People often forget that up until 200 years ago, the Pope was easily the most powerful leader on the planet for 1000 years. They had a vested interest in every nation and every nation played to that interest. They were murdered and not investigated because, church. I know this isn’t true in all of Asia or Africa, but for a vast majority of Europe and reaches in some of Asia and Africa they were the person to decide a lot of what was going on.