In 1542 Pope Paul III established a permanent, Rome-directed, all-powerful office which he called “the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.” This became the supervisory body for all local Inquisitions. Though the pope was the head of the body, he assigned 11 cardinals to do the actual work of the organization. Today the office is know as The Congress of the Doctrine of the Faith–new feel-good name, same deadly agenda. The only reason the Inquisition is not in operation today is because secular laws prohibit it. Such laws will one day be removed and the mighty Catholic Church, her numbers increased by billions of people formerly of other religions and empowered by a world-ruling Beast government, will once again wreak havoc on earth–the Office of Inquisition will once again raise its ugly head. Prior to his elevation in status, the director of the Congress of the Doctrine of the Faith (Office of Inquisition) was none other than Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who became Pope Benedict XVI.

Initially, only Christians were persecuted. Later Jews and Muslims were singled out for ever-increasingly harsh treatment. The year 1288 saw the first mass burning of Jews which took place in France. By this time it had become routine for “heretics” (non-Catholics) to be burned at the stake. Those who confessed their “guilt” were strangled before being burned; those who refused to confess were burned alive. The accused was guilty until proven innocent, which rarely happened. One’s relatives could be forced to testify against him/her. Anyone could bring charges against anyone else. False accusations sometimes resulted in personal grudges resulting in people being killed for anticatholic rhetoric or actions which were seen or heard only by the accuser. If found guilty, the property of the accused was confiscated by the church. Much of the tremendous wealth possessed by the Catholic Church was acquired in this manner.

Dissatisfied with the slow, cumbersome process being carried out by the church, the queen of Spain asked for and received permission for her government to carry out its own state-run Office of Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition officially began in 1481. Directed primarily toward “conversos”– Jews, Muslims, Athiests and former Catholics who had converted to Christianity–the Spaniards lost little time in showing the rest of Europe how to deal with religious rebels. In Seville, 700 conversos were burned at the stake; in Toledo 467 went up in flames.

In all, approximately 32,000 heretics were eventually burned at the stake by the Spanish Office of Inquisition. Officials in Portugal burned some 1800. The exact number of rebels burned at the stake world-wide is not known, but estimates put the number in the tens of thousands. Some estimates of the total number of people killed by various means during the Inquisition world-wide range from 50,000,000 and 150,000,000. Because records were not kept in all areas, the exact number can only be surmised. The more fortunate heretics were merely removed from their individual countries. England expelled all her Jews in 1290; Spain in 1492; Lithuania in 1495 and Portugal in 1497.

Some have wondered if the Catholic Church had anything to do with the trials in which people accused of witchcraft were tried and put to death. The church did not formally participate in the trials of accused witches. However, it was a papal bull (publication) by Pope Innocent VIII linking heresy to witchcraft that seemed to set the movement in motion. His influence in this regard eventually extended to the New World where the Salem (Mass.) witch trials would later remind the world of the deadly effect that Satan-controlled religion can have on a population. To be continued. L.J.