Has there ever been a female pope?

Answer 1

- No, there has never been a female pope. There is a myth about a Pope Joan that in recent times has been revived, but which has be clearly rebutted by scholars.

Wikipedia has a good outline of the Pope Joan myth here: (link below)

- Roman Catholic AnswerThe Pope is the Bishop of Rome, if he is not a Bishop when elected to the Papacy, he is tonsured, ordained a lector, then an acolyte, then a deacon, then a priest, and finally consecrated a bishop. Up until the ninth century, bishops were never elected popes as bishops never moved out of their diocese. Regardless, he is always a bishop, and only a man can be consecrated a bishop, so, no, there has never been a female pope.

- In the legend she was supposed to have been very talented, and, disguised as a man, to have risen through the church hierarchy to become pope, sometime in the Middle Ages.

It has been a popular story since the thirteenth century, but no one has ever found any reason to believe it actually happened.

Since there have always been women who felt they were really men, it is most likely that one was unmasked trying to become a priest. This would have started a rash of 'what if she hadn't been discovered' stories, culminating in the Pope Joan myth.

Answer 2

There is no historical evidence to support the existence of a female pope. The legend of Pope Joan, a woman who supposedly disguised herself as a man and became pope in the 9th century, is considered fictional by historians.