And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH (Rev. 17:1–5).

Roman Catholicism, the oldest continuing apostasy of Christianity, has been a historical enigma for centuries. A “mystery of iniquity” has been the rotting heart underneath her public veneer of a self-proclaimed “representation of Christ on earth.” Even from pre-Reformation times, the Roman Catholic Church has been viewed as the Mother Harlot of Revelation 17. Its extravagant wealth, pomp and circumstance have been part of an elaborate cover-up of this Kingdom of the Tares; it has been a church that has entered the gates of hell (Hades) where it resides in death. Its history from the early Crusades and subsequent reign of terror of the Papal Inquisitions has left the Vatican with more innocent blood on its hands than all the twentieth-century dictators, such as Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein, put together. Although End-time political governments certainly have had their cover-ups of deception and oppression, Romanism has risen to be the greatest of all deceptions. Proclaiming to be under the cloak of Christ, she presents herself as the bride of Christ, the papacy as Christ’s Vicar, and the Roman Church as the only church accepted by God.

The Architectural Wonder of the Mother Harlot

The word Vatican comes from the Latin Vaticanus, the name of one of the hills in ancient Rome upon which the palace of the pope was later built. St. Peter’s Basilica, located at the Vatican, is the largest church in the world. It occupies the site of Constantine’s original basilica, commissioned in A.D. 326 to mark the place of Peter’s martyrdom; his basilica was completed thirty years later. By the fifteenth century this first basilica, unstable and with entire walls on the verge of collapse, was in great need of repair. Work did not properly begin until the reign of Julius II (1503–1513), who tore down almost the entire building under the care of Donato Bramante, his master architect, and then laid the foundation stone for the new church. Bramante died in 1514, after which numerous architects and artists were called in to scrutinize and rework the plans, including Raphael, Peruzzi, Michelangelo (who was personally responsible for designing the mighty dome, the largest rotunda in the world; St. Paul’s in London is the second). Carlo Maderno finally completed its very impressive façade.

On November 18, 1626, more than a century after work began, Urban VIII consecrated the new St. Peter’s, and Romanists from all over the world came to marvel at its beauty. As one approaches the basilica, the certain details of the towering façade are not obvious from a distance: the central balcony, for example, from which new popes are presented to the people and give their inaugural blessings; or the thirteen statues including Jesus, John the Baptist, and eleven of the Apostles that line the balustrade (St. Peter’s statue is inside). The entrance to the basilica itself is through one of five enormous doors in the atrium (the central, ornate door dates back to 1445). On the floor, a few feet inside the entrance, is a circle of dark red stone. Of the six such stones that decorated the floor of Constantine’s original basilica, this is the only one that remains. It was on this very slab that kings and emperors knelt to receive their coronations from the pope himself, including Charlemagne, crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, A.D. 800.

Upon entering the basilica, on display in the Chapel of St. Peter, to the right of the entrance, is Michelangelo’s marble statue of Jesus in the arms of Mary (the Pieta); interestingly, the head of Mary is disproportionately larger than Jesus’. Michelangelo was only 23-years old when he did this piece, eventually signing his name along the sash of Mary’s mantle (mantilla) to silence doubters who thought he was too young to have come up with a work of such perceptive depth. Pope Paul III commissioned the elder Michelangelo (in his 70s) to work on the basilica itself. In 1972 a mad-man attacked the sculpture severing Mary’s arm, shattering her nose, and chipping off one eyelid before guards could stop him. Six months later the restorers discovered a previously unknown monogram sculpted from the skin lines on the palm of the Madonna’s left hand—an “M” for Michelangelo.

Down the main hall from this Chapel are two monuments. The first of these is the tomb of Pope John XXIII, who when he died in 1963 had become the most beloved pontiff in modern history. The second is the statue of a seated St. Peter; this statue was rescued from the original basilica and is believed to have been sculpted in the workshop of Arnolfo di Cambio. Peter’s left hand clasps the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, while his right is raised in a papal blessing. It is his feet, however, that get the most attention, the right one having been subjected to the kisses of so many pilgrims over the ages that it has been visibly worn down.

The Vatican over the centuries has boasted of sacred relics which have included the head and a little finger of St. Andrew; fragments of the true Cross brought back from Jerusalem by Constantine’s mother Helena; the veil used by Veronica to wipe sweat from Jesus’ forehead as He carried that same cross to Calvary (that cross was later believed to have displayed miraculous powers, from curing blindness to resurrecting the dead); and the lance of the Roman soldier Longinus, used to pierce the side of the crucified Christ. It is interesting to note that the ancient Italian Abbey of Monoppello, high in the Apennine Mountains, was in 1999 declared to have been in possession of the “real” Veronica’s Veil all along, despite the fact that the Vatican still brings out its own version once a year for Easter ceremonies. Such relics, endless in number, are found in many halls and rooms as well as in the many buildings and annex rooms that make up this massive edifice called the Vatican. There are also the many priceless paintings that adorn the complexity of this home of the Harlot.

The Vatican boasts of being the site of Peter’s martyrdom. In 1950, Pope Pius XII announced that the apostle’s tomb had been discovered beneath the high altar of the basilica. This was the result of more than a decade of intense archaeological excavations. The crypt beneath Peter’s had long been the final resting place of popes, emperors, and early Christian leaders, but it was always suspected that under them lay even more ancient graves. These graves are what were discovered between 1939 and 1949 under the direction of Ludwig Kaas, a high-ranking Vatican priest. During this time an entire network of second- and third-century mausoleums was uncovered, some Christian, some Roman.

The most significant discovery was a small monument dating from as early as A.D. 160 and seeming to mark the tomb of Peter. The team, led by Kaas, dug deeper, coming across a range of bones that were immediately sent to Dr. Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, the personal physician to the pope himself (soon after revealed as a “bogus” doctor), who asserted with inaccuracy that they belonged to a powerfully-built man who had died in his late 60s, a claim that led directly to Pius XII’s declaration. When the bones were sent to secular specialists for a second opinion, however, the results were far from what the Church had been hoping for. The “apostolic remains” were in fact bones belonging not to one man, but to two separate men (one young and one much older), as well as those of a woman, a pig, a chicken, and a horse. This news was kept from the public until Kaas died, less than two years later. It was then that other writings by Kaas were found and revealed that he had located another collection of bones in a second tomb. He had worked during a number of nights alone and kept his findings secret from the others of the archaeological team. When these bones were tested and confirmed to have belonged to a man in his 60s, the new Pope Paul VI made his own announcement, this time asserting that there could be no doubt that these were the true relics of Peter found beneath the high altar of the basilica (because of this the previous bones were discarded).

The Dark Secrets of the Mother Harlot

The history of Rome encompasses many dark secrets of deep immorality and perversions of great magnitude. It includes a woman as a pope (Joan in A.D. 855), the many illegitimate children of its papacy, assassinations of its leaders, and the many shady financial dealings of the Vatican bank. Truly, Rome has been the cover-up of evil throughout its history. Romanism is replete with history of debauchery and its control by the “prince of this world.”

Tokens of its perdition may be seen in such examples as Alexander VI (1492–1503), who ruled with such decadence that to this day the very mention of his name causes many within Rome to shake their heads in shame. He reputedly committed his first murder at the age of twelve, went on to become pope by sending four mules loaded with silver to his closest competitor, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, to help swing the vote in his favor. Alexander became father to no less than ten illegitimate children with various mistresses, and as pope he engaged in a campaign of ruthless nepotism, elevating many to positions of power (his son Cesare was made Archbishop of Valencia while still a student of seventeen), and setting up his mistresses in palatial homes across Rome. One, Giulia Farnese, was even used as a model for the Virgin Mary as has been proven in a recently discovered fresco for the papal apartments. Wealthy cardinals were imprisoned and executed on trumped-up charges, simply so Alexander could get his hands on their property. Rome was plunged into a period of unprecedented darkness, its streets filled with prostitutes and murderers going unpunished, while the pope occupied himself with drunken banquets of great immorality. Rome has never recovered from this debauchery.

Another token of perdition is seen within her corruption of wealth (estimated at three trillion dollars), which came to the forefront in the tragic 1982 murder of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi, whose shady financial dealings with the Vatican bank brought him to his undignified end, swinging on a rope beneath London’s Blackfriars Bridge. He was the chairman of the Italian Banco Ambrosiano which collapsed with debts of up to 1.5 billion dollars. Calvi’s death seemed to have been suicide, and the case was quickly closed by the Vatican, the independent state within the city of Rome. Yet the verdict of suicide was not accepted by the family, and the exhumation of his body in 1998 found compelling evidence that he was murdered; this evidence had been intentionally overlooked the first time. The injuries to Calvi’s neck, for example, were inconsistent with hanging; and there were many aspects that indicated he was murdered. Various underworld figures were indicted for the murder by the police of the city of Rome. Even today great mysteries continue to surround his death.

The collapse of the Vatican’s bank (Banco Ambrosiano) revealed an enormous network of illegitimate investments traceable to the Vatican Institute for Religious Works (IOR). A number of people who were involved were paid off to keep quiet. Calvi’s secretary (left a note revealing all that was done) jumped from a fifth-floor window of the Banco Ambrosiano building taking her own life. Calvi shaved his moustache, purchased a fake passport, and fled to Venice, where he then hired a plane to London. The next morning, Calvi’s body was discovered. Several other individuals of the bank also mysteriously died.

Another example of Romanism’s deep-rooted corruption within the hierarchy is found in the mystery of what happened to the speech denouncing fascism that Pope Pius XI was due to give just hours before his death in 1939, and what was the true role of his successor, Pius XII, in the rise of Nazi Germany? One of his first acts in replacing Pius XI was to meet with German authorities and reaffirm his support for the Nazi Party. The following month the papal ambassador to Berlin hosted a gala reception to mark Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. War was just weeks away. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, Pope Pius XII said nothing. He refused to condemn the Nazis even as war escalated and casualties mounted on both sides. Even later, when President Roosevelt sent his personal representative to the Vatican in the hope of forcing a reaction, the pope remained cold and silent. Rome’s view of Hitler and his leadership seemed not to have changed even years later when Pope Benedict XVI made his controversial trip to Auschwitz; he would not condemn Hitler and the Germans for what they did to the Jews. (We must remember that this pope was a member of the Hitler Youth, though he states he was forced into it at 14.)

There still is a great mystery surrounding the untimely demise of Pope John Paul I, who was found dead in 1978 after only thirty-three days in office. Much speculation has been given to his death, believing he was poisoned due to his strong anti-communist beliefs and his immediate desire to curtail Marxist’s studies in the seminaries of the Roman Catholic Church across the world. None of his desires to stay the growing plague of Christian Marxism within Romanism would be seen in the next pope, John Paul II.

Then in 1998, a member of the Swiss Guard brutally killed John Paul II’s superior officer and wife in a great rage, or, at least, that was the Vatican’s official version of events. Information about these deaths was quickly quelled by the Vatican. The autopsies were carried out behind closed doors by Vatican doctors who were sworn to secrecy and kept no written records of their findings. The families involved hired their own independent detectives who uncovered much information, but nothing was able to be done with the Vatican because of their “closed doors” policy.

As for the assassinations perpetrated by Rome, the list is endless; so are its secret manipulations of the media. One of the reasons the tens of thousands of priests caught as pedophiles are able to by-pass the law of the countries of the world is that as representatives of the independent state of the Vatican they have political amnesty. Yes, the Vatican is truly one of the crucial seats of Satan on the planet today, the Harlot who has drunk much blood of the saints and lived in the dark powers of evil.

The Secrets of the Mother Harlot

Perhaps a word concerning the papal secret archives would be worthy to note. This notoriously inaccessible repository for all manner of records, the so-called “Archivio Segreto Vaticano,” contains much of its dark, insightful history of collaboration with the powers of evil. Off limits to all but the most persistent of scholars (and even then, the materials are very limited), access to it is granted only by a lengthy application procedure. Some of the manuscripts found here may date back to the Caesars of Rome. The writings number into the tens of thousands. The following is just a small sample of the documents contained within the archives:

1. The letter from the Mongolian ruler Great Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, rejecting the pope’s claim that the Great Khan needs to be baptized, and his refusal to enter into peaceful relations with the Church until the pope himself goes to pay homage at the Mongolian Court.
2. A document announcing the foundation of the University of Cambridge by Pope John XXII in 1318.
3. A petition on behalf of the English King Henry VIII seeking papal annulment of his twenty-four-year marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he might marry Anne Boleyn (1534). It is interesting to note that the many red ribbons attached to the bottom of the petition (the seals of eighty-five English noblemen attempting to convince the pope of the legitimacy of Henry’s case) are said to be the origin of the term “red tape.”
4. A letter from Pope Paul III to the artist Michelangelo asking the artist to continue his work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, originally commissioned by Paul’s predecessor, Clement VII—1535.
5. One of the last remaining letters by Michelangelo himself, pleading the case of the guards of St. Peter’s Basilica, whom he says “have not been paid in three months and will desert their posts unless remuneration is forth-coming”—1550.
6. Handwritten records of the Inquisition’s trial of Galileo for his so-called heretical claims that the earth revolved around the sun—1633.
7. Award of the Papal Equestrian Order of the Golden Spur granted to Mozart for his musical achievements—1770.
8. Peace treaty between the Pope and Napoleon’s French Republic, signed by Napoleon himself—1797.

Along with more manuscripts from the Inquisition, other items in these collections include the legendary lost second book of Aristotle’s Poetics; countless apocryphal Christian writings, many of them gospels penned by contemporaries of the apostolic apostles and a century later; the libraries of the heretical Frankish Cathars which speak of the alleged marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene; evidences pertaining to the many torture methods (and drawings) used by the Papal and Spanish Inquisitions; Gnostic writings,including texts by groups such as the Orphites who worshipped Lucifer as the “Light Bringer”;the dark dealings by Vatican authorities over many centuries; evidences and details of sacrificial murders and devil worship to the more recent controversy surrounding pedophile priests, and the tens of thousands of babies born to priests because of their immorality;detailed reports of various Vatican exorcisms through the many centuries of the Vatican; and the list goes on and on.

The popes over the centuries have kept nearly every scrap of paper, from personal letters to formal papal documents, since the beginning of the Roman Church. The vast bulk of this material was passed on from pope to pope until A.D. 649 when the collection found its first home in the vaults of the Lateran Palace of Rome. In the eleventh century, the archives were moved to a holding place on the slopes of Palatine Hill, by which point a number of the oldest papyri were already disintegrating. During the Middle Ages, the archives were significantly defected by being moved around a great deal. In 1245 they were taken by boat to a monastery in Cluny, and then to Perugia, Assisi, and finally Avignon, where they remained for more than a century. It was not until the rule of Pope Martin V (1427–1431) that the monumental process of moving the archives back to Rome began, by boat and wagon. A great number of official documents were lost or ruined at this time.

The first attempt at cataloguing the collection came during the reign of Pope Innocent II(1198–1216); but it was Nicholas V (1447–1455) who officially founded the Vatican Library and Sixtus V (1585–1590) who organized the secret archives into eighty separate cabinets or amaria which are still in existence today. There was one final journey of this collection, when at the turn of the nineteenth century Rome was invaded by Napoleon. He decided to transport the entire Vatican Library to France. The shipment was estimated at3,239 separate chests; it took three years to make the move. But following his defeat in1814, the archives began their slow return back to the Vatican. Many carts plunged into rivers and fell over cliffs; only 2,200 of the chests made it back to Rome.

Nevertheless, its archives are now safely in the vaults of the Vatican. According to some reports the secret archives are estimated as containing fifty-two miles of shelving, with some thirty-five thousand volumes catalogued and many works still waiting to be catalogued.The oldest surviving document (at least catalogued) is declared to have been written in the eighth century. But again, this is the formal statement of the Vatican. The secrets within the Vatican seem to go back much further.

What details of assassinations, plots to overthrow governments, and the writings of crimes against nature and humanity are to be found in the vaults of this Harlot’s record of iniquity! The historical record of her wickedness seems to be part of the thrill and delight of her many deeds of fornication with the world.

Conclusion

In our next issue of Straightway, we desire to unfold the changes that are coming to Romanism and the present influences that are rising within its labyrinth of networking powers. Also we must observe the “speculations” that recent literary works have identified with Romanism and its cover-ups of history. Whatever the Mother Harlot has been in the past, she has not come to what she will be in order to ride the back of the Beast, the Antichrist. Though the final product of her sin has not yet appeared, she will be the leader of the “Inter-faiths” of religion that will rise in the next few years. The time is ripe for the changes; the end of one Rome will be known, and the beginning of another will rise from her filthy garments and fornication.

May God grant us the sight to see God’s Word through these dark and difficult days of political and religious deceptions.