Many of us remember 1978 when there were three popes in two months. The last time this occurred was in 1605, when Paul V was elected on 16 May.

Camillo Borghese, the son of a professor of law, was born in Rome in 1552. He studied canon law and when ordained worked in the Roman curia. After spending some time as a Church envoy in Spain he returned to Rome, where he was made a Cardinal and director of the Inquisition. On the death of Leo XI (a nephew of Leo X), who was Pope for only 27 days, Borghese was elected at the age of 52, took the name Paul V and reigned for 15 years.

His first test came within a few months when the powerful Republic of Venice forbade the building of new churches without its permission. After it also put a bishop on trial Pope Paul excommunicated the Doge and his senators and placed the Republic under an interdict. The Jesuits, who were loyal to the Pope, were expelled, but most of the clergy supported the Doge. Soon the defection of Venice to Protestantism and even a European war were feared. But through the mediation of Henry IV of France a Venetian schism was ended two years later. It was a moral defeat for the Pope, for though the imprisoned bishop was freed the papal interdict was proved useless.

Paul’s next test was in 1606 when British Catholics were obliged to take a special "oath of allegiance" to the King and to swear that the papal power to excommunicate and depose kings was "damnable and heretical".  Pope Paul's condemnation of this oath divided British Catholics and led to a more ruthless enforcement of the laws against them.

Paul's involvement in Germany's religious strife had even more serious results when the Thirty Years' War began there in 1618. He gave large sums of Church money to the Emperor Ferdinand and the German Catholic princes to finance their battles against the Protestants.  It was this War, in which half the population of Germany died, that made permanent the religious division of Europe.

Pope Paul was more successful, however, in dealing with purely Church matters. He strictly enforced the decrees of the Council of Trent, especially those that applied to the clergy, such as the obligation of bishops to live in their dioceses. He published the Roman Ritual of the rules for celebrating the sacraments. And he did a great deal to promote the missionary work of the Church.  He directed Catholic universities to teach Hebrew and Arabic; he established the Church's Secret Archives, so useful to historians; and he beatified Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier among others.

Fond of pomp and a patron of the arts, he finished the building of St Peter's, begun a century earlier. He had his own and his family's name prominently displayed over the main door of the Basilica. He also did a great deal to enhance Rome itself, building many fountains and restoring ancient aqueducts.

But like so many popes before him, he was an ardent nepotist. He made his nephew, Scipione Caffarelli, a cardinal at the age of 26 and appointed him Secretary of State with a large annual income. The Church historian Claudio Rendina said, "Paul V went ahead with limitless nepotism. Other nephews and cousins also received important Church positions and huge sums of money. The Borghese family soon attained a high level in Roman society, showing off their wealth with luxurious living."  The vast Church income enjoyed by Cardinal Scipione enabled him to build the Villa Borghese, one of the city's biggest palaces.

In contrast to these nepotist popes, who used Church funds and benefices to feather their families' nests, Blessed John XXIII, of more happy memory, said, "The Church belongs to everyone, but especially to the poor." His brothers all died, as they lived, poor working class men.

Another Church historian, Alberto Caracciolo stated, "Paul V became more and more powerful, moving down the road to dictatorship," and accepting no criticism whatever.  One biographer, DG Jackson wrote, "He was a strong and able Church leader, but not an attractive person, being hard and dictatorial, in spite of his piety.  His personal arrogance marred what might otherwise have been a great pontificate."

He is hardly remembered at all today, except perhaps for his ignominious role in the Galileo case, one of the most embarassing chapters in Church history.  "It makes my blood boil," wrote the great Jesuit historian, Fr James Broderick, in his life of Galileo, "to think of that proud rancorous pope browbeating one of the brightest spirits in human history, till broken in health and terrorised he even offered to refute" Copernicus' theory that the earth revolves around the sun - and not vice versa as was thought till then. Galileo’s crime was that he had written in favour of the 1530 theory of Copernicus, the Polish founder of modern astronomy.

"The proud implacable Pope,” Broderick continued, “who has squandered the Church’s wealth, the patrimony of the poor, on his wretched grasping nephews, ordered that a very harsh decree against Galileo be entered in the acts of his trial. He was to be questioned under threat of torture."

In 1616 the Holy Office condemned Galileo's Copernican teaching as "foolish, preposterous and heretical, because it was contrary to Scripture".  Before the Cardinals and Inquisitors, the old man, abject and broken, was forced to recite, while kneeling, "I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies".  Paul V didn't have him burned at the stake, as he did others.  He was sentenced instead to life imprisonment, later commuted to house arrest for the last nine years of his life.

In 1983 Pope John Paul admitted that the Church under Paul V had made a major mistake and apologised for the shameful way it had treated Galileo.