The Story of Pope Joan is a pure figment of the imagination. The myth is rejected by every reputable scholar, Catholic, Protestant or Atheist. There is no room for the fictitious Joan in the place she is supposed to have occupied in history, i.e., between Benedict III and Leo IV; for Leo died July 17, 855; and immediately after his death, Benedict III was elected by the clergy and people of Rome and was consecrated on September 29th of that same year. The celebrated historian Dollinger gave the most exhaustive exposure of the fable in his work, “Fables Respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages.
…”The myth of the woman Pope was not definitely put into writing before the middle of the thirteenth century, … Now is it conceivable that the appearance of a ‘Popess,’ if it were a historical fact, should pass absolutely unnoticed by all the historians and writers, and they were numerous, from the tenth to the thirteenth century? … No one with self-respect, however anxious to blacken the Catholic Church, would identify his name with such a ridiculous and exploded myth; honest Protestants, with any education, would not touch it with the end of an Orange procession pole; and it is therefore left to the uneducated, stupid, and unscrupulous bigots of the gutter to rake up now and again, even though they, themselves do not believe it”.