mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
States loans amounting to 1.5 million scudi. The Barberini nephews
thought this was an excellent opportunity to become dukes themselves,
seizing Farnese’s tiny duchy of Castro as forfeit for the loans. Urban sent
ten thousand troops under the command of Prince Taddeo to take Castro.
Cardinal Antonio strapped on armor over his red robes and rode
into battle. But the French, Venetians, Mantuans, and Tuscans gave financial
support and troops to the duke of Parma. The pope found himself
politically isolated, and the cost of the war strained the papal coffers
beyond their capacity.
With the Vatican treasury bankrupt, the futile campaign ended on
March 31, 1644, when France mediated an embarrassing peace in which
everything was returned to the way it had been before the conflict. But
the scorched earth of Umbria, the Romagna, and Ferrara—historically
the most fertile regions of the Papal States—could not so easily be returned
to its former state. Neither could the empty coffers of the Vatican
treasury fill themselves up again as if the war had never happened.
The pope had spent some twelve million gold scudi on his army, though
many thought that the Barberini nephews had pocketed a large portion
of this sum.
In all probability the humiliation of the war of Castro hastened the
pope’s death. On July 2, 1644, the seventy-six-year-old Urban VIII became
alarmingly weak. Cardinal Francesco informed his uncle that there
were eight vacancies in the Sacred College at the moment and suggested
he stuff the conclave with Barberini friends. But Urban, who knew that
quite soon he would be standing before a tribunal even greater than
that which Galileo had faced, would not hear of it. He died on Friday,
July 29.
The camerlengo, or chamberlain, of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal
Antonio Barberini, performed the ancient and solemn ritual that
took place immediately after a pope’s death. He hit the dead pope on
the forehead three times with a silver hammer, each time calling his
name. If the pope did not answer, the camerlengo solemnly announced,
“The pope is dead.”
Surely the cardinals gathered around the bed would have been
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