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Galileo Galilei suggested the Earth moves around the sun, and that the star was the center of the universe. He was arrested for heresy, denounced his beliefs, and was imprisoned until his death.

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And to make the party even more interesting, Pope Alexander VI reportedly offered prizes to the man who could have sex with the most women.

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He is said to have gotten 50 women to strip, and then chestnuts were thrown on the floor, “forcing the women to grovel around their feet like swine,” according to historian Tony Perrotet.

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Not only did this Pope apparently like to watch horses fornicate as entertainment, he also became associated with a party in 1501 known as the Banquet of Chestnuts.

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Czech theologian and philosopher Jan Hus had this crazy idea that because the Church was run by humans, it was inherently flawed. The Catholic Church was not a fan of critics, so in 1415 they arrested Hus, accused him of heresy, and burned him at the stake.

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A contributor to Protestantism, Wycliffe believed the Catholic Church should give up its possessions. He too was involved in the first English translation of the Bible.

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The concept of indulgence has been around for a while in the Church. But what is it, really? “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.”

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The Catholic military order founded in 1118 was instrumental during the Crusades and indeed in serving the Church. But King Philip IV of France pressured the Church to get rid of them because he owed debts to the order.

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In 1415 (31 years after his death), Wycliffe was declared a heretic. Over a period of 12 years, Wycliffe’s books were burned, and then so was his exhumed body.

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The massacre triggered by the book continued for centuries, with famous cases such as the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Some documents point to 1793 as the last recorded execution, which took place in Poland. But witch hunting is still very real in some parts of the world, particularly in some African countries.

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The book ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ ('Hammer of Witches') was written in 1487, after Pope Innocent VIII declared that witches were real. Since then, millions of women have been persecuted and killed for allegedly being witches. It is estimated that 40,000 to 50,000 people were burned at the stake (mostly women), but it has been suggested that the number is much higher, as not all executions were made in the public arena.

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During the rule of Pope Leo X (1513-1521), it was common practice for people to pay to get their sins absolved. Some went as far as selling absolution for future sins. This was one of the reasons why Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation.

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The English scholar was burned at the stake by the Church for translating the Bible into English so that everyone could read it.

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He is even depicted in Dante’s ‘Inferno’ as worthy of a spot in hell. Not to mention that he demolished the entire city of Palestrina, killing about 6,000 people.

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Pope Boniface VIII, the head of the Catholic Church between 1294 and 1303, appears to have been anything but holy. There are quite a few accounts of him abusing numerous women and children. So much so that he was posthumously accused of heresy and sodomy.

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The 19-year-old was eventually tried by the Church and accused of over 70 crimes, including wearing men's clothes. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, only to be considered a martyr a few years later and canonized in 1920 by the very same Church that killed her.

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While not being a predominantly Catholic country, it is estimated that there have been at least 17,200 victims in the US alone, according to a 2011 report.

Sources: (Ranker) (The Wall Street Journal) (NBC) (The Smart Set)

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For many years, numerous cases of sexual abuse, including of minors, have been covered up by the Catholic Church.

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It was not until 2019 that Pope Francis publicly acknowledged it and declared war on sexual abusers in the Church.

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And a month earlier, in August 1942, Ukrainian Archbishop Andrzej Szeptycki also told the Vatican that Jews were being persecuted in the Lvov ghetto.

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For many years, Pope Pius XII has been criticized for ignoring eye witness reports of the mass executions of Jewish people by the Nazis.

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While there have been contradictory claims, new evidence unveiled in 2020 by the Vatican suggests that in September 1942 the pope’s assistant received an eyewitness report of Jews being persecuted in Warsaw.

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…for dressing like a man. Yes, the famous French heroine helped fight the English out of the country, but she was also persecuted by the Catholic Church.

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Needless to say, the Catholic Church didn’t like the idea of a vernacular Bible being distributed among lay people. Both Tyndale and copies of the book were burned.

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The Crusades lasted from 1095 to 1291. The original idea was to seize Jerusalem from Islamic rule, which pretty much turned into a 300-year-long bloodbath.

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In 1307, Pope Clement V started persecuting Templars. By 1312 he had enough heresy confessions to disband the order. Many were then burned at the stake.

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It is estimated that about 1.7 million lives were lost on this misguided quest. But it was not just Muslims who were slain at the service of the Catholic Church. It is believed that only one in 20 Crusaders actually survived to see Jerusalem.

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Muslims were not the only ones persecuted during the Crusades. Jewish people also fell victim to the Crusaders. Some were forced to convert, others killed.

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There have been countless religious scandals over the years. This is particularly true for the largest Christian church in the world: the Catholic Church. But while many of these scandals only surfaced in the last few decades, the Church does have a controversial history dating back centuries.

Browse through the following gallery and learn more about these Catholic Church scandals.