Hoax Pope -- the Shocking Scandal the Vatican Doesn't Want You to Know About

In the wake of the Pope's recent visit to the United States, noted papal expert Winston Quarryman has come forth with some startling allegations that Pope Benedict XVI died suddenly in a freak Popemobile accident, and was secretly replaced by a lookalike imposter Pontiff.

Quarryman started to uncover the evidence while researching an article about the usage of insecticides in the Vatican. While reading an article in the Vatican Herald Ledger about how beetles were being exterminated within the Vatican, he came across an article about an unidentified Cardinal who had been killed in an accident at a traffic signal while on a road leading to an abbey. The vehicle was described as a "high, plexiglass walled" custom vehicle.

"He blew his mind out in a Popemobile," Mr. Quarryman alleges. "His drivers didn't notice that the lights had changed."

When pressed about the fact that the article does not identify the pope or the vehicle being driven by name, Winston Quarryman pointed to mounds of other evidence that Pope Benedict XVI is dead.

Quarryman pointed to video of the Pontiff walking in the gardens around his residence. "If you look at the video, you can see that the alleged pontiff is barefoot and clearly walking out of step with the other Cardinals that are walking with him." It apparently is an old Catholic custom to bury Popes without their shoes on.

He also notes startling evidence from the Pope's recent visit to the United States. "The tail of his papal plane had an interesting registration number on the back. It says "LXXXI - 1F" This apparently means, 81 if, with LXXXI being the Roman numeral for 81 and 1F looking a bit like the word "IF". Quarryman says that the pope would have been 81 if he hadn't wrecked his Popemobile.

Quarryman also points to his itinerary. "He said mass at Yankee Stadium and the Nationals Stadium. Do you think that if this was really the Pope, these would be the teams he would choose to say a prayer for?" Quarryman postulates that the real Pontiff would have said mass at the home of a truly needy team, like the Cubs.

Quarryman also had video analysis of video of the Pope's mitre by the same researchers who studied the Zapruder film after the Kennedy Assassination. From the videographic evidence, the Pope's head in the past week would appear to be at least a half a size smaller than it was prior to the accident.

But the intrepid researcher saved his most damning evidence for the end. He plays a tape of the Pope's mass at Yankee Stadium forward. He stops it, and then using his computer, plays the same sounds backward. "Pray for me Dead Pope! Benedict XVI did die!" the sound loop says over and over. And at the very end of the mass, the alleged pope says something under his breath that sounds like "I buried Benedict." It must be noted that the Pope's press agent indicated the backward messages were sheer coincidence and that his last words heard during the mass were "I'll pray for your friend who is sick."

As for who replaced the Pope, Mr. Quarryman speculates that the Pope was replaced by a lookalike Irish Cardinal named William Sheers O'Campbell, a man of similar build, facial features, and stature to Benedict, whose face was surgically altered to look more like the Pope.

As for the veracity of Winston Quarryman's claims, another noted Catholic researcher named Paul Ramon pointed to the fact that Quarryman claims that Pope John Paul II is not dead, and merely faked his death to escape his fame.