Was Pope Leo X corrupt?

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Pope Leo X is associated with the selling of the indulgences to rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral…

What positive legacy did he leave the Church?
 
Andrea22 said:
Pope Leo X is associated with the selling of the indulgences to rebuild St. Peter’s Cathedral…

What positive legacy did he leave the Church?
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Totally corrupt? No, I wouldn’t say so. Partially corrupt? Quite probably. Stupid as a political leader and with a penchant for abundance that would be a downfall? Most definitely.

Says the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The only possible verdict on the pontificate of Leo X is that it was unfortunate for the Church. Sigismondo Tizio, whose devotion to the Holy See is undoubted, writes truthfully: “In the general opinion it was injurious to the Church that her Head should delight in plays, music, the chase and nonsense, instead of paying serious attention to the needs of his flock and mourning over their misfortunes”. Von Reumont says pertinently—“Leo X is in great measure to blame for the fact that faith in the integrity and merit of the papacy, in its moral and regenerating powers, and even in its good intentions, should have sunk so low that men could declare extinct the old true spirit of the Church.”
 
I also read that he was the last non-priest to be elected pope? How could that be?
Was he elected pope because he was born into the right family and had the right connections?
 
Andrea22 said:
I also read that he was the last non-priest to be elected pope? How could that be?
Was he elected pope because he was born into the right family and had the right connections?
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Well, any Catholic male can be elected Pope, they’d just have to be ordained a Bishop.
 
Andrea22 said:
I also read that he was the last non-priest to be elected pope? How could that be?
Was he elected pope because he was born into the right family and had the right connections?
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Hilaire Belloc takes Leo X and a number of his immediate predecessors to task for treating the papacy like an Italian principality in his book How the Reformation Happened. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in the subject.
 
Belloc_Fan said:
Hilaire Belloc takes Leo X and a number of his immediate predecessors to task for treating the papacy like an Italian principality in his book How the Reformation Happened. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in the subject.
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I might read it… Who is Hilaire Belloc? Is/was he Catholic?
 
Andrea22 said:
I might read it… Who is Hilaire Belloc? Is/was he Catholic?
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He’s great. He was English Catholic. He could be sort of harsh regarding Protestantism and Islam at times, but he was this brilliant and amazing lucid historian. He rejected the sort of mainstream “Whig history,” and showed that a lot of the forces in the Reformation weren’t high-minded and religious. He also sounded the alarm about Communism, Nazism, and the rise of radical Islam in his book Heretics, written long before most people realized the danger of any of them.
 
Andrea22 said:
So you are saying any Catholic male can be a Bishop?
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I think the college of Cardinals can elect any Catholic male to the papacy, but they’d have to be ordained a Bishop before they took office, so to speak.
 
I’m quite sure its any Catholic male over the age of 19…period. If this male was not a bishop he would be taught in the ways of the faith. To say that God would only want a bishop as a successor presumes that you know the workings of God, who can work through whomever he wants whenever he wants.
 
TheQuestioner said:
I’m quite sure its any Catholic male over the age of 19…period. If this male was not a bishop he would be taught in the ways of the faith. To say that God would only want a bishop as a successor presumes that you know the workings of God, who can work through whomever he wants whenever he wants.
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but apparently not women 🤷
j/k
 
You bet he was corrupt. So am I. So are you. So is everyone in the world. We all have our faults. Every person, Bishop, priest, and Pope is corrupt. We all have weaknesses. Greed, lack of chasity, you name it. Sin is a corruption.
In the end it doesn’t matter if a Pope was corrupt, other than to the study of history and our own opinion. They all were, of course some more so (much more) than others. This doesn’t effect their infalibilty as some Protestants would like to have it. It isn’t impecability.
End of public apologetics insert
 
What i’m saying is that, any Catholic male can become Pope, but he’d have to be ordained a Bishop because the Pope is the Bishop of Rome.
 
bacon_man said:
What i’m saying is that, any Catholic male can become Pope, but he’d have to be ordained a Bishop because the Pope is the Bishop of Rome.
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One of the reasons I have faith in the Church is because I’ve always thought that the man in the office was a holy man. I know that the college of cardinals elects the Pope in the conclave and I have always believed it to be a very solemn endeavor guided by the Holy Spirit. Am I wrong (naive) to think this? has it not always been this way?

In my lifetime I have seen two of the holiest Pope’s who have ever lived. JPII and Benedict. Both very intelligent and holy. It is so hard for me to imagine any pope’s not being like that.
 
Andrea22 said:
One of the reasons I have faith in the Church is because I’ve always thought that the man in the office was a holy man. I know that the college of cardinals elects the Pope in the conclave and I have always believed it to be a very solemn endeavor guided by the Holy Spirit. Am I wrong (naive) to think this? has it not always been this way?

In my lifetime I have seen two of the holiest Pope’s who have ever lived. JPII and Benedict. Both very intelligent and holy. It is so hard for me to imagine any pope’s not being like that.
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This is what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said in 1997:

“I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

“There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.”

nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/conclave/pt041505c.htm

Now theoretically, any Catholic male can be elected pope. But it’s likely that a non-Cardinal will never be chosen.
 
phoenix3212 said:
This is what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said in 1997:

“I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

“There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.”

nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/conclave/pt041505c.htm

Now theoretically, any Catholic male can be elected pope. But it’s likely that a non-Cardinal will never be chosen.
Click to expand...
Excellent article Phoenix! Thank you for that.

Then the clincher: “There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.”

So who are these Pope’s? and was Pope Leo X one of them?
 
Andrea22 said:
Excellent article Phoenix! Thank you for that.

Then the clincher: “There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.”

So who are these Pope’s? and was Pope Leo X one of them?
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Pope Leo X would certainly be one of them. Another Medici popes, Clement VII was not that great either. Leo X’s predecessor was probably the worst of the corrupt popes. He had several children which he acknowledged and was openly having affairs with woman while Pope. Clement V who was so influenced by the King of France that he moved the Papcy to Avignon from Rome.
 
And then some peasant girl later made the Pope moved back to Rome, she’s a Saint now, I forget which one.
 
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