The Only FEMALE POPE

According to legend, in AD 855 a woman succeeded Pope Leo 4 to the papacy. Joan, said to be the daughter of an English missionary. was born in Germany in abut 818.She was noted for her beauty from her early age and her love of learning was evident. Later when she fell in love with a young monk of Fulda, she dressed up as a monk so that she could be with him, and together they travelled from one seat of learning to another.

When Joan's Lover died, she was reluctant to give up her freedom and live the traditionally narrow life that was a woman's lot in medieval times. So, masquerading as a man,she went to Rome and opened a school. Her apparent virtue, undoubted scholarship and theological knowledge attracted widespread rspect, and when the papacy became vacant Joan was an obvious candidate.
Elected under the name of Joan 8, Joan performed her duties capably for more than two years, until one day she yeilded again to temptation of a more human kind. She was far from being the only pope to become a parent, but motherhood is less easily concealed than fatherhood. Joan was especially unlucky in that, not knowing when the child was due, she made a spectacle of herself by giving birth to a son in the street, while in solemn procession between the Colosseum and the church of St Clement.
So public a revelation of Joan's sex was an ebarrassment not only to herself but also to church, so it was rather conveneint when she died shortly afterwards. The event was hushed up and her name removed from the church Chronicles To this day popes avoid JJoan's route to St Clement's.
Athough the story of Pope Joan was first circulated in the ninth century by a Roman historian, there seems little doubt that it is an invention. presumably to discredit the papacy in the medieval times....