Juan did not know that he was a Pope, for what does a 12-year-old boy know about a Pope? The damned pope was known for his greed of wealth, his affairs with many women who bore him equally greedy children. To get rid of his enemies he would not hesitate to commit murder either by paying thugs to carry the evil act by murder or poisoning. The last was the reason he found himself in hell.
Despite the miter he wore, the face of Pope Alexander VI wore the mask of greed and cruelty. Juan heard him grumbling in his dark corner no longer the throne of a powerful pope but the pit of a fallen devil. Juan overheard the pope grumbling and cursing.
This is not my place—this unholiest infernal den. Did I not heed the most powerful church in the entire Christendom? What was Rome before and today? Did I not live up to the dictum: "When in Rome do what the Romans do? I was a Spanish. Rome was the seat of criminals and corruption. What better corrupt the human soul than gold. So, when I had the opportunity, I bought the papacy and the cardinals who were too happy when I dangled gold to their greedy faces.
My children, (of course I have children from my legitimate and other women) were too happy to share the loot. When I was outside the Vatican on official and even secret tryst, my wife would govern the eternal city. When I got tired of my aging wife, I ordered the annulment of our marriage and took another woman whose children were equally evil like me.
Sex and murder were my forte. I did not know why. Vatican was a snake pit so I employed cunning and deception to keep me and my family in power. But crime does not pay or sins will visit you sooner or later. And the damned cardinal, referring to his nemesis, he outwitted me.
He switched that poisoned drink my son Cesare had prepared. My son survived but I succumbed to the poison on account of my age. If you hate a pope just poison him. That's what they did to me and other popes who died mysteriously. Open their crypt or sarcophagus, have them subjected to postmortem examination, and you realized they did not die of old age or nightmare. They were poisoned like rats and holy rats were indeed crawling in the eternal city.
Juan remembered the dead rats his father had poisoned because they were pests. But he still believed that popes were holy, God's representative on earth. The pope stopped his narration, removed his miter and smashed it to pieces.
Juan left the pope for he could not bear his earthly crimes. He could not understand why the Church fell into the hands of criminals while its pope and other "Princes of the Church" engaged in the worst form of sins against God and man.
