Thread by @farbandish

Okay fine it is time for: ~THE STORY OF THE EXPLODING POPE~

(CW for gore, medical malpractice, gore, and gore)

(sorry new followers, if I come off as v.v.unprofessional today, it's because I am)

https://twitter.com/mightybattlecat/status/1104511511001731072

This is Pius XII, pope from 1939 to 1958. He's the one who appeaed the Nazis, which is obviously the attribute that most people focus on. But he had two other noteworthy attributes:

1. He was obsessed with his own body
2. He was perhaps UNIQUELY BAD at picking doctors

During his life, these attributes resulted in him ending up looking for life extension treatments. He eventually settled on Paul Niehans, whose course of treatment consisted of taking cells from a sheep and injecting them....directly into the holy father's ass.

The only medical impact of these treatments was apparently vivid and terrifying hallucinations and nightmares, and (although it is not noted) presumably some trouble sitting down. He was lucky: other Niehans patients straight up died.

Again: this is the 1950s. Not 1350s, 1950s.

But the truly wtaf thing happened when Pope Pius XII, Bishop of Rome, cacked it and went straight up to the pearly gates, leaving behind a corpse and a will that demanded he be embalmed _without taking the organs out_. Again: bodily integrity.

Now, embalming consists of cranking down the heat, yoinking out the organs, filling you with cotton wool, stitching you up and hoping you don't come back as a zombie and seek revenge. Every embalmer and doctor approached was like "that's impossible".

Enter Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi

Galeazzi-Lisi was the Pope's personal physician, and a complete nut. And he insisted he had a way of embalming the Pope without taking out his organs! And being the Pope's personal physician, everyone sort of shrugged and let him do it.

This was a terrrrrible mistake.

So, Galeazzi-Lisi decided the best way to embalm the pope was:

1. Crank the heat up
2. Put the pope in a big plastic baggie
3. Get the oils and herbs Jesus was anointed with
4. ....massage them into the pope like a turkey. Marinade the pope. Marinade the pope in jesus herbs.

The marinaded pontiff was then taken off to lie in state and receive visitors: it is not known whether he was still in a baggie. What is known is that it was real hot that summer, and the result of that and the marinadembalment was...that you could literally watch him rot.

(CW, gore)

You could watch him decay in real time. He was basically a time-lapse video of entropy. His fingers turned green, then black, then dropped off. The Swiss Guard standing around the body had to be rotated every 15 minutes because they kept passing out from the smell.

(CW, gore)

And then, finally, still out lying in state for visitation, still decaying while sauced up like the world's least appealing Christmas dinner, with his chest filling with gas from the decay - gas that could not escape, and got more and more pressurised - the pope went:

Galeazzi-Lisi was dismissed and banned from Vatican City. Not for BLOWING UP THE POPE, no, but because he took some polaroids and sold them to the media. That was the dismissable whoopsy. And with the whole Nazi Pope thing, nobody seems to remember Pius straight up exploded. Fin!

I am extremely distraught to report that, having already marked the thread as done, I have only now thought of the joke "Splatican City"

I don't have a soundcloud but I do have a paper on the need for an insurrectionary movement in computing research that works to undermine capitalism and the state ironholds.org/resources/pape…

People who have heard me sing can confirm this is farrrrr better