Catholics have long been the targets of lurid conspiracy theories. In today's episode, we're going to refute three of the silliest ones,

starting with a recent conspiracy that's been shared on social media. Number one, the Pope John Paul II, Jeffrey Epstein Connection.

In the wake of the recent release of material from the Epstein files, some people claim Pope St. John Paul II was involved in Jeffrey Epstein's sex

trafficking and cite this picture as evidence. This ex-user writes, Jeffrey Epstein and

Jislane Maxwell being personally blessed by the Pope. Interesting. But a raised eyebrow does not

an argument make. The Pope blesses thousands of people every year, and he doesn't do a background check on

each of them beforehand. Other people pointed to this email from one of Epstein's assistants

or associates saying that Epstein lived at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II, implying that the

Pope knew about Epstein's activities. Now, first, people have lived with even serial killers

and not even known what they were doing.

So it's not surprising if some bad people lived in Vatican City and the Pope never knew about what they were doing.

But the evidence that Epstein himself lived at the Vatican is as flimsy as the evidence that Epstein unalived himself.

In the email from 2015, 10 years after John Paul II died, some kind of contractor says he's trying to paint columns in different styles for Epstein and writes the following.

He wants me to finish each column different, as when he was living with Pope John Paul II in Vatican.

He looked at variety of different columns captured in wars.

He told me that every pope demanded to have a column from every conquered country. So there is a collection of different columns captured in wars. He told me that every pope demanded to have a column from every

conquered country. So there is a collection of different columns in Vatican. But there is no

collection of columns that the pope acquired after conquering different territories. So this is probably

just a jumbled recollection of something a Roman tour guide told Epstein when he was in Roman 2003 when John Paul II blessed him,

and then he told this restoration specialist about it 10 years later.

Now, John Paul II does share some blame for the clergy abuse crisis and McCarrick scandal.

Part of this was due to the Pope having endured the Soviet occupation of Poland,

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