Inquisition

The Inquisition of the Catholic Church seems to have been established to arrest, torture and kill those who did not fully comply with the teachings of the Catholic Church.  It was often assisted by the leaders of the various countries that were considered Christian.  Real nice Christian attitude! Remember to never get a Religion upset at you.  There may be a costly price to pay.

Probably many thousands of people were punished by the Inquisition.

The Nazi Gestapo and the Inquisition seem to have had a lot in common.  Both were feared nasty groups of deranged people in a position of absolute power.

Galileo was a victim of the Inquisition but at least he was not burned at the stake like many other victims.  He was just arrested and jailed for the rest of his life.  Perhaps he would have been better off if he had been burned at the stake.  At least he would not have had to suffer the humiliation of imprisonment for something he believed in that was later proved mostly correct.  

The Inquisition has undergone a name change and is now, as far as I know, called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but at least they do not, at least to the best of my knowledge, still burn people at the stake who do not totally agree with the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Burning at the stake is probably not an approved activity in most modern civilizations.  As far as I know even the Ku Klux Klan did not even burn people at the stake. I do not know exactly what they, the new members of the Inquisition,  do, other than still oppose Freemasonry because of their ignorance about the Masons.

I doubt that the Catholic Church will ever be totally forgiven for this atrocity unless all of history can be rewritten.

A Freemason name John Coustos was captured by the Inquisition and tortured for simply being a Freemason who would not reveal the so-called 'secrets of Freemasonry' to his captors.