male narrator: One of the most powerful men on earth
holds a position that has existed
for nearly 2,000 years.
[metallic clanging]
[dramatic choral music]
As the world changes and faith evolves,
his authority remains.
What began with one apostle
has become 1.2 billion followers under one man.
He is the head of the Catholic Church:
the pope.
And this is his path to power.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
In this episode,
never-before-seen orders sent from Rome to the New World
expose the most scandalous popes in Vatican history
and reveal how spectacular advancements
in art, science, and exploration
are embroiled in webs of sex, bribery,
and murderous rivalries.
[bell tolling]
From the time of Saint Peter through the Middle Ages,
popes act as beacons of faith, morality,
and religious leadership.
But as Church influence expands,
the trappings of power
will seduce even the godliest of men.
In 1417, the papacy has been split
between France and Italy for 40 years.
But after the devastation of the Plague,
Pope Martin V reunites the Church
and begins to rebuild the once-great institution
in the once-thriving city of Rome.
- It was with the return of the papacy to Rome
that its heart began to beat again.
And it started to grow and to function
as the center of the Western Church.
And that was when the Renaissance
really kicked in.
- Very gradually, as Europe climbs back
into economic activity,
you start to see a class emerge
with enough money to have aspirations to buy things.
Luxury comes back on the scene.
narrator: As a merchant class begins to rise,
Europe ushers in an era or revolutionary advancements
in art and science.
Explorers set out in search of new lands.
[ticking]
The first mechanical clock
and the Gutenberg printing press are invented.
- And on the walls of the churches,
you start to see, for the first time,
that when human beings appear, they're not just tiny.
Man is standing a little closer next to God.
narrator: And the man closest to God is the pope.
- We owe some of the most significant art
in Western history
to the popes of the Renaissance.
- It's the world of Michelangelo,
Leonardo, Raphael.
And a whole succession of popes
act as patrons to this huge flowering
of the Western imagination.
- The Renaissance popes reshaped the city of Rome
into what we know it today.
narrator: Today, upwards of 10 million tourists a year
visit Rome to see the art and architecture
commissioned by Renaissance popes:
the Sistine Chapel,
Capitoline Museums,
and the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace,
all built in the name of the Church
during this time in European history.
But the celebrated advancements
in art and exploration come at a hefty price.
- For all of the beauty and creativity
that we think of now as the Renaissance,
a lot of that work was financed by corruption.
You want the Sistine Chapel?
The Sistine Chapel was paid for by bribery.
A lot of that beauty,
the flip side of it was brutality.
- The Church is very human,
made up of sinful people
who are striving to live a life
according to the Spirit,
and yet, we fall.
And big men with big titles fall.
- We always have to remember
that this history about the papacy
is not always a good history.
narrator: Behind the iconic images
of the 15th and 16th centuries
lie webs of scandal, violence, and depravity
surrounding the popes at that time.
- The thing you have to really remember
about this moment in history
is, there is no other game in town but Catholicism.
So the higher up you get in this organization,
which is kind of multinational by this time,
the more important your influence is.
And the pope is the CEO of this global institution.
- And Italy at this time
was an unbelievably dangerous place
to be an important person.
narrator: Throughout the Renaissance,
the Church amasses an exorbitant amount of wealth
through property holdings.
Churches act as local banks.
They hand out loans, collect tithes,
and sit on vast reserves of gold and silver
reaped through political alliances.
With the Church's swelling wealth
comes immense power,
and Europeans stop at nothing to gain favor with the Church
and garner influence within it.
- If you read Shakespeare
and you read Jacobean drama, stuff like that,
Italy at the time becomes this shorthand
for evil and grotesque double-dealing
and poisoning.
- Italy at this time is, of course, not a country.
She's a set of little city-states.
And the basic tool of loyalty in all of these places
is family, family.
You know, the mafia doesn't grow out of Italy
for no reason at all.
narrator: The families that control these city-states
are in constant competition with one another
for money, land,
and most importantly, power.
- The most important city-states were Milan,
run by Sforza family;
Florence, which came under the domination
of the Medici family;
and there was Rome,
which was the kingdom in which the king was the pope.
narrator: Today we don't often think of popes as family men,
but in the 1400s,
it was extremely common for popes to have children.
- It's pre- the Victorian moment
and the Puritan moment.
So all of these people
who are running this big institution,
many of whom have come from top-notch families,
cannot get married, and they understand that.
But that doesn't appear to mean chaste,
because the pope would have children.
narrator: By stacking the College of Cardinals
with sons and nephews,
popes are able to ensure
that their families stay in power.
- There is a great problem
when the papacy changes between families.
Rome can become a very dangerous,
even violent place there,
where the faction that's controlled the Vatican
finds itself under threat.
- I think the Pazzi conspiracy is a beautiful microcosm
of how crazy a place Renaissance Italy was.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
narrator: By the 1470s,
the Italian families had been embroiled
in power struggles for generations.
And the newly appointed Pope Sixtus IV,
a member of the ambitious della Rovere family,
feels an imminent threat from one of his rivals.
- There's conflict with the Medicis.
- The Medici family,
they were kind of a messy family.
I think about them as being the "Dynasty"
of the Renaissance.
narrator: The Medicis had interfered
with some business dealings of the della Roveres.
- One of Pope Sixtus's many nephews
is a vicious nut case.
Says, "The answer to our problems is,
"get rid of the Medici.
Get rid of this headache.
- This is just a stupid idea.
I mean, the Medici clan was huge.
- The pope agreed to the murder
of Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother.
narrator: The della Roveres recruit members
of the Pazzi family,
another Italian banking empire.
- The second-wealthiest family in Florence was the Pazzi,
who resented the Medici,
because they felt that the Medici
had unfair advantages.
narrator: On Sunday, April 26, 1478...
[crowd screaming]
The assailants attacked the Medici brothers
at a mass in Florence.
- The conspirators attacked and killed the brother
and attacked Lorenzo, who escaped.
- Lorenzo musters his troops.
They quickly capture the main conspirators
and the murderers,
and they're summarily executed.
narrator: And on August 6, 1492,
just three days after Columbus set sail
for the New World,
with the wealthiest Italian families
entangled in murderous rivalries
and the power to rule all of Europe and the Americas
at stake,
23 cardinals embark
upon one of the most ruthless conclaves in Vatican history.
narrator: In August of 1492,
23 cardinals must elect a new pope,
who will lead more Catholics than the world has ever known.
- The cardinals will live in the Sistine Chapel
until they finally decide who's pope.
So it's a very intense hothouse.
narrator: Every powerful Italian family
has a seat at the table and a horse in the race.
- The two most powerful factions at this conclave,
one was led by a cardinal named Ascanio Sforza.
And Sforza's primary rival was Giuliano della Rovere.
narrator: And Giuliano della Rovere,
the nephew of Sixtus IV, the vicious pope
who called for the violent removal of his rival,
has inherited his uncle's blind ambition.
- della Rovere had a very powerful personality.
- He's very smart, and he's very ruthless.
narrator: Determined to swing the conclave in his favor,
Giuliano della Rovere begins handing out bribes
in exchange for votes.
- Although the matter may finally be
about God and heaven,
this is an earthly institution,
and it's run by men,
and it has a power structure attached to it.
And whenever in history you introduce power structures,
you will find forms of corruption.
narrator: But while della Rovere and Sforza
wheeled and dealed center stage,
another candidate begins to form his own campaign
behind the scenes.
- Rodrigo Borgia...
was both an insider
and a dark horse at the same time.
narrator: Rodrigo Borgia is a Spanish Cardinal
who had steadily risen through the ranks of the Church
since he was a teenager.
- He had been through five papacies.
The most important, powerful member
of the Vatican bureaucracy.
But he was a Spaniard,
That makes him an outsider.
narrator: But despite being an outsider,
Borgia is an experienced Vatican politician.
On day four of the conclave,
the Spanish cardinal makes his move.
[mysterious music]
- In the middle of the night, six mules loaded with silver
leave the Borgia palace in Rome
and trot along the streets
to the palace of Ascanio Sforza,
cardinal, and one of his rivals.
And it is absolutely clear
that somewhere underneath there,
a deal has been done.
[bell tolling]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Rodrigo Borgia bought his way into the papacy.
narrator: Borgia's first order of business
as Pope Alexander VI
is to surround himself with a network
of people he trusts.
Like many powerful men of the era--and today--
Borgia places his children
in the highest ranks of his council.
- He had some of his children
marry important princes in other dominions.
He made his one son a cardinal
and gave him all kinds of Church income.
- It is a story of nepotism, really.
People ask, how could these kind of venal arrivistes
take over the Vatican City?"
narrator: Flanked by his children,
Pope Alexander VI prepares build a Borgia dynasty.
- The hierarchy of the Church is about making sure
that the papacy stays powerful.
And we have a global,
multinational company operating.
It needs a vast administration.
- Pope Alexander VI is the father,
almost the creator of modern diplomacy.
He introduced the practice
of stationing the prototypical ambassadors
at the city-states, to live there.
And then he started doing that
with the major north European capitals.
narrator: Each of his ambassadors
live amongst the clergy in their various stations
and report back to the Vatican.
Just weeks into his papacy,
Alexander VI has consolidated his power across Europe...
and he does not intend to stop there.
- The New World is discovered,
and Columbus is instructed to write letters to the pope,
sort of chatty little travelogues
about all the things that he's seeing
and who the natives are and what they look like
and how fascinating they are.
He's filling in the pope
in order to soften up the pope
towards the Spanish perspective,
because the Portuguese and the Spanish are spatting
about who is going to own what.
- This got very ugly and very tense,
and it seemed likely to result in war.
- They turned to the papacy, to Alexander VI,
to adjudicate the international boundary.
- It's the pope who literally draws the line
on the map of the ocean.
- Everything east of that line belonged to Portugal.
And that's how Brazil came to be a Portuguese colony.
narrator: On May 12, 1493,
Pope Alexander VI issues the Inter caetera.
The first papal bull grants the majority of the New World
to his homeland.
- The Spanish have the lion's share.
And blow me down, but if the pope
doesn't also get a Spanish bride
for his second son.
narrator: The papal order,
which leads to hundreds of years
of pillaging and destruction of native lands,
is still controversial today.
The world will soon learn
that all of Borgia's accomplishments
come with a price.
narrator: When Rodrigo Borgia
becomes Pope Alexander VI in 1492,
he ushers in an era of extreme duality.
He brings astonishing advancements
in art and technology into the Vatican,
alongside a culture of corruption, nepotism,
and brutal politicking.
- He knew how to terrify people.
He knew how to bully people.
But he was a very astute politician.
- He was like a mafia don,
like Marlon Brando in "The Godfather,"
somebody who enjoyed the trappings of power.
Often a very good administrator
is somebody who wants to get very rich themselves.
- Corruption is two-fold.
It's financial and sexual.
narrator: One of the most salacious stories
to come out of the Borgia papacy
is the Banquet of the Chestnuts.
- The story is that it was a party
at which dozens of prostitutes were invited,
and everybody got naked,
and all sorts of things happened,
somehow involving chestnuts.
And supposedly, Pope Alexander was present.
narrator: Though the tale of the banquet
is met with doubt,
the story of the pope's mistress
who took up residency in the Vatican is undisputed.
- Giulia Farnese was a beautiful young member
of an important Italian family.
And when Rodrigo became pope,
among the young men he appointed cardinals,
one was Giulia's brother.
This was a way of buying the girl.
"I'll make you a cardinal,
you let me have her as a mistress."
Rodrigo was 60 at the time.
She was 15.
She lived in the papal palace with the other young Borgias.
He had at least one child with her.
- To us, that looks like a bundle of contradictions.
How can you be conventionally pious
and yet be living this kind of contradiction?
It's a kind of Latin distinction
between the man and the office.
People managed to respect the office
while being aware that the people who occupy it
were extremely fallible.
- The modern man has some trouble with this.
Jesus himself was both god and man.
The person is both body and soul.
The Church is both justice, the law,
and mercy, forgiveness of sins.
- There was a sense in which sin was automatic.
Human beings would sin,
and if they didn't sin,
they wouldn't need the Church to help them get out of it.
narrator: And one way the Vatican
funds the pope's sins
is with the sale of indulgences,
fees paid to the Church in exchange for salvation.
- If you know you're gonna sin,
maybe you could buy, ahead of time, a pardon.
narrator: Despite their moral questionability,
indulgences pay for many of the treasures
we've come to associate with the modern Church.
- Borgia exemplifies all the things
about the Renaissance papacy
that we both deplore and admire.
A corrupt papacy,
but he's a great patron of the arts.
He begins to employ the greatest artists
and architects of the time.
narrator: During Borgia's papal rule,
the Castel Sant'Angelo was restored,
a center for the University of Rome is built,
and Michelangelo draws plans
to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica.
- One just has to live with the paradox
that these things are the product of sin,
but they are not themselves sinful.
They're wonderful,
and the world is better for them.
narrator: Borgia commissions so many works of art
in the name of God and his family
that the image modern Christianity
has come to associate with Jesus Christ
is said to be modeled after his oldest son, Cesare.
But while Alexander VI continues to collect bribes
and adorn the Vatican...
an old rival hatches a plan to take him down.
- The man who will turn out
to be Rodrigo Borgia's real nemesis
is Giuliano della Rovere.
- He was an angry, aggressive man
in contrast to Alexander VI's nature,
which, by everybody's agreement,
was immensely charming.
narrator: Borgia and della Rovere's rivalry
dates back to when they were both young cardinals.
But when Borgia wins the papacy in 1492,
della Rovere becomes obsessed with destroying his enemy.
- Not surprisingly,
when della Rovere doesn't get the papal throne,
he basically leaves Rome in a sulk.
- Della Rovere exiled himself to France
and attached himself to the French court
and tried to work against Pope Alexander VI.
narrator: Determined to take out his rival,
della Rovere convinces King Charles VIII of France
to capture Naples and, on his way, to sack Rome
and dethrone the pope.
- Two years after Rodrigo Borgia
comes to the throne,
this army floods over the Alps into northern Italy
and towards Rome.
It's a major catastrophe.
- As the immense French army
on its way to Naples approached Rome,
the papal court got ready to flee.
Alexander decided at the 11th hour,
"I'm not gonna run away."
narrator: Despite having no army himself,
in the face of 25,000 French soldiers,
Pope Alexander VI is determined
to fight for Rome and the Church.
- Basically, then, the pope is having to negotiate
sort of for his life,
and for the life of Vatican and papal independence.
- He invited Charles to come live with him in the Vatican.
And he so charmed him, so won him over,
that Charles announced, "Hey, this is a real thing.
I'm not gonna depose him."
- And then Pope Alexander helps to scoot them out on their way.
narrator: In one of the greatest diplomatic moves
in world history,
the Borgia pope convinces King Charles of France
to leave Rome and the papacy intact.
- Della Rovere went nuts over this,
because della Rovere lost his chance
to displace his enemy.
narrator: But soon, Giuliano della Rovere
will prove to be just the first of many threats
to the world-changing papacy of Alexander VI.
narrator: In 1494, the papacy is both flourishing
and festering in a sea of corruption.
And although the Borgia pope
charms King Charles into sparing Rome...
[cannons blasting]
his formidable French fleet continues its march
through the rest of the Italian peninsula.
[men shouting]
- The situation in Italy is getting very dodgy.
And into this vacuum kind of enters
this passionate fundamentalist
called Girolamo Savonarola.
narrator: Girolamo Savonarola
is a charismatic Italian friar living in Florence.
As Vatican culture becomes overtaken
with materialism and depravity,
Savonarola becomes more and more committed
to the Word of the Gospel
and takes vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
- He's a very good preacher,
and he understands the Bible inside-out.
He's part of the Church, but he sees its corruption.
And so he starts to make an attack on the Vatican.
- If you take Borgia and Savonarola,
they represent polar opposites
within the Christianity of the 15th century.
narrator: While the Borgia pope
commissions lavish works of art in the name of God,
Savonarola hails these expenditures
as the downfall of Christianity.
- His take on the Renaissance
is basically, "This is the beginning of hell on earth.
This is the beginning of the end."
narrator: Savonarola's apocalyptic sermons
draw thousands.
He blames the pope for the French invasions
and proclaims that God is punishing Italians
for the hedonism displayed by the Church.
- When Italy was being invaded by French armies
for the first time in decades,
it was a moment when the world
looked as if it was coming to an end.
And Savonarola started preaching
this world-end message before the crisis really hit,
so people thought, "Well, here's a prophet."
- He understands what happens when people get frightened,
and what he does is to say,
"Look at all this art all around the walls.
"There was a time when all you saw
"was pictures of our saints and Mary and Jesus.
"And now, along with them,
"you've got these people of flesh and blood.
"And there's quite a lot of flesh being shown too.
This is the body; this is not the Spirit."
"We're moving away from the true path,
and God is punishing us."
narrator: While Pope Alexander VI
dismisses the fanatical preacher as a passing phase,
Savonarola's following only grows.
- He did whip up a lot of support in Florence
aimed at Rome.
And he wrote some shocking things
about Alexander.
He wanted the world to see Alexander
as the embodiment of evil.
He wanted Alexander to be removed from the papacy.
Alexander could have had Savonarola taken into custody,
killed.
He just laughed it off
and never defended himself against it.
narrator: But on February 7, 1497,
Savonarola makes a spectacular display
of his rebellion that the pope cannot ignore.
- Savonarola contrives this idea of a bonfire...
[crowd clamoring]
to set fire to things that are not necessary
and fripperies and are luxuries.
[crowd clamoring]
- Famously, Savonarola gathered paintings,
beautiful objects, luxurious fabrics,
all put in a bonfire as a symbol of the last days.
- It becomes known in history as the bonfire of the vanities.
narrator: Tens of thousands of Florentines flock
to the bonfire of the vanities
and burn their worldly possessions.
- It's a brilliant stroke.
It's intimidating.
It's public spectacle.
It shows his power.
And it's dramatic.
[dramatic music]
It is one of the moments in this moment in history
that lives on as emblematic of excess luxury
and then excess fundamentalism.
narrator: Pope Alexander VI realizes
Savonarola is no longer someone to be ignored.
He deems the fire a declaration of war
against the Vatican.
[dramatic music]
narrator: In 1497, after months of ignoring
Savonarola's incendiary displays against the Vatican,
the bonfire of the vanities forces Pope Alexander VI
to strike back.
- The pope told him to stop all this.
He said no.
And the pope declared him a heretic.
narrator: Two months after the spectacle in Florence,
Pope Alexander VI has Savonarola excommunicated.
- Excommunication is a very powerful tool
which makes a lot of people nervous
about coming to hear Savonarola talk.
They may believe in him,
but the pope still runs the show.
And this guy is going to hell if he's been excommunicated.
- He was destroyed by his defiance of the pope.
narrator: For his transgressions,
the pope's supporters demand the heretic die.
On May 23, 1498, Girolamo Savonarola
is pulled into Florence's central square
and burned at the stake.
[fire crackling]
- They let him burn until nothing is left.
[dramatic music]
narrator: In August of 1503,
after creating a diplomatic empire,
commissioning some of the greatest works of art
the world has ever known,
and reigning over one of the most depraved papacies
in Vatican history,
the Borgia pope contracts malaria
and suddenly dies.
- It's such a dramatic decline.
A mosquito bites someone,
and the entire 11 years
of trying to build a dynasty collapses.
It's gone.
And within a year,
the arch-enemy has taken the papacy.
narrator: Just three months after his death,
Rodrigo Borgia's arch-rival Giuliano della Rovere
becomes Pope Julius II.
- Della Rovere was not chosen by a College of Cardinals
that saw in him a holy man
suited to be the leader of the universal Church.
He took the office, which he had hungered for,
by the force of his ability to intimidate,
and almost immediately became a kind of egomaniac.
narrator: Pope Julius II,
still driven by spite and vengeance,
makes it his personal mission
to destroy everything his nemesis built,
starting with Borgia's son Cesare.
- Pope Alexander definitely did go overboard with nepotism,
particularly with respect to his son Cesare.
- Cesare was basically been given the key to the kingdom.
He was given control of the army.
narrator: After he becomes pope,
Julius II has Cesare Borgia thrown in prison,
stripped of his title, and eventually killed.
- Della Rovere devoted himself
to blackening the reputation of the whole Borgia family.
- The rumor starts that Lucrezia Borgia,
Rodrigo's daughter, is a whore
who is sleeping with her father
and probably sleeping with her brother.
There is no evidence inside the Borgia history
of incest.
That doesn't mean it did not happen.
But it's a bit like tabloid journalism.
Once the mud has been slung, it sticks.
narrator: Pope Julius II continues to slander
the Borgia name
and proclaims their behavior so disgusting
that the part of the Vatican they lived in
must be closed off.
- Julius II had those Borgia apartments sealed up.
So contaminated by these evil presences
that nobody should go there.
They stayed sealed till the 19th century,
and now they're a tourist attraction.
narrator: Today, over 5 million people
tour the restored Borgia apartments every year,
making them one of the most visited attractions
in Vatican City.
And despite Pope Julius II's avid condemnation
of the corrupt Borgia papacy,
his lifestyle is even more extravagant.
- He actually was the great patron of Michelangelo.
He rebuilt the whole of St. Peter's.
He commissioned Michelangelo to do the dome.
narrator: In 1508, Pope Julius II commissions
the most famous work in the modern Vatican,
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
[dramatic music]
- Della Rovere was driven by personal ambition,
grandiosity.
He wanted Michelangelo
to get finished with the Sistine Chapel
so he could get to work on his, Julius's, tomb,
which was never finished.
narrator: Despite his motivations,
art flourishes under the della Rovere pope,
and the papacy becomes stronger
and more powerful than ever.
- He's a warrior pope
who actually goes into battle leading his own soldiers,
wearing silver armor.
It is to aggrandize himself, to some extent,
but it's also part of a vision of a papacy
that has to be underpinned by power.
narrator: Pope Julius II continues flaunting
the power of the papacy until his death in 1513.
By then, another powerful Italian family
has been patiently plotting to take over the papal throne.
And the young banking heir will take Renaissance opulence
to levels of excess
from which the Church may never recover.
narrator: The Renaissance popes
are known for their extravagance,
but one pope pushes papal spending
beyond the realm of wild excess.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Pope Leo X is a member of the wealthy Medici family
and has grown up in a lifestyle
of lavish luxury.
- Giovanni de' Medici was the second son
of Lorenzo de' Medici.
He was a pleasure-loving man.
Loved the arts, theater, music, all that sort of thing.
- Leo X and members of the Medici dynasty
represent the most glorious aspect of the papacy
at the beginning of the 16th century,
and also its nemesis.
They are the initiators of the alliance
between the papacy and the arts
and the corruption
of Western Christianity altogether.
[crowd chattering]
narrator: Leo X celebrates his election
with a party in Florence.
Part of the celebration includes a young boy
painted in gold.
In the middle of the festivities,
the boy dies from paint poisoning.
Many see this death of the golden boy
as a symbol of the apocalyptic prophecy
preached by Savonarola,
the embodiment of death by excess
at the hands of the Catholic Church.
- Pope Francis rapidly becoming known as the people's pope.
- Yeah, he takes the bus, as we've reported here.
He pays his own bills.
- Pope Francis is simply not interested
in the power-wealth-influence aspect of the papacy at all.
He gets up at 5:00, and he works till 10:00 p.m.
So there's a kind of focus there that we admire.
But if everybody was like that, the world would be horrible.
The Renaissance popes
did things very, very differently.
They took a lot of holidays.
They partied.
And they created beauty.
But the beauty was paid for with sin.
narrator: The Borgias, the della Roveres,
the Medicis,
and the murderous, power-hungry families
that shaped Renaissance Italy
bring the Church to a breaking point.
By the end of the 16th century,
their blind ambition, fierce loyalty,
and frivolous spending
has bankrupt the Church financially and spiritually.
- What they did with power,
it's obviously incompatible
with the figure of Jesus in the Gospels.
And yet, when you stand
in front of Michelangelo's "Pietà" in the Vatican
or Raphael's frescoes,
what do you say?
Do you take a hammer to them?
Or do you say they have nothing to do with Christianity?
- The finance and the corruption
and the creativity
are in queasy relationship to each other
all the way through this extraordinary moment
in history.
narrator: There can be no way
to untangle the corruption of the Renaissance
with the beauty and discovery that has come out of it.
Much of the power of today's Vatican lies
in the diplomatic positions set up by the Borgia pope
and the tourism attracted by the works of art
commissioned by the della Roveres
and the Medicis.
- What has been erected
are these extraordinary gifts to all of humanity,
so that the Church is like a repository of beauty.
How can we have this magnificent art depository
and architecture of St. Peter's
and then the corrupt actions of individuals?
And yet, the Church is both.
narrator: The duality of the Renaissance
lies within every facet of the modern Church.
With all progress comes sacrifice.
And despite the corruption of fallible men,
the papacy remains divine.