mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
The very first evening, Urban VIII’s brother, the cardinal of Saint
Onofrio, was involved in a message-smuggling scandal. The good cardinal
had evidently bribed a mason to make a hole in the outer wall of
his cell through which he could pass messages too long and detailed to
be hidden inside the tiny secret compartment of a food platter. While
many cardinals smuggled messages, they all denied doing so and eagerly
pointed fingers when their enemies were proven to be leaking
news. And it was always the laborers, never the cardinals, who got arrested
for the security breach. Giacinto Gigli reported, “There was discovered
in his room a hole that gave onto the court of the Belvedere and
therefore the cardinals of the opposing faction made a great noise about
it and the hole was walled up, and they say that a mason was put in
prison.” 6
Having settled into their cells, the cardinals met with various ambassadors
for negotiations the next day. The French ambassador visited
the cardinals individually or in small groups, advocating the favored
candidates of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, prime minister of France. The impoverished
Italian-born Giulio Mazzarino had worked his way up the
church hierarchy in France by climbing into the widowed queen
mother’s bed. Since her husband’s death in 1643, the dim-witted Anne
of Austria supposedly ruled for her young son Louis XIV; but it was
the luxurious Mazarin—mercurial, brilliant, and crafty—who held
the power.
Five months before Pope Urban died, Mazarin heard of his steep
decline and sent precise instructions to his ambassador regarding papal
candidates. Mazarin’s first choice was the sixty-five-year-old Cardinal
Guido Bentivoglio, who for many years had been nuncio to France. His
second choice was Cardinal Giulio Sacchetti, who at fifty-eight suffered
the drawback of youth but was very friendly toward France. There was
one other candidate Mazarin named. “As for Cardinal Pamphili,” he
thundered, “His Majesty cannot in any way consent that his ministers
concur to his exaltation and orders them to oppose him by all means
possible, first in secret, but overtly if necessary. He is a man who has
given all his affections to Spain, and who has lost no occasion to give
proofs that he has an aversion to France.” 7
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