Bernard de Morlaix, monk of Cluny, writes in the 12th century,
"Rome is the impure city of the hunter Nimrod: piety and religion have fled its walls.
Alas! the Pontiff, or rather the King of this odious city of Babylon, treads under foot the sanctity of the Gospel and the morality of Christ."
Matthew Paris, the historian of the 13th century, says:
"The holy city has become a place of infamy, whose lewdness surpass even that of Sodom and Gomorrha."
So universal was the scandal caused by the bestial vices of the Popes and the Italian cardinals that the Catholic Parliament of England refused to allow Pope Innocent IV. to come to the British Court. Why? Because, as the House of Commons roundly declared, "the Papal Court spreads such an abominable odor that it should not be permitted in England."
(This was the Catholic Parliament of the Catholic King, Henry III., 13th century.)
Let me quote the brutally frank words of a Pope—
"Whoever," writes Pius II., "has not felt the fire of love is either a stone or a beast.
Who is it, at the age of thirty, that has not committed a crime for the sake of love?