Cardinal calls for reform of Catholic Church, drops dead moments later

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

I know the Catholic clergy is debauched, but when a cardinal's name is literally "Martini", things get interesting.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Carlo Martini was a candidate for pope, before he went "off message". Then he died days later. Did God smite him for supporting divorce, anti-Biblical stances on the position of women, and child-murder? Or did the other Catholics kill him for his dissent?

From the BBC:

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has described the Roman Catholic Church as being "200 years behind" the times.

The cardinal died on Friday...

Catholics lacked confidence in the Church, he said in the interview. "Our culture has grown old, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous."

Unless the Church adopted a more generous attitude towards divorced persons, it will lose the allegiance of future generations, the cardinal added. The question, he said, is not whether divorced couples can receive holy communion, but how the Church can help complex family situations.

And the advice he leaves behind to conquer the tiredness of the Church was a "radical transformation, beginning with the Pope and his bishops".

"The child sex scandals oblige us to undertake a journey of transformation," Cardinal Martini says, referring to the child sex abuse that has rocked the Catholic Church in the past few years.

He was not afraid, our correspondent adds, to speak his mind on matters that the Vatican sometimes considered taboo, including the use of condoms to fight Aids and the role of women in the Church."

That's the exact same things that was said by Pope John Paul the first, who died within days of becoming pope:

...the Vatican altered some of the details of the discovery of the death...an autopsy was not performed. Yet this, along with inconsistent statements made following the Pope's death, led to a number of conspiracy theories concerning it. These statements relate to who found the Pope's body, the time when he was found, and what papers were in his hand. The Vatican has yet to investigate any of these claims.

There's a whole book on how they had the mafia "whack" him, called "In God's name".

Here's Time Magazine reporting that Pope John Paul 2 was murdered.

Look at this list, and you'll see that being a pope is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world:

Chronological list of popes murdered:

Stephen VI (896–897): Strangled[6]
Stephen VII/(IX) (939–942): Mutilated[citation needed]
John XII (955–964): Murdered by cuckolded husband[7]
Benedict VI (973–974): Strangled[8]
John XIV (983–984): Either by starvation, ill-treatment or direct murder[9]
Gregory V (996–999): Poisoned[citation needed]

Chronological list of popes who are alleged to have been murdered

John VIII (872–882): Allegedly poisoned and then clubbed to death[10]
Adrian III (884–885): Allegedly poisoned[citation needed]
Leo V (903): Allegedly strangled[11]
John X (914–928): Allegedly smothered with pillow[12]
Stephen VII/(VIII) (928–931): Allegedly murdered[citation needed]
Sergius IV (1009–1012): Allegedly murdered[citation needed]
Clement II (1046–1047): Allegedly poisoned[13]
Damasus II (1048): Allegedly murdered[citation needed]
Boniface VIII (1294–1303): Death possibly (though unlikely) from the effects of ill-treatment one month before[14]
Benedict XI (1304–1305): Allegedly poisoned; no evidence provided[citation needed]
Pope Pius XI (1922-1939): Allegedly, due to the fact that his doctor was the father of Benito Mussolini's mistress.
John Paul I (1978): death just 33 days after Papal election led to conspiracy theories.

[Johny Joe Hold]

Re: Cardinal calls for reform of Catholic Church, drops dead moments later

I did not know all the facts in this case. Thank you for laying them out for us.

I hope there is an investigation. Somehow, I think the Pope will prevent anyone from looing into it.