64 AD, the Great Fire Rome hit, which we talked about before.

And Nero blamed the Christians. And he launched a wave of retaliation. resulting in the death of approximately 979 of them and St. Peter was part of that he's part of the wave he was killed by being executed on he was being he was crucified

but he was crucified upside down which looks horrible and it's it's super interesting because the the the like currently St. Peter's Basilica's built on top of what was called Nero's Circus which is where he would

execute people cool is that cool that's so cool I love that you've been in the basilica right yeah okay was there any remnants of

like when Nero had control but Rome is so cool because Rome is like I think we saw this before as well but Rome is very layered like literally physically a layered city

you know so like you can see things like in the subways there's like Roman architecture because it's below the other stuff you know so crazy it's so fun yeah

also what does that remind me of? Oh, whenever we pass a church or are near a church, my kids are like, what does that little tea mean again? It makes me laugh every time. I think maybe you should educate them on that. I did.

They know what it means, but we can't, you know, we don't talk about it all the time. There's one of the artworks I mentioned earlier, it's a Carvaggio painting of the crucifixion of St. Peter. I love Carvaggio. I bet you would recognize it. It looks so incredible, like the detail. Like, it's super cool.

Yeah. So St. Peter was considered the leader of the Catholic faith after Jesus's death and the successor to kind of spread his message. Given that he was the most recognized leader in the most powerful city on earth, he was ordained Bishop of Rome by his followers. And to this day, whoever becomes Pope is called the Bishop of Rome. So he was the first pope. But the word Pope comes from the Latin word, Pappas, which means father, and wasn't formally used as a title for someone until Pope Marcellainis, around 296. A.D. So it took 300 years for the word Pope to be like the title for that person. Cool.

From where this story started at around to about 306 AD, Christianity had been steadily growing up to the rule of Constantine the Great, who became the first Roman emperor to convert Christianity. Is that cool? That is cool. And that unlocked. What year was that? 306. Okay. I'm up to 306.

We got a long way to go. You skipped a lot, I'm sure. He skipped a lot. We've got a long way to go still. So that obviously put the Catholic Church on a slightly different trajectory now that the emperor was in their favor. Right. So Constantine issued laws granting the church the ability to acquire and possess property and even gifted them what's called the Apostolic Palace, which today is the Pope's home in Vatican City. Wait, did you go to Vatican City too?

You must have. Yeah, you wouldn't say. Yeah. so resources started pouring in and the church started acquiring land which granted them more status and more power by this point there was an eastern and western roman empire under the theory that the city was too big for one person of control and so they kind of split that up ultimately that weakened both states and on both fronts they started inviting kind of barbarian invasions from germanic tribes as well as until the hun tearing through the region a lot of names that we like are so fascinating. It's so crazy. Anyways, over time, the culture of Rome shifted as more and more outsiders moved into Rome

and as a byproduct of these invasions. So Rome was changing, but the church wasn't, which appealed to a lot of the local natives, the native Romans, right? And so this only resulted in more and more local Romans, gravitating towards a church, expanding Christianity,

expanding kind of their power and status and all that stuff. Because it's funny, you can see it building. It's like when you talk about like political organizing, like it reminds me of that it's like it doesn't happen at once it just has to be like a ground swall that builds so over time rome's power waned as dramatic groups like the franks rose to prominence they would ultimately control a lot they would control this is modern day i'm using the language so they would the franks would control france most of germany all of belgium netherlands luxembourg switzerland most of austria and northern parts of italy spain slobadian and check

Republic. They're huge. Like, those are my people. Yeah. Genetically. Yeah, totally. In the 400s, their king was a guy named King Clovis, and he converted to Christianity and formed a natural partnership and alliance with the Pope at the time. During that time, mid to southern Italy was still being attacked by other Germanic tribes not controlled by the Franks, namely a group called the Lombards, and the Pope obviously

hated this. So in 754, Pope Stephan II Anointed the King of the Franks, a guy named Pepin the short, poor guy. Poor guy. He's like, he's like, I'm not that short. I'm 5'8. Like literally my brain goes to say someone like real jolly.

You know, being like, boppadoo, what's up, guys? But it's probably not that. Probably not that jolly. I don't think anybody was that jolly this time. Um, so they, uh, the pope at that time in 754, he, uh, ordains and anoints this, uh, king of the Franks protector of the Romans. And following this, Pepin agreed to use military power to repel the Lombards and give control of the region back to the Pope. So he did that only two short years later. So in two years in 756, he uses military strength, took control of other regions within the middle to southern parts of Italy.

Um, the region that is modern day Amelia, Rome, obviously. the Adriatic Coast, Spoleto, and Baturbo. And that was approximately 18,000 square miles of land and around 2 million people that were now directly under the control of the Pope. At this point, this is the shift in the late, the mid to late 700s from the Pope being a spiritual leader to one that was a political one as well. And we're going to fast forward a little bit to 12 years later after this land grant was given by Pepin, he died in his sons, Charlemagne and Carloman. Carlemagne, they rose to power, although Carlemagne died in 771, leaving Charlemagne, the main ruler. Amazing.

He was also a huge supporter of the popes, and the Pope very much needed his support to maintain his power. So as part of a, I can't even understand how complicated this is, so part of this complicated strategic plan was balancing out, like, the need for protection versus the need for control. What Pope Leo III decided to do was he crowned Charlemian. is the Holy Roman Emperor and the Emperor of Romans. So the trade-off here was that the Pope gave Charlemagne's spiritual authority, and Charlemagne gave the Pope military and political muscle.

That was the idea. That was a handoff. This would result in a ton of strife because what you ended up in a situation was that you have two people with egos. And they don't want a place that can fiddle of the other. And so they were just getting each other's hair all the time. And this is like not between necessarily Charlemagne, but all this, successors, like successor popes to successor emperors. And you can't take it away.

You already said you're the Holy Roman Emperor. So it's like, eh, for the next guy, we're going to take that back. It's like now it's part of the routine, right? So this would spark a centuries-long tug of war between future popes and emperors. Emperors would try to make decisions, had decision-making abilities within the church, like who should be appointed bishop and the Pope would retaliate by excommunicating emperors. Like, that was kind of the tugging back and forth. over time this tension built up to the point where the pope had no faith that whoever the holy roman

emperor was would protect him in the church so he found salvation within france and the french monarchy because the french monarchy at that point was rising in power and saying we'll protect you come to france so in 1305 the papacy actually moved to avignon france and it would remain there till 1378 when pope gregory moved back to rome sparked in part because of of the 100 years 100 years war with France and England it's all tied it's so you see what I'm saying

like it's literally like what you're doing right now the knitting you're doing like every element of like human history is knitted with like the church and like what it did and what it didn't do it's so fascinating

and I mean as you're saying that I'm like remembering when like Napoleon made himself with the holy remember I'm gonna talk about that don't ruin it don't run it yeah we're gonna do we're gonna do a lot of this

we're only at 1300 okay okay so over the time that they were in avignon their control over their lands in italy were reduced as the locals kind of started acting independently of the papacy even though technically the papacy still controlled the region they had local administrators but they were like you're not here who cares like why am i going to pay attention yeah i mean it sounds i mean it's hard to do that now with computers yeah you know like keeping everything straight i feel like it would be really almost impossible

so throughout the late 1300s and early 1400s um they use their military power to seize back control their lands and basically regained all of it. So the Pope moves back in late 1300s. They just like shore up a military and we're just going to take this by force. And it seems this time period and the kickoff to the Renaissance is also when the Pope became like much more of like a military and strategic leader than anything else. Pope Julius II apparently he was called the, what was it the war pope or something? he would literally wear armor and lead his military into cities that he wanted to take and like it's like nuts like it's like he was like imagine can imagine pope francis with like a sword like just running into battle with his little hat i mean my whole life the pope has been in his 80s yeah it feels like it's always been an old man yeah totally totally so by the late 1500s the papal state was um as large as modern day switzerland and at the height of its importance of power this is one

we get to the Pope or to Napoleon. So in 1796, Napoleon would invade Rome and defeat the Pope's army. Napoleon had a very hostile relation with the Catholic Church, as did France in general during the French Revolution. I mean, he actually, he thought religion was fine, but only when it served the state's interests. And so that idea of a papal state and a Pope army was kind of anathema to him. When Napoleon invaded, he took Pope Pius as a prisoner where he would eventually die in prison several weeks later. They, and they took back all church land for France. So they were just like undoing all of it.

It wasn't until 1801 that Napoleon was like, oh, like people are like way more malleable and chill when you don't take their religion away from them. And so in 1801, he restored the Pope's spiritual authority in what's called the concordant of 1801. They did not give back any land, but it was just meant that the Pope can just do his thing in peace without worrying about death or being killed

or thrown into jail. Eventually, Napoleon was defeated and the Congress of Vienna was held to decide what to do with the territories he had conquered, including the Papal States. And that seemed to be the easiest problem to solve at that time because they were basically just undo it, just

whatever they had before, just giving back what they had before Napoleon came into power. Meanwhile, there's people who are just like, I just want my farm to produce potatoes, I don't die. Yeah. So post-Napolian, Italian nationalism became more prominent and the goal of having

a united Italy started getting traction the kingdom of Sardinia would lead this charge along with this revolutionary Italian hero named Giuseppe Garibaldi between 1859 and 1861 the Papal state would have its land taken away by the kingdom of Sardinia as it was

trying to consolidate power to form this modern day Italy of all people enter Napoleon's nephew this is incredible so this guy was named Louise Napoleon Bonaparte he was president of the second French Republic it was vying for Catholic support

so when the Pope saw Italian nationalism was on the rise he felt threatened and asked Bonaparte to send French soldiers to the Papal state to offer protection this was a problem for Italy because they wanted Rome as the capital of their new country and that was being controlled by the Pope which was now being militarily enforced by Napoleon's nephew

also named Napoleon. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war kicked off and Bonaparte was forced to pull his troops to go fight in Germany. That same year, Italian forces would breach the walls of Rome, annexed it, and make it their capital. So this wasn't meant to be a bloodshed or outright rejection of the Papal State

and said that they just wanted to reconfigure things a bit. And so what they did was they drafted up this thing called the Law of Guarantees. Basically, it just took away the sovereign element of what the Pope had. but he was able to retain the church and the properties and it but you're just like in italy like that's it that's the key difference you're not a sovereign state you still have all your stuff and they also were going to grant him 3.5 million leer a year to cover expenses for

running the church so it wasn't like being it wouldn't be like jerks about it right and um you would have thought that would be great but given how dramatically it reduced its power from even 300 years ago, the Pope at the time, Pope Pius, he totally rejected it. He was like, no, without sovereignty, I'm not going to do this. It wasn't until 1929 in the signing

of the Lateran treaty between Mussolini and the Pope at the time. They finally reached an agreement and Vatican City was established. Mussolini's involvement. I went from Jesus

to to Charlemagne to Mussolini. I don't know anything about Mussolini, but that's kind of a shit deal, but I can say it's small. I want you to say more of that because the next thing I pointed out here was that that allowed the allowed them

have sovereign control over Vatican, the Vatican City State under the Pope. So he's still head of state there. But again, it went from an 18,000 square mile empire to what is 190. acres it's basically a beautiful church and a gift shop it's that small yeah i mean like okay so i think it's not i mean 109 acres i think when you go there you stand in the middle of the piazza whatever and you look at if the pope is there he comes out on his little um balcony in waves

otherwise you're kind of like filtered through the galleries and then into the 16 chapel and then out of it like there's not i don't know i just i feel like that when you're a tourist you kind of go in and out because then you can leave it's like wall it's a walled part inside of rome and like the swiss guards with their funny little office outside so i was um i was trying to put in context in perspective i would understand what a hundred nine acres is i looked up how big the builtmore estate is in north carolina and it's 8000 acres so it's this is 80 times smaller so that's still not great for scale but yeah it's like i feel like i feel like the like how big is universal studios i mean it's not crazy small yeah so it's not super small but it's

like you know well the other thing i imagine that yeah because it's like yeah it's like it's like the piazza and then like buildings around it well the other thing they granted them was that there's a bunch of other properties that is the catholic church's properties that are outside vatican city in italy and one thing they did was that They were like, listen, those properties are going to be on Italian land, but we'll treat it like a foreign embassy essentially. You can do whatever you want there. Like you have like immunity, whatever. Like just we're not going to intrude on your stuff there.

And so that's what the deal that ended up striking was. And that's kind of where they're at right now with things, which is like, again, just so interesting. Like how crazy this history is and how it intertwines with like so many things you learn in school and hear about. And it's all interconnected. there's stories in here that there's a fun story where when napoleon was going to take his crown the pope was going to give him the crown but they still had this like contentious love hate kind of a relationship with each other and he grabs the crown from the pope and it's like this doesn't come from god i gave i gave this to myself and like he like put it on his head i remember i remember

i said that because i did i did napoleon remember yeah and i remember writing i cannot stress this enough that napoleon put the crown on his own head and then and then another thing i don't know if you said this in that episode or not one thing he did was he was going to give like a gift like a crown gift to the pope and usually these things are like made for fitting on your head and they're like two pounds right he ended up sending him like this like tiny hat there was 18 pounds of jewels and gold but just be a jerk yeah just to be in wing absolutely that's so funny he seems like when i was when i was reading the napolely part i was like this guy seems like crazy petty like He seems like a very, very small person.

Yep. Indeed. But that is just like a surface level view of like all, like some of the major events that ended up leading us to the current day Vatican City. All that being said, Taylor, you've actually been there. You've touched it. You've smelled that. You've seen it.

Like, what is it like? It was, well, I mean, it was very crowded. So I felt like that was like a big takeaway. I went there. I think, okay, so that's all the 16 Chapel. When did you go? When did you go? 2001 okay um what is the saccharities painting in vatican city there's a great oh the school of athens is a really cool fresco by raphael and that's in there that's really cool i remember seeing that and then sistine chapel obviously is incredible and i feel like yes is it inside the basilica or is there a separate building i think it's the next door building okay

Yeah, it's like connected, but it's like next to it. Because it's like a, it's like a cathedral, like a long room with, there's no seats because everybody's just standing and staring up, you know. So what do they do there again? Do they use it for service or what is it? Maybe that's where the conclave happens. Maybe. They probably do things in there.

But I don't know. I don't know. But it's worth a visit. Like it sounds like even just like the artwork you see is like crazy. Oh my God. The Sistine Chapel is insane. It's just absolute credible. It's incredible that essentially Michelangelo did it upside down.

You know? And there's people who like devote their lives to every single panel of it. You know, every single section. Like what does this? What is this like? And it's a fresco. And I do remember when I was there, I took an art history, obviously our history class. And we had like a thing where we made a fresco and it was so funny because it was so freaking hard.

because he painted on both this and the school of Athens or painted on wet plaster. So you have to paint really fast. And then it's like becomes the wall. It's not like they painted the wall. Like the wall is the painting, you know? And it's really hard. And it's beautiful.

And we're very lucky that it still exists. I feel like a lot of these things, especially like all of the Roman architecture. I think we talked about this last week. We're like, we're so lucky that David didn't get destroyed during World War II. Yeah. all that stuff um my favorite picture of my brother kinkade ever as they're waiting for the pope to come out in the piazza and he's just standing there and it was so hot and there were all these super

excited nuns around him and he's like oh my god it's so hot there's so many nuns it's just really funny did you see the pope when you were there i didn't but i think kinkate and my dad did because they were there at a different time than i was yeah Yeah, creation of Adam Michelangelo. It's like, it's like every, like, like, the best of the best of the best in art, in terms of artwork and like all of it is just like absolutely. It's like tiny hundred and nine acres.

Like, it's like, so interesting. So if any one of the reviews is people ruined, people ruined the experience because they were loud and just pushing. And that is, I agree to that one. There were too many people there. I assume, you know what? I assume that's exactly what the Louva is like. That's why I've never had any interest in seeing the Mona Lisa,

because I'm like, I don't want to be around that many people. Exactly. It's really hard. Being in a, yeah, being in a crowd museum is so annoying. You want to, like, take your time and, like, sit and read and look and bring it in. But when people are pushing you, yeah, it's annoying. Yeah, I mean, wherever you go, it's wildly crowded. It's beautiful.

The Swiss guards are cool. I don't know why. Do you remember why Swiss guards are there? Because they got rid of the military. Because as part of the last accord they signed with Mussolini, they couldn't have a standing military and it's it's the swiss guards and there's another thing i came over it's a word i've literally never seen as i started researching a genderman or something there's some sort of like their function is that of like police for vatican city essentially right i's going to ask you

when that was then so a swiss guard get approximately 500 euros a month tax free and they get free housing and their children's school fees are covered so and they get to the shop at a special tax-free duty shop for the swiss guards that's funny well i i don't know if i'm going to do like a multi-part series on this but like man there's so much fun like little stories like i know we love it i just learned there was a netflix show that came out like two years ago about this girl that went missing in the vatican who lived in the Vatican with their own line. They still don't know what happened, but the more you dig into it, they found some mob

bosses, like remains in the papal tombs. It's like crazy. It's literally like the DaVinci Code, except like real. I love reading the DaVinci Code. I was excited. It's so interesting. Yeah, I was like, this is super fun. I love this stuff.

Like, I love it there might be a secret in the middle of it. Like, remember they found the one king in England in a parking lot? like that does sound familiar of like a Sainsbury's you know it was like there's like there's so much stuff in Europe it's like underneath the ground and Rome is just cool like that

even like St. Peter like I mean you probably saw his tomb when you were there and then research it and like well they found like they found where neurosurcass is and they found like where they think that the bot he would have been like buried and they found all these different bones like they did all this like maths for

exactly who's who and which one is most likely his. They put him in the tomb in St. Pierce's Basilica. The tomb, what you're looking at is like not, he's underneath it, but he's like a level underneath it. So you can go underneath the tomb into the papal. So beneath the basilica is like a graveyard of popes.

And the artwork is unbelievable. Like look up Papal tombs and look up some of the artwork around these guys. And it's just like, and I don't think you're even allowed to go in there. I think you have to do a special request to go in there. I'm like, what else do you all have? Like, how many crazy pieces of artwork and how many, like, insane things are there? They're, like, behind walls that nobody can ever access, like. Oh, yeah.

What are the tombs in Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade? Are they in Rome? I don't remember. In the beginning? Um, yeah, it's like the, it's just like that, though. There's, like, beautiful stone. headstone things everywhere. That's very exciting.

Yeah, we should go. Yeah, I definitely, it's definitely on the list. Oh, they're in Venice in the beginning. Yeah. I know I will watch Conclave. I do want to. Yeah, tell me what you think of it afterwards. I have opinions, but I'm not going to share them right now.

I mean, I think it's, I think it was great. But like, whatever. Cool. That's all I got. And who knows? Maybe I'll do more Catholic church stuff next week or the week after. But if y'all have ideas on this, like given the fact that there's a 2,000 year history here,

like there's so many different directions you can go in and all of them are fascinating and it's kind of hard to figure out which one you want to go after. Yeah, like everything because like did it care of lives to just talking about this. Totally, totally. Yeah, so write to us, do you know philpottajum.com, find us on the socials.

Taylor, do you have anything for us? No, I did. Morgan did send something about her friend who is doing like a, has a documentary about it, Ardica coming up. So I'll share with that when that comes out because we were just talking about Antarctica last week, and that was pretty cool.

Sweet. Love it. Cool. If there's nothing else, we'll go on and sign off then. Cool. Yeah, find us on all the socials. Did you say that already? Doomedepilpod, Patreon as well.

Email, doom tofillpod. Atchemel.com. All of things. Thanks, all. Thanks, all. Thanks, Taylor. Thanks.