mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
Innocent into bowing to her demands. It was a rare miscalculation for
Olimpia, who had ruled the pope for decades with a calm and jovial
manner. Not only did her rage irritate Innocent, but it obscured from
her a more subtle and effective tactic. Had she pretended to welcome
Cardinal Astalli-Pamphili’s promotion, she could have stayed at the
pope’s side and, when the time was right, sabotaged the interloper.
As it was, Olimpia’s horrific scenes only made the pope realize there
was another issue to be addressed, an issue far more disturbing than the
selection of a new cardinal nephew. And this issue had been weighing
on him for nearly six years. But Innocent, the eternal procrastinator,
had put it off.
The pope’s dilemma was this: the woman who had placed him on
the pinnacle of power, carrying him step by step on her strong shoulders,
guiding him with her agile mind, was now pulling him down.
Worse for Innocent, she was pulling the church down, the church he
loved and honored. It was the joke of Europe that Olimpia had insisted
on taking the prostitutes of Rome under her protection, allowing them
to use the Pamphili coat of arms. Then she had exiled Camillo and the
princess of Rossano, which caused people to murmur against the pope’s
unnatural severity toward his closest relatives. The pope had never even
seen the little grandnephew named after him. She had polluted the Sacred
College with the creation of two idiot cardinals—Francesco Maidalchini
and Michel Mazarin, although the latter had considerately died
within a year of taking office.
There was, of course, the public spectacle she had made of herself
when she insulted Cardinal Pallotta in the street, prompting him to call
her a whore. Her grain speculation during the Masaniello revolt had
given rise to the rumor that Olimpia had caused the subsequent Roman
famine. She had pilfered the sacred shoulder of Saint Francesca and put
on licentious comedies poking fun at the pope, Camillo, and major
public figures. She had stolen the pope’s thunder during the Holy Year.
Most painful, because of Olimpia’s actions he had not spoken to his sister
Prudenzia for three years before she died.
And that was just Rome. There was the additional matter of international
humiliation. The duchy of Savoy had been irked by the nasty
[ 281 ]