Special Guest Blogger: Pope Adrian IV

After the Pope Joan debacle, it used to be that to become Pope, you had to sit pants-less in a horseshoe-shaped chair and let a couple of cardinals see if you had the goods. If you passed, they'd yell 'Testiculos habet et bene pendentes!' (He has testicles, and they hang well!) It's true, in those days it took real balls to become Pope because in 12th Century Europe, every nation was intent on killing each other and the Roman Emperor hated me personally.
I began life in Hertfordshire, England and travelled to the south of France to study law but i felt the Church calling me and went on to Avignon and the joined the Abbey of Saint-Ruf.
I was appointed Abbot and in my role met Pope Eugene III who liked my no nonsense style of strict discipline and religious zeal and thought i could do a job ending the conflict between the Christian
Catalonians and the Muslim Al-Andalus which i did by saying i would bang their bloody heads together if they didn't stop fighting which got me promoted to the Bishop of Albano.
The Pope then sent me to Scanidaniva which was a much tougher task as the Swedes and Norwegians were in the middle of a vicious, full blown war and I thought this would take some special negotiating, either that or i just reorganise the Church in both nations and say you can't kill each other now because you are all the same which worked but when i excitedly got back to Rome to tell the Pope the good news, i found out he had died and the Cardinals were in the process of choosing a new one and in i stepped, flavour of the month, and got given the job, the first Brit to gain the role.
My problem was that Italy was divided with the  Byzantine emperor in the North and Norman Kings in the South fighting over it and me stuck in the middle and it didn't help when i argued with the Romans that the Church is the defender of Christians and not them which really did not go down well.
I had better luck with the Irish though and solved all their problems by giving Ireland to the English and passed a decree that serfs should be free to wed whoever they wished, without their master’s blessing, since marriage was sacrosanct but the Byzantines were causing me a real headache so i planned to excommunicate the Emperor to rid me of him but never got a chance.
Quite embarrassing really, but i choked to death by swallowing a fly which had been floating in my goblet of wine but i was a trailblazer and proof that anyone can become Pope and the Church welcomes all, as long as you’re not gay or into science or anything like that anyway.