Here’s an “interesting” Pope in the complex, intermingled line of the Renaissance period:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VI
One of the infamous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Borgia
This can be a fun exercise for the reader: try to read all of both articles and keep track of all the detailed relationships.
For extra credit, follow the lines of family and influence through history from then until now and come up with one or two specific descendants in the 19th or 20th centuries.
Or, go back in history and trace the family roots.
Studying new world order is fun !
The Borja family (later spelled Borgia, as the Italians spelled it) was a very important family in Spain. They were from Gandia, a region south of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast. I visited the family home, now a museum, a few years ago.
They produced a saint, St. Francis Borgia, and it’s not even clear that Alexander VI was the villain depicted by his enemies (mostly the Italians, who hated the Spanish).
He was actually elected as a reform Pope because of his intelligence and decent life, and did excellent things for the Church during his tenure. However, he did bring family members to Rome, as did every Pope, and it was mainly the ones who married Italians and thus became involved in Italian politics who were the big problem.