Was Pope John Paul I murdered in 1978? Does the Vatican have evidence that Jesus was not the son of God? Is the Holy See monitoring the skies for extraterrestrials? With its secrecy and power, the Vatican has long attracted conspiracy theories. So, let’s have a look at the Top Ten Vatican Conspiracy Theories. Starting with the claim that the papacy created Islam.
The Vatican created Islam
This extraordinary claim was made by an ex-Jesuit priest, Alberto Rivera (1935-1997), in the 1970s. While still a Jesuit, Rivera paid a visit to the Vatican where Cardinal Augustin Bea (1881-1968) revealed how the Roman Catholic church had manufactured the Muslim religion in the 7th century CE. Bea was a German Jesuit and confessor to Pope Pius XII. Whether Rivera really met Bea was unverifiable because by the time Rivera went public with his story, Bea was dead.
Rivera revealed all in comic book form. He provided the storyline for a publisher specialising in mass circulation, cartoon-based attacks on Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic church. In a graphic novel titled The Prophet, Rivera describes how the Arab people fell victim to the Vatican’s plan for world domination.
The tale begins in the Roman Empire. Despite persecution, Christianity was spreading rapidly. The only solution was for the Roman emperor to create a counterfeit version of Christianity rebranding Jupiter as St Peter and Venus as the Virgin Mary. The headquarters of this bogus faith would be the Vatican hill, where the “Satanic” temple of Janus stood. And so began the Roman Catholic church – ruled over by the pope.
Under orders from the Vatican, St Augustine, a bishop in north Africa, set out to win over the Arabs of the Middle East, but many resisted Catholicism. They adhered to what Rivera called “true” Christianity, which rejected papal authority. These non-Catholic Christians and the Jews controlled Jerusalem, the holiest of cities. How could the pope break their hold on Jerusalem and take charge of the holiest of sites in Christendom?
The Vatican directed loyal Arab Catholics to identify and support a messiah-like figure who would unite the Arab tribes and take Jerusalem for Catholicism. A key figure in this plot was a wealthy Arab Catholic widow called Khadijah as well as her cousin, Waraqah ibn Nawfal. They found an impressionable young Arab, Muhammad, who could be groomed for their purpose.
There is a nugget of truth here in that Waraqah was indeed a renowned Christian scholar – though Khadijah was certainly not a Catholic nun, as Rivera claimed. A nun who threw aside her vows and married the much younger Muhammad.
Muhammad was duly brainwashed by the covert Catholic duo – wife and cousin – into believing that the Jews were his enemies and that Roman Catholics were the only true Christians. He was to form a militant movement and with the blessing of the pope – plus lots of funding – invade the Middle East and North Africa, acting as a proxy for the Catholic church.
Sure enough, everything went as planned with Jerusalem taken by Arab Islamic armies. But when the pope asked for the city to be handed over to the church, the Muslims refused. Worse, they condemned the pope as an “infidel”, erecting mosques in Jerusalem, including the Dome of the Rock. Furious at this disobedience, successive popes organised Crusades to crush their own creation: Islam.
Eventually the Catholic church and Islam – after centuries of battling – reached a rapprochement. Muslims would let Catholics operate in their countries and vice versa. This was agreed on the basis that “true” Christians (Protestants basically) would be banned or persecuted by both sides. So, Mecca and the Vatican made peace.
The alliance between Islam and its creator, the Vatican, has been seen throughout history – Rivera wrote. Fast forward to the 20th century and the rise of fascism. The Vatican directed Hitler and the Nazis to bring Russia under the pope’s heel.
In the 1930s, the Vatican united with Islam to defeat the left-wing Republican government in the Spanish Civil War. Rivera is referring to the use of auxiliary troops from Muslim colonies of Spain to take the Canary Islands and southern Spain. This had been a traumatic episode for Rivera in his childhood, who grew up in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In The Prophet he describes a childhood encounter with these Muslim troops, which gave him a lifelong hatred of Islam.
Most astonishingly, Rivera asserted that Pope John Paul II was shot by Mehmet Ali Ağca in 1981 as part of a Jesuit plot to pull the Muslim and Catholic worlds closer together. The tortuous logic runs that the Iranian ayatollahs were so embarrassed that “one of their own” (a Muslim) had tried to kill such a holy man that they sent heartfelt condolences to the Vatican. This ignores the inconvenient fact that Mehmet Ali Ağca was a Sunni Muslim while the ayatollahs are Shiites.
When the pope went to visit his would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Ağca in prison and forgave him on camera, this was just another ruse to cement the Vatican-Islam alliance. As if that wasn’t far fetched enough, Rivera wrote that Pope John Paul II, a proud Polish nationalist, was in fact a covert communist, despite his very vocal opposition to the Soviet Union.
As with so many conspiracy theories, this one rushes breathlessly through the centuries and from one topic to the next. Almost as if to stop for a breather would expose it to scrutiny. Inevitably, church sources condemned Alberto Rivera. Jesuits in Spain revealed there was no record of a man by his name ever entering their order.
He responded by setting up the Anti-Christ Information Center in Cangoa Park, California, producing materials that exposed the “whore of Babylon”, an old, hostile term for the pope. Here is a document from that organisation signed by Rivera.
The Vatican wants to revive the Inquisition
Rivera also came up with the notion that the Vatican is compiling a computerised list of the names of Protestants throughout the world who will be targeted by a revived Inquisition. The full horror of torture and public execution to be unleashed on the world’s heretics – all those who do not accept the absolute authority of the pope.
These theories were articulated in a series of comic books with mass circulation in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. They caused a media storm at the time.
The Pope is a Freemason
This is a longstanding conspiracy theory that every pope since 1958 has been a secret Freemason. These popes – John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV – instigated and then spread the modernising reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which abolished the Latin mass. Ultra-traditionalists believe this is clear evidence that the Vatican had been infiltrated and then seized by a masonic cabal who installed one of their own on the papal throne.
Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the closing sessions of the council, and enforced its decisions, has been a particular target of this conspiracy theory. While more recently, a photograph of Pope Francis with his hand tucked inside his coat was decried as a clandestine masonic signal.
This accusation is made despite the fact that since 1738, the church has banned Roman Catholics from being Freemasons. Indeed this ban was reinstated by Pope Francis in 2023. The original prohibition was declared by Pope Clement XII who threatened to excommunicate any Catholic joining a masonic lodge. It was reaffirmed by Pius VII in 1821, Leo XII in 1825, Pius VIII in 1829, and Gregory XVI in 1832. Pope Pius IX, in 1873, branded Freemasons as the “synagogue of Satan”.
However, the same Pius IX was at the centre of rumours in the 1870s that he had been a mason in his younger days. This was strenuously denied by the Vatican. Here is a letter to a newspaper at the time begging journalists to stop spreading this malicious falsehood.
His successor, Leo XIII, was the victim of an extraordinary hoax involving a French journalist, Léo Taxil, who claimed to have uncovered a Satanic masonic network. Pope Leo granted Taxil an audience to hear all about it. Taxil strung the pope along for years before eventually admitting that he had made the whole thing up.
The Pope possesses artefacts from Atlantis
Did Atlantis really exist? Apparently the pope has the answer!
Deep within the bowels of the Vatican are ancient documents, maps, and artefacts that prove the existence of the ancient civilisation of Atlantis. These include copies of lost works by the Greek philosopher Plato giving more details about Atlantis and pre-Columbian maps indicating a mysterious landmass at the centre of the Atlantic Ocean.
Jesuit missionaries who journeyed to the New World collected indigenous oral accounts about Atlantis, handed down through the generations among isolated tribes. Why does the church hide this? Because the existence of Atlantis would challenge the account of the universe’s origin we find in the Book of Genesis. It would imply that there was a pre-biblical human civilisation.
Rome knows that Jesus didn’t exist
According to this theory, the Vatican posseses Roman census records, and early Christian writings proving that Jesus never existed. It shows conclusively that the Son of God was a fictional figure, not a historic person.
Within bible scholarship today, there’s a division between historicists and mythicists over the question of Jesus. The former can be believers, atheists, or agnostics who are united in their belief that Jesus was a historic person – regardless of his divine status. Mythicists state that if we stick to the facts, there’s insufficient proof to categorically state that Jesus was a real person. Their argument would be bolstered by the Vatican’s secret files.
Allied to this is the argument that the Vatican has suppressed gospels that contradict the accounts of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Some of these gospels have emerged after centuries of being forgotten – for example the Nag Hammadi library found in Egypt in 1945.
It’s undoubtedly the case that the church did condemn what came to be regarded as heretical definitions of the nature of Jesus. But is the Vatican sitting on ancient gospels and refusing to publish them? That is a very different assertion.
Here I am below in 2024 in the heart of the Vatican – Saint Peter’s Basilica – doing a bit of investigating (article continues below).
The real third secret of Fatima has not been revealed
In central Portugal, millions of pilgrims visit the Marian shrine at Fatima every year (6.2 million in 2024). In front of an early 20th century basilica is an airport runway sized piazza on which the faithful march on their knees to seek the intervention of the Virgin Mary.
This Portuguese answer to Lourdes originated in 1917, at the close of World War One, when three peasant children – Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto – claimed to have been visited by the mother of God six times between May and October of that year. The church hierarchy was sceptical but the cult of Fatima grew rapidly and the Vatican eventually embraced it.
Jacinta and Francisco died of the Spanish flu not long afterwards aged just nine and ten. This left Lúcia Santos as the sole survivor and she carried the flame of Fatima until her death in 2005, aged 97. By then she had been a nun for many decades, living in an enclosed community, and writing several works on her experience.
Lúcia said that the Virgin Mary had imparted several secrets to the trio and one – The Third Secret – was written down in 1944 and kept sealed by the Vatican. It was not to be opened until at least 1960 “when it will appear clearer”. The first two so-called secrets were a detailed vision of hell and a prophecy about the conversion of Russia back to Christianity.
In June 2000, Pope John Paul II ordered the Third Secret to be unsealed and published. There was some apocalyptic stuff about an angel with a flaming sword crying out: Penance, Penance, Penance! And then a bishop dressed in white passing through a city in flames with the dead lying in the streets. When he reached the top of a mountain, he was killed by soldiers in a hail of bullets and arrows.
This was interpreted to be a reference to the assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Ağca on Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981. This murder attempt happened on the 64th anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima. The pope was reportedly convinced that his life was saved because he prayed to Our Lady of Fatima. So much so that he sent the bullet extracted from his abdomen to the shrine where it now sits in the crown on the head of the statue of the Virgin Mary. This brush with death also resolved John Paul to go public with the Third Secret.
However, not everybody is convinced that this was the Third Secret even though a very old Lúcia Santos confirmed that it was. Critics argued that the original secret had referred to the end of the world and included actual words spoken by the Virgin Mary. But the Vatican countered that the released text was the final word on the matter and there were no further predictions of future events.
Below are images from my 2019 visit to Fatima plus Pope John Paul II meeting Lúcia Santos, Paul Paul VI meeting her in the 1960s, and the three children who had the visions in 1917.
The Vatican is hiding the Ark of the Covenant
As we know from the Old Testament, King Solomon began the construction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem to house the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Ten Commandments and other sacred objects. But this disappeared when the Babylonians destroyed the temple around 587BC. The temple was then rebuilt in stages with King Herod – the notorious figure in the Jesus birth story – embellishing it considerably.
Jerusalem came under Roman control and initially, the new rulers fostered the temple priests as collaborators with Rome and even donated gifts to the temple. But then the Jews revolted, attempting to shake off the Roman yoke. This led, in 70CE, to the sack of Jerusalem and the levelling of the temple.
Its treasures were carted back to Rome and this act was commemorated on the Arch of Titus, pictured below from my 2024 trip to the city. You can see the soldiers carrying the Jewish Menorah – candelabra – in their victory parade, but no Ark of the Covenant – that was never seen again after the Babylonian invasion.
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According to the Romano-Jewish historian Josephus, the treasures were deposited in the emperor Vespasian’s Temple of Peace. Fast forward nearly four centuries and Roman power is in decline, especially in the west. The imperial capital is sacked by the Visigoths in 410CE and then by the Vandals in 455CE.
On a visit to the Jewish ghetto in Rome in 2025, I discovered a tombstone of three Jewish brothers – Natanel, Ammon, and Eliau – who found the Ark of the Covenant, and the menorah, dumped in the river Tiber, which flows through Rome. They attempted to recover the treasures but were executed by order of the emperor Honorius. The Ark and menorah were to be left hidden underwater.
A local Jewish historian told me that he believes the tombstone is a 19th century forgery and that the corner of it was broken deliberately to indicate that it’s not genuine. If it was what it seems to be, then it’s proof that Ark made it to Rome. Here is the tombstone below – image taken on my iPhone.
The Byzantine (eastern Roman) historian Procopius, writing in the 5th century CE, claimed the temple treasures were seized by the Vandals in 455CE and taken to Carthage, which they had captured from the Romans. The treasures were then recovered by the Byzantine general Belisarius who brought them to Constantinople. From there, the emperor Justinian sent the sacred items back to Christian churches in Jerusalem.
Or is all this a cover story? Because others claim that the temple treasures ended up in the archbasilica of St John Lateran. This church and palace was originally the residence of the popes, up until the 14th century, when the Holy Father relocated to the Vatican. The evidence for an object identified as the Ark of the Covenant being held at St John Lateran is surprisingly compelling. From around 1100 to the year 1745, it was listed by priests in their inventory of holy relics.
The canons at St John Lateran compiled the inventory – titled the Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae (“Description of the Lateran Church”) – in the early 1100s. Not only did they claim to have the Ark but listed its contents, which had been added to since the time of Solomon and Moses. There was the rod of Aaaron and manna from heaven but also the seamless garment of Christ and the scissors used to cut the hair of St John the Evangelist.
According to the basilica’s official liturgy – the Ordo Officiorum Ecclesiae Lateranensis – the Ark of the Covenant was brought out and displayed on Holy Thursday, before Easter, and the pope consecrated the eucharist over it. Playing the role of the Jewish High Priest in Jerusalem, he alone viewed the items within the Ark. And we know from Indiana Jones, what happens to most people when they look inside!
Intriguingly, across the road from the basilica is a building that houses the Scala Santa – the steps that Jesus walked up to face his trial by Pontius Pilate, brought to Rome in the 4th century CE. The stairs lead to a dead end but behind the wall blocking further progress is a medieval chapel, previously only accessed by the popes.
It’s called the Holy of Holies – the Sancta Sanctorum – which was the name given to the space in the original Jerusalem temple where the Ark was contained. One theory is that the canons at the Lateran felt the basilica’s priestly authority was being undermined after Jerusalem was retaken during the Crusades with the Holy Sepulchre back under full Christian control.
Therefore, they sought to project the Lateran as the new temple with everything – and more – that you would have found in the original Jewish temple. Photographs are discouraged but your humble scribe took this image in 2025 of the Sancta Sanctorum (article continues below).
In the 13th century, William Durandus of Metz (1230-1296) wrote the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum describing how the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine commanded St John Lateran to be built to house the Ark and Jewish menorah. This was during the reign of Pope Sylvester.
The Jewish community in Rome was convinced the Ark and other temple treasures were being held in the basilica. A Jewish visitor to the city, Benjamin of Tudela, was told by local Jews that two bronze columns from the temple were held at the Lateran and every year, on the date of the temple’s destruction by the Romans, the columns wept!
We also have a witness from Iceland: Níkulás Bergsson, abbot of the monastery of Þverá in Eyjafjörður, Northern Iceland, who wrote the Leiðarvísir og borgarskipan (A Guide and List of Cities) around 1157. This document, preserved at the University of Copenhagen, was a Christian sightseeing guide to Rome and he mentions the Ark at the Lateran.
The basilica was prone to fires and one in 1308 led to the Ark being moved to a side chapel. The canons couldn’t resist a peek inside and noted the blood of Christ and a wooden altar used by St Peter.
In 1647, when the chapel was demolished, the Ark was moved to the apse where both Jews and Christians came to venerate it. Then in 1661, the Italian antiquarian Famiano Nardini (pictured below) studied the object and declared it authentic:
“But after having diligently studied this Ark, which resembles the one described in Exodus, I cannot imagine that it is a thing produced in Rome for some other use, nor do I dare declare that it is a work made out of vain pretense.”
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By this time, the popes were installed at the Vatican. In 1745, Pope Benedict XIV paid a pastoral visit. He approved of the table from the Last Supper, which is still displayed, but removed the Ark and all its contents. Why one holy relic was acceptable and the other was not is unclear. This was when the Ark of the Covenant disappeared.
Persistent rumours have circulated that deep below the Vatican, in its secret archives, the pope is hiding both the Ark of the Covenant and the Jewish menorah. To such an extent that in the 1990s Israeli officials asked permission to inspect the archives to ascertain whether this was true. An exasperated Holy See did apparently agree to an inspection and nothing was found.
Shape-shifting lizards have taken over the Holy See
Lizards run the Vatican!
This crazy assertion emanates from David Icke’s “reptilian elite” conspiracy theory popularised in his 1998 book, The Biggest Secret. Icke writes that shape-shifting reptilian aliens have infiltrated the highest levels of human society – royalty, politicians, religious leaders – disguising themselves as humans to control the world.
Inevitably, this theory extends to the papacy. Why? Because the Vatican is super-secretive and controls a global religion commanding the adherence of countless millions of people. And the evidence? Clues include the Paul VI Audience Hall which is shaped like a snake’s head if viewed from above. The papal regalia and benediction gestures are all “reptilian signals”.
Adherents to the lizard conspiracy theory often alight on grainy video footage where skin appears to be scaly or an eye blink reveals a third protective eyelid. Any video editor will roll their eyes at this and explain how poor quality film can create these effects.
The Vatican has a telescope nicknamed “Lucifer” that is looking out for aliens
Like the most resilient conspiracy theories, this one is a blend of fact and fiction. The Vatican runs an astronomical research programme that includes a telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona, in partnership with the University of Arizona.
The observatory houses the Large Binocular Telescope Near-infrared Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research. As that is a mouthful, the acronym LUCIFER was chosen, though understandably it was later shortened to LUCI.
Despite its name, astronomers are at pains to point out that this instrument isn’t just seeking aliens hurtling towards us. It’s also used for mainstream astronomical activity like studying galaxies and star formation.
Nevertheless, selecting LUCIFER as a name for a telescope that involves the Vatican wasn’t the smartest move. The blame apparently lies with German engineers and not the pope’s cardinals!
However, why is the Vatican interested in extraterrestrial life? Well, of course, it poses some thorny theological issues. If there are more advanced civilisations out there and they’re not Roman Catholics, let alone Christian, how does that square with the bible’s account of the universe and the church’s grip on the faithful?
The Vatican has been keenly observing the heavens since 1891 when it set up the Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory), one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world. Ever since Rome’s bitter clash with Galileo, the papacy has taken a more nuanced approach to science – attempting to prove that it can be reconciled with religion.
A former director of the observatory, Father José Gabriel Funes, declared that the existence of aliens wouldn’t contradict belief in God. While the current director, Brother Guy Consolmagno, says he would willingly baptise any aliens encountered – as they have souls, just like humans.
Pope John Paul I was murdered
On 6 August 1978, Pope Paul VI died at the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. I remember, as a 15-year-old, seeing the news break on TV while on holiday in Portugal. Twenty days later, the patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani, was elected pope. After centuries of the papacy being held by Italians, he would be the last.
In an unusual move, Luciani chose the name John Paul in honour of his two predecessors: John XXIII and Paul VI. It was a signal that he would continue the reforming approach of John while also being a consolidator like Paul.
Luciani was the smiling pope, projecting a relatable image to a church that had gone through the trauma of the Second Vatican council, which had angered traditionalists and frustrated modernisers. But John Paul I was a grittier character than is often realised.
While in charge of Venice, he imposed a new priest on the village of Montaner that led the entire population to defect from Roman Catholicism to the eastern orthodox faith. Police had to escort him to Montaner where he effectively deconsecrated the local church. He absolutely refused to back down and a schismatic church remains to this day.
Luciani clashed with liberals over divorce and demanded action against any priest who supported the Italian Communist Party. At the same time, he moved against traditionalists to stamp out the old Tridentine mass, in line with the Second Vatican Council that banned the mass being said in Latin.
But it was the financial affairs of the Vatican that some believe resulted in this pope’s untimely death. John Paul I, the theory runs, wanted to address corruption within the Vatican Bank, known as the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, or IOR for short. He was determined to investigate the bank’s most senior executive, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, regarding his relationship with the Banco Ambrosiano – a bank in which the Vatican was the biggest shareholder.
Marcinkus was a bluff character from a working-class Illinois background who once famously stated: “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys.” Maybe so – but his approach to high finance nearly cratered the Vatican. At six foot four inches, he was nicknamed the “Gorilla” in the Italian media and on one occasion, threw himself physically at a man in the Philippines who attempted to assassinate Paul VI on a visit to Manila.
He was not only accused of financial skullduggery in relation to the Banco Ambrosiano but also involvement in the murder of the pope. Just 33 days into his papacy, John Paul I was found dead in his private study early in the morning. Marcinkus was later forced to deny he had anything to do with the death.
“I’ve been accused of murdering a pope and then getting involved in Ambrosiano, both of these things are completely unfounded.”
As an aside – and touching on another conspiracy theory about the Vatican – Marcinkus was implicated in the laundering of Nazi gold by the Vatican bank and was wanted for questioning in the United States. For some time, he holed up in the Vatican, avoiding law enforcement from Italy and the US. Eventually, he went back to the US and died in Sun City, Arizona.
With some confusion over who found John Paul’s body and whether he was in bed or not, the conspiracy theories began to fly. No autopsy was conducted – though this is standard practice for dead popes. However, these were exceptional circumstances and many commentators felt the refusal to make an exception was suspicious. Any toxicological analysis was impossible as the body was rapidly embalmed.
In the years that followed, events only served to heighten suspicion. The head of Banco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi, was founded hanged from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. When the coroner’s court ruled it was suicide, journalists scoffed. To believe that a portly 62-year-old could have loaded his pockets with bricks and climbed along the scaffolding to hang himself from the required position, shown below, beggars belief. Few now doubt that it was murder.
Calvi’s bank collapsed in the same year amid charges of fraud, money laundering on an epic scale, and involvement with a high-level masonic lodge, Propaganda Due (P2) and – inevitably – the mafia. If John Paul I was determined to remove Marcinkus and expose all the dirty dealings, did shadowy figures linked to P2 make sure that didn’t happen?
The various strands of this conspiracy theory were woven together in the 1984 bestselling book In God’s Name, by journalist David Yallop. Those arguing for foul play point to all of the above plus John Paul I’s perceived theological liberalism, including the possibility that he was about to soften the church’s position on abortion.
In my view, this ignores his conservative position on divorce and other issues. Regarding his health, it’s been stated that John Paul I was in robust health for a 65-year-old. This overlooks a lifetime of health issues plus he had experienced chest pains in the days before his demise. Nevertheless, the 1990 movie Godfather III, the last in the Godfather trilogy, was largely based on the idea that the smiling pope was killed.
Two contemporary newspaper reports of the pope’s death with the second showing just how rapidly his body was laid out for mourners with requests for a medical examination turned down.
