Probably the last pope with such a worldly and political approach as Francis’s was Urban VIII (1623–1644). He involved the papacy in a disastrous war with neighboring principalities, and at Urban’s death the Holy See was bankrupt and his family was chased out of Rome. The more lasting damage that Urban did to the Church was his condemnation of Galileo, not because he considered that the astronomical theory of heliocentricity was heretical (the erroneous view that is often taken of the incident) but in personal revenge for the apparent insult to the pope that Galileo had woven into his book on the subject.

Perhaps a closer parallel was a ruler such as Paul IV (1555–1559), a zealot for religious poverty who was elected pope in his seventies. His political obsessions led him to fight against the Emperor Charles V, the prime champion of the Catholic cause in the war against Protestantism that was raging at that time, and he quarreled, again for political reasons, with Mary Tudor and Cardinal Pole, who were engaged in the difficult task of restoring Catholicism in England. His reign ended in political scandal and popular riots against him. Or one might consider Urban VI (1378–1389), who was elected as a complete outsider and soon showed that he lacked the mental balance for his office. The cardinals asked him to abdicate, and on his refusal declared him deposed and elected an antipope, thus initiating the forty-year Western Schism. Urban responded by creating a job lot of twenty-nine cardinals to replace those who had deserted him, but he soon quarreled with these too and executed five of them for plotting against him, while several others went over to the rival side.

Cases such as these illustrate the dangers of placing a loose cannon aboard St. Peter’s Bark, and the difficulty of deposing a pope.³⁷

37. In 1632 Urban VIII’s refusal to support the Catholic cause in the face of the Protestant military victories that were sweeping over Europe caused Cardinal Ludovisi (the nephew of the previous pope) to threaten to depose him as a protector of heresy, while at one consistory Cardinal Borgia read out a formal protest, with the cardinals crowding round him to prevent the pope from silencing him. One of the pasquinades that appeared against Urban VIII asked, “Is His Holiness by chance a Catholic?”—a question which has been heard in our own times.