Three Popes

One of the funniest incidents to happen during the 14th century was the great schism of the Catholic Church. A bunch of cardinals walked into Rome to elect a new pope, and an angry mob declared it will kill all of them if they didn’t elect an Italian pope instead of a French one. An Italian pope was elected. So they returned back to France and elected a French pope to be the new pope. Now there were two popes at the same time, each saying the other one was a phony, splitting up Europe into two religious groups, each ready to use religion as their excuse to annihilate the other. The Catholic Church’s solution was to elect another pope, only for absolutely no one to stand behind him. So now there were three popes, all of them saying the other was illegitimate and all of their followers were going to hell. Finally, the Catholic Church got rid of all the popes and elected a new one, and this time they made sure no angry mobs were there.