Author's Note. My perspective in this article is as a Catholic. Readers are warned that the Catholic Church is as human as it is divine. The human frailty and errors among Popes and Cardinals should not scandalize the faithful into leaving the Church, join the growing non-Catholic sects, led by the Born Again movement, and deepen the crisis. Rather, we should pray for the human Church to have the grace to reform itself.

Note also that the term "Conservative" and "Liberal" are used as generic terms and do not necessarily apply to certain individuals. There is a vast rainbow of theological positions among Popes and Cardinals.

St. Pope John Paul II or "JP2"  (1978-2005) was a staunch Liberal. When Vatican journalists exposed the "Vatican mafia," dominated by Conservatives, who embezzled Vatican Bank funds on a massive scale, JP2 shrewdly chose Conservative Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI) to contain his fellow Conservatives. Ratzinger partly succeeded, for which he was labeled the "German Shepherd," but the Conservatives had been too big and powerful in the last few centuries to be easily extinguished totally.

When JP2's Parkinson's disease worsened, Ratzinger advised him to resign. Instead, JP2 formed a commission to handle the Vatican mafia problem. The commission also gave him the same advice — resign. So it was a dead-end in the effort to weed out the mafia.

When Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013), he still could not control his fellow Conservatives, especially the powerful Roman Curia, the central government of the Catholic Church.

The corrupt Cardinals were the modern-day Pharisees who were causing a Church crisis, which was prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima. Benedict was forced to resign because he was helpless in handling the Vatican Bank scandals and the growing pedophile epidemic, two raging Church issues.

In the latter, there were growing cases of pedophile prelates, from priests to cardinals, who were simply transferred to other dioceses to cover up their crimes, where they continued their evil ways.

Thus, the pedophile epidemic spread even more. The cases were swept under the rug, until a massive avalanche of court cases, especially in Europe and America, was bleeding the Vatican coffers dry.