“If true, the Vatican should issue an official apology (albeit, the Templars were dissolved in 1307 (when they were massacred.) There are 13 thousand plus souls who deserve this symbolic apology. SMIB”
Good point.
According to History channel show on it, the instigator of the trial of the Knights Templar was the French King, who had owed the Templars a lot of money. The King also at the time had his own Avignon Pope (time of papal schism) so it wasn’t the Pope in Rome who was overseeing this.
The pope at the time, Clement V, was a Frenchman, but there was only one pope. From this time until the 1370s the popes lived in Avignon. The Great Schism was later, after Gregory XI returned to Rome and died there and Urban VI was elected but antagonized his cardinals so they claimed to have elected him under duress and chose someone else to be pope. Urban VI and his successors in Rome are now regarded as the legitimate popes, and the rival popes who lived in Avignon after 1378 are considered antipopes. That situation lasted until about 1415.