The Holy See, which has been called the Vatican since 1929, is one of the most mysterious and powerful states on this planet. Despite the fact that its representatives constantly declare in public that “their kingdom is not of this world,” the real power of the theocratic elite extends even to the most remote corners of our world. The reason for this is as follows: Catholicism is still the most widespread branch of Christianity; it is professed by over 1200 million people.
The history of the emergence and development of the Christian faith, as well as the history of its headquarters, the Vatican, is full of a huge number of secrets and mysteries, investigations of which often lead to things that are very remote from religion.
According to official sources, Christianity became the official religion under the Roman emperor Constantine. But, if we consider at what pace it was introduced, a lot of questions arise. Almost out of nowhere, within a few years, one of the cults of the provincial people becomes a state religion with all the attributes: from temples and rituals, to a ready-made staff of clergy with a management system. One gets the impression that the new religion was made by imperial decree in connection with an urgent "state necessity". Indeed, if you look at the provisions of the Christian religion, it becomes somewhat incomprehensible the contrast between them and what constitutes the system of its management. In a word: the clergy does not correspond to the faith.
Alberto Rivera, a former Catholic priest who converted to Protestantism, says that he came across an ancient Roman text in the archives of the Jesuit Order, which tells how the first Christian temple was urgently "built" in the time of Constantine. Obviously, the "project deadlines" were so tight that they had to go to obvious fraud. One of the temples located on the Roman hills was taken as a basis. The temple was plastered with new plaster, and the statues of the pagan gods inside were subjected to cosmetic treatment. So, for example, the statue of Jupiter was painted in St. Peter, the statue of Venus was “dressed” and christened the Virgin Mary, and so on. The temple was located on the Vatican Hill (mons Vaticanus). Actually, this is where the name of the capital of Catholicism comes from,and on the site of the very "first temple" of Christians, the Government Palace is now located.
From the very beginning of its appearance, the young religion went hand in hand with official power and did everything to control this power, if possible. In fact, starting from the 4th century AD. no ruler of a state with a Christian religion could do anything without looking back at the Holy See.
There is an opinion that even the emergence of such a religion as Islam is also the result of the activities of the Vatican, one of the most ambitious, but, alas, failed experiments.
In the 6th century A. D. The Eastern Roman Empire was able to get its hands on most of the "goodies" left over from the Western Empire after its collapse from the invasion of the Goths in 476. However, literally 100 years later, due to internal strife and raids by local barbarians, its territory was reduced to the size of modern Turkey. All this the clergy of Christianity could have experienced, if not for one circumstance: the holy city of Christianity, Jerusalem, turned out to be all the borders of the Empire. Moreover, the local tribes not only were not Christians, but also showed open hostility to this religion.
Something had to be done urgently, and a certain Augustine, the bishop of North Africa, got down to business. Having carefully studied the cults existing in that region (there were, in fact, few of them: Judaism in various forms and semi-pagan cults of worship of the Kaaba - an ancient sanctuary with a meteorite stored inside), Augustine decided to use the principle of "if you cannot win - lead." He developed the concept of a future religion, to which the following construction should have existed: Jesus was called a prophet, but the Pope was his successor. All other provisions of Islam were of little concern to Catholics. They were based on the books of Genesis, and, in fact, were a mixture of early Judaism, modernized Christianity and also some parts of the Kaaba cult.
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Be that as it may, at the initial stage, the idea was a tremendous success. Having chosen the necessary person among the Arabs - Muhammad, and having provided him with a number of "faithful helpers", the Catholics within literally 1-2 generations received at their disposal a huge army of followers, at least loyal to the Catholic Church.
These guys very quickly cleared the lands of Palestine from people "inconvenient" for Catholics (they cleansed in the truest sense - physically exterminated or expelled), however, when it came to the return of Jerusalem, the very purpose for which the new religion was created, they sent the Roman Curia far away. Moreover, they themselves turned to the Pope in order to issue them with letters for the seizure of the northern lands (Byzantium and Europe), since, they say, there are infidels and they also need to be urgently "cleaned up". Naturally, the Vatican refused, and the Arabs began their expansion without looking back at the Papal See. If Karl Martell had not been defeated at the Battle of Poitiers, perhaps we would all be Muslims now. However, the Vatican did not appreciate its savior: after his death, the church's comments about this man were very derogatory.
Then, over the next 800 years, the Vatican tried unsuccessfully to reclaim Jerusalem for itself, undertaking a total of nine crusades against the Arabs. This somewhat cooled the ardor of the top of the Catholic clergy. In addition, a number of problems “on the ground” appeared: all sorts of reformers appeared, such as Luther, all sorts of kings who wanted to be little “popes” themselves, such as Henry VIII, a lot of work appeared in the recently discovered Americas, and so on. For a time, the Vatican officially forgot about the Holy Land.
But have you forgotten? Not in the least! Throughout their existence, Catholics have been obsessed with the idea of control over Jerusalem. If you carefully analyze the history, you can see that during any political or economic shifts in the Sinai Peninsula, there must be a person somewhere nearby, if not from the Vatican, then in one way or another dressed in a monastic robe.
Since the mid-16th century, Jerusalem was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Vatican took a variety of steps in order to take it for itself. Naturally, during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, this was out of the question. However, already in the 18th century the situation changed dramatically: the Ottomans lagged far behind Europe both militarily and economically, and the Vatican had a chance …
Whoever the Holy Catholic Church tried to attract for the reconquest of this city. Spain, the kingdoms of Italy, Austria and even Russia - this is a list of only the "major players" of the political arena of that time, to which the Vatican officially addressed in order to free the shrine from the yoke of Muslim heretics. Individuals who dared to explicitly refuse the holy fathers, after a very short time either found themselves out of work, or were banally liquidated. Such was, for example, Paul, the Russian emperor, who imagined to unite Orthodoxy and Catholicism, and become the head of a new religion. These plans had a very serious justification: Paul, in spite of everything, wanted to be an ally of Napoleon, and such a conglomerate of political and military systems was mortally dangerous for the Vatican. The papal throne quickly orientated itself in the situation and, with the hands of the Russian aristocracy, "removed" the objectionable autocrat, at the same time achieving two goals at once: getting rid of a dangerous competitor and eliminating the threat to itself in the form of Napoleon (since the course of Russia after Paul's assassination changed to the opposite, anti-Napoleonic) …
Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Great Britain laid its paw on Palestine. Her government, promoted by a Jewish lobby that aims to create a unified Jewish state, received a temporary mandate to create a semblance of a Jewish state in Palestine. The British military contingent present there ensured the safety of Jews from various disasters from all over Eastern Europe. However, the most surprising thing was that behind the receipt of this mandate were not so much the big Jewish financial tycoons who sponsored this mission to Great Britain, but a certain Abrogio Ratti, who later became Pope Pius XI.
It was this man who first called on the clergy to adopt democratic institutions, it was he who inspired Britain to receive a Palestinian mandate, it was he who, in the end, agreed with Mussolini on the formation of the Vatican in its current state. But his main goal was precisely to hang the flag with two keys of St. Peter (the official flag of the Vatican) over Jerusalem. Ratti did not disdain anything on this issue - when he did not like the British, he turned to the Nazis. It is believed that Rommel's African campaign is an attempt to recapture Palestine from the British in order to hand it over to the Holy See. And in the future, the Catholic Church in every possible way helped the former Nazis to avoid persecution by both Israeli and other special services: Giovanni Pacelia (who became Pius XII in 1939) was not far from his predecessor.
And, perhaps, under Pius XI (or Pius XII), the Vatican would have received Jerusalem as a separate entity, annexed to the Holy See, but did not grow together again. This time "bloody Stalin" stood in the way of the Catholics. Joseph Vissarionovich was so imbued with the idea of sovereign Israel that he made every effort to grant him all kinds of autonomy, and in fact it was to him that the Jews owe the appearance of their Historical Homeland.
Be that as it may, it remains a strange fact that the religion, which currently has the largest number of followers, has not only a single "control center", but also the best ideology among religions (reformed Tomism, which allows one to operate very freely with the dogmas of faith), with fanatical pagan persistence seeks to take possession of a piece of the Sinai desert. Why does the Vatican need Jerusalem, if they have complete order with their "religious basis"? We may not know something; maybe the holy fathers of Catholicism have some mystical secret …