"THE MURDERED POPE"



The real enemy of Pope Boniface VIII was the leader of France in the 1300's, King Philip the Fair, who sent his henchman William of Nogaret to exact punishment on this saintly Pope by breaking entrance into his papal quarters in the Vatican, then striking the Pope with a sacrilegious blow on the face. 

Shortly thereafter, within a month, this pope died from this fatal blow thus transferring the papacy to Avignon, France for the next seventy years. This was the end of the Middle Ages and the inception of troubles



The real enemy of Pope Boniface VIII was the leader of France in the 1300's, King Philip the Fair, who sent his henchman William of Nogaret to exact punishment on this saintly Pope by breaking entrance into his papal quarters in the Vatican, then striking the Pope with a sacrilegious blow on the face. 

Shortly thereafter, within a month, this pope died from this fatal blow thus transferring the papacy to Avignon, France for the next seventy years. This was the end of the Middle Ages and the inception of troubles for the Church and the world hereafter. 


What horrors came upon Europe for the murder of Pope Boniface VIII:  The Hundred Years War, the despair of the Black Death with millions dying in Europe and just as many dying with unabsolved sins on their souls and no Eucharist. The Church too was scourged with more horrors: heresies, schisms, superstitions, and immorality everywhere. 


Viciously, the Church was also attacked by the secular Renaissance and with the religious revolution of Luther in 1517.  Then came the French Revolution as revolutions spawned more revolutions everywhere–the American, the Russian, and the Chinese– as the hierarchy of the Church was crumbling before Christendom’s very eyes. 


Then followed the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions and the modernistic pagan and secular world we live in today; all since the murder of Boniface VIII.  What is left for us today with the slow collapse of Christendom in the West but few very holy men as popes: amongst all the popes who have ruled since Boniface VIII, we have seen only three popes canonized in seven centuries since Bonficace VIII’s death in 1303 and only three others declared blessed.  Most noteworthy of all is how few popes are really worthy of the title "saintly" in all of history since Boniface VIII, how few have shown such heroic sanctity as Boniface VIII, how few a great love of God, how few a pristine and pure faith, how few a vigilance for doctrine and a Christlike charity.