L I B R A R Y
"ROMA PAPALE" BY LUIGI DESANCTIS
BACKGROUND
Desanctis became a Catholic priest in 1831 , and a member of the Order of the Regular Chancers of "Camillians". In 1835 during the cholera epidemic. He served in Genoa as chaplain giving last rites to the sick.
Desanctis held the degree of "emeritus censor" at the Theological Academy of the University of Rome and became a fellow of numerous Italian academies.
In 1836, Descantis was promoted to doctorate of theology in the Roman Catholic Church and On June 9, 1837, Desanctis was appointed qualifier of the Holy Office ( of the Inquisition ), in Rome. Desanctis served as an appointed qualifier for the office of inquisition, for a full decade. Cardinal Ludovico Micara, dean of the Sacred College of Rome, chose Luigi Desanctis, as one of the diocesan examiners of the clergy.
In 1838, Descantis was appointed professor of theology at the University of Sapienza. But in 1842, fter experiencing the shock of personally participating in an inquisition he was responsible for as professor of Theology, he began to think about what he had been involved with and developed politically liberal and critical ideas, about the role and policy of the Vatican.
After making known his ideas of reform, he was suspended from his duties and sent to Sant' Eusebio of Rome's convalescence and spiritual exercises and encouraged to review his ideas. His objections of conscience to the inquisition, however, only continued to intensify and on September 11: 1847, he fled from Rome to the island of Malta, which at that time, granted asylum for persecuted priests fleeing from extradition by the Vatican. after escaping from the Church of Rome, Luigi Desanctis went on to become one of the most active missionaries and prolific authors, of evangelical Protestantism, in ecclesiastical history. Today, the vast majority of people who identify themselves as evangelical Protestants, have never even heard of his name.
In the book, "Roma Papale", Luigi Desanctis, the former doctorate professor of Theology, at the University of Sapienza and Inquisitional examiner, recounts what he witnessed at the Vatican, when he became involved with the Papal inquisition. And the shocking truth he discovered, that turned him personally and irretrievably , against what the Vatican undeniably, really was.
EXCERPT FROM "ROMA PAPALE" BY LUIGI DESANCTIS
There was a flight of stairs down one side of the courtyard that entered into an area lighted only by an open grating. It was a subterranean like sepulcher, greasy, black and soft earth covered the ground and human bones cracked under our feet.
We could scarcely contain ourselves at such a sight, my host fumed with indignation. We then went down to look at another part of a building where the prisons are ...there are small cells, capable of containing one person ...under these are the subterranean prisons ...they are made from the ruins of the ancient circus of Nero, which was there.
In one of these dungeons there was a stone staircase which led to a still deeper dungeon. It was destined to receive those who were condemned to be walled up to die. The skeletons that were found here indicated the mode of their barbarous execution.
They let down these unfortunate ones with their hands and feet tied they buried them up to the breast in dry lime mixed with earthen cement and left them there, closing the grating above. The positioning of these skeletons showed the horrible struggle they had before finding death.
We came out of the dreadful abode and continued to visit the old prisons. A little corridor on the left of the courtyard described, led down to another yard, smaller and worse than the first. In it were sixty small cells used as prisons divided into three floors, twenty on each floor. In many of these cells there was an enormous iron ring made to open and shut with a padlock. In the middle of one such prison was a round stone in the pavement. It covered a well without water in which there were skeletons.
The Vatican's Palace of Horrors.
They are divided into two stories. Each one has the form of a monk's cell, except that the window is very high up with bars. There remained to be seen the Chamber of Torture. It was in one of the lowest and most hidden dungeons. It had no window.
A door and a passage afforded the current of air necessary for respiration. No other light penetrated but from lighted torches and the braziers. We went down further by stone steps into what was called the "Hall of Torture".
The instruments of torture were no longer there because... torture was (legally) abolished at the end of 1815. A large chimney close by indicated the place of torture by fire.
Now this place is changed to a cellar, the bottles of the Holy Inquisitors fresh. Having pulled down a wall, another cellar was found, but instead of bottles, they found in it two large ovens, made like beehives and in these furnaces, there were still calcined human bones. But the Holy Inquisition never derogates from its own laws and when it can no longer burn heretics in the open air, because the smoke would be seen, it burns them in its furnaces.
We came out of so dreadful a place never to return again.