CONSPIRACY: The Vatican's Chronovisor

Every year, millions of people head into the wilderness searching for peace, beauty, and adventure.

But hidden in those same scenic landscapes are stories of violence, survival, and lives cut short.

I'm Dilya DeAmbra, and on my podcast, Park Predators, I uncover the true crimes that happened in the most amazing places on Earth.

Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes, after a long day of reading about a lot of really dark stuff, all I want to do is sit on my couch, cuddle with my dog Lilo, and watch some reality TV.

It's sort of like a mental palette cleanser for me.

I mean, nothing says hard reset, like watching the drama unfold went a bunch of women yell at each other over something they said three months ago.

Now, I'll admit, I have been a fan of reality TV forever.

Hello, I was even a reality TV star myself, circa 2006 when I was on the biggest loser.

But I just find other people who live in totally different worlds so fascinating.

The only thing that could make it even more interesting is if you could dial back the clock hundreds of years.

What I would give for a real housewives of ancient Rome.

But as we were doing some research for this show, that nice stumbled upon something.

And it made us realize, maybe that's not as far fetched as it sounds.

That's right, according to some sources, the Vatican actually has a thing called the Chronovisor.

Basically, a TV that was built in the 1950s that allowed priests to see into the past.

And we're talking full-blown real scenes of actual events.

Cicero, giving a speech in Rome, Quintus Inius writing his famous poems,

even the real crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

And the man who was in charge of running it, Father Ernetti, insisted for decades the device was real.

Which, if true, would make this one of the most powerful TV sets on the face of the Earth.

And if you could watch, would you?

I'm Yvette Gentile.

And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecorero.

This is so supernatural.

There are some people in this world who just seem destined for greatness, practically from birth.

And that was the case for Marchello, Pellegrino, Ernetti.

He was born in 1925 in a small medieval village called Raca Santo Stefano, east of Rome.

It's in the province of Lazio, Italy.

And by the time he was a teenager, he was well known in his community for being gifted.

He had a knack for learning new languages and for musical theory, meaning he understood rhythm,

chord structure, and harmony on a deeper level.

Ernetti was also really good at science.

He could easily grasp complicated topics that most people struggled with.

On top of all of that, Ernetti was very religious too.

He grew up in a Catholic household and from a young age, he had this sense that God had a plan for him,

that his gifts were meant to serve a divine purpose.

So instead of becoming a pianist, a physicist, or a linguist,

Ernetti took his vows on October 28, 1941.

He was just 16 years old when he became what is called a postulent or a candidate at a Benedictine monastery.

It was the first step on his path to becoming a priest.

And he used his skills in music, science, and language to help the church.

In 1952, when Ernetti is 27 years old, he gets assigned to a special project.

High-ranking Vatican officials want to figure out the best way to design their churches,

so choirs can sound as angelic as possible when they perform.

So basically, create acoustics.

So Ernetti joins a team that's supposed to study the science of sound.

They track things like their frequency, pitch, and volume.

Then he and his team plan to use that data to create the perfect church layout.

On September 15th of that year, he and a colleague are trying to record a Gregorian chant,

but it isn't going very well.

The equipment keeps glitching and its wires keep coming on hut.

Ernetti is at his wit's end when this thought crosses his mind.

If his dad was here, he'd know what to do.

Ernetti's dad was never interested in sound or in engineering,

but he was always good at keeping Ernetti calm and making him feel supported all the way up until his dad.

So he says a quick prayer, asking his dad for help in this very trying moment.

Almost immediately, one of his sound recording devices grapples to life.

And his dad's voice supposedly boons through saying,

quote, of course, I shall help you.

I'm always with you.

Ernetti can hardly believe what he's hearing.

Until a few seconds later, when the voice speaks again, it says, quote,

zucchini, it is clear.

Don't you know it is I?

So for context, zucchini is Ernetti's childhood nickname.

One only he and his close family members knew about.

As soon as Ernetti hears the word zucchini, he realizes this has to be his dad.

So straight away, Ernetti mentions the experience to a high-ranking church official,

namely Pope Pius XII.

And apparently, they are close enough for Ernetti to open up to him about this situation.

And the Pope comforts Ernetti by telling him,

there's a scientific explanation for what just happened.

The physics are a bit complicated, but the idea is that sound is just a wave of energy,

a vibration that travels through the air until it hits our ears.

And we perceive it as noise.

Scientists believe these waves can be blocked,

like how you can close a door to shut out sounds in the next room.

And when they travel across long distances, the vibrations lose energy and fade away.

Which is why you have a hard time hearing someone who's talking to you from across the street, right?

But Pope Pius tells Ernetti that maybe sound doesn't actually fade or dissipate into nothing.

Instead, maybe those vibrations exist forever.

They're just too faint for most of us to hear.

So when Ernetti heard his father's voice, he wasn't actually talking to his ghost.

Perhaps his very sensitive equipment was just picking up phrases that his dad had said years ago back when he was alive.

They just coincidentally seemed like real-time responses to the things Ernetti was thinking.

And Ernetti gets an idea from this.

He thinks what if he used very delicate recording equipment like what he had in church to listen to other conversations from the past?

So for the next few weeks, Ernetti continually finds himself thinking about how to build a machine like that.

He talks to his friends who are skilled at physics and engineering, and they even help him brainstorm some ideas.

And some of them say he may not be limited to audio recordings of the past.

With video equipment, he might be able to see historical events too.

That sounds like a real-life time machine to me.

Well eventually, Ernetti decides to put these theories to the test.

He wants to build a machine that will let him look through time.

His hope is that a device like this will actually benefit the church.

Maybe even inspire people to be better Catholics because they'll be able to hear Jesus' teachings from his own mouth and watch biblical stories play out before their eyes.

He even has a name picked out for the machine, the Chronovisor.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, he recruits some of the best physicists, mechanics, and researchers that he can find.

Unfortunately, we still don't know everyone who joined Ernetti's project.

The information is supposedly top secret, but Ernetti himself claimed there were 12 scientists on his team.

Nine of those researchers' names are still anonymous.

But the other three include Ernetti and a pair of scientists named Enrico Fermi and Werner von Braun.

Fermi is an Italian scientist who's technically Catholic on paper.

He grew up in a religious family and went to church as a child, but in his adulthood, he wasn't devout.

He wasn't even sure God existed, but that probably didn't matter to Ernetti.

All he cared about was that Fermi was a damn good physicist.

And after Fermi fled to the United States during World War II, he played a key role in developing the atomic bomb.

By the time Ernetti's working on his Chronovisor, Fermi is a Nobel Prize winner.

As for Werner von Braun, he's a much more, let's just say, controversial physicist.

He wasn't a Catholic either and he spent World War II helping the Nazis develop rockets.

After the Allies won in 1945, von Braun immigrated to the United States and accepted a job working for the space program.

For the record, the Americans knew von Braun was a Nazi collaborator, but they hired him anyway.

Because they wanted his expertise.

And from the sound of things, Ernetti was also willing to look the other way.

Because he supposedly recruits him too.

The team has never spoken publicly about what methods they used to build the Chronovisor.

But I do know it involved a lot of guesswork.

Nothing like this had ever been created before, so there was a ton of trial and error.

And at some point in the early 1950s, although it's hard to nail down an exact year, they finally finished building the device.

It looked a bit like a television set with a screen and antennas.

And when the team turned it on for the first time, they were excited to find it actually offered a window into the past.

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In the early 1950s, a Catholic priest named Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti allegedly worked with a dozen scientists to develop a window through time.

Known as the Chronovisor, it could show a viewer any moment from history.

And to be clear, the machine's not interactive. It's not like the viewers can actually change history.

All they can do is watch and listen. They also can't see anything from the present or future, because the Chronovisor is just picking up old pre-existing vibrations.

From what I can tell, though, it sounds like the team can turn the Chronovisor's dials and knobs to decide when and where they want to see into the past.

So the very first time they use it, Ernetti and his friends look at a moment from the recent past.

Specifically, they want to pick up a speech the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini once gave.

And after a bit of tuning and scanning, they actually find it.

By this time, Mussolini's been dead for roughly a decade give or take.

So they know they're not picking up a current television broadcast.

But to test it further, Ernetti's team decides to look a little farther back.

At something that happened before any of them were ever born, before cameras were even invented.

So they set the Chronovisor to show footage of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Ernetti and the others have all seen paintings of the famous French general.

So they recognize him easily enough.

And they listen in astonishment as Napoleon talks about his vision for Europe.

Eventually, Ernetti decides to dial back even further to ancient Roman times.

Because remember, he built the Chronovisor with hopes of convincing more people to become Catholics.

Especially after they witnessed real biblical events, which is why his team looks for footage of the life and death of Jesus Christ.

They want to confirm firsthand how he died, where he was buried, and if he truly did come back to life.

The problem is nobody knows the exact date Jesus was born when he gave his teachings or when he was crucified.

There are a lot of historians with many theories about when these things actually happen.

But Ernetti and his team have a hard time pinpointing these moments with accuracy.

And Ernetti and his team just can't tell the Chronovisor, hey, show me Jesus giving the sermon on the Mount, or I want to see Jesus, you know, turn water into wine.

They need to give the device a specific date or even a year to hone in on.

So they hop around through Roman history more or less at random.

Just take, for instance, how your radio might scan for frequencies when it can't pick up a station.

Apparently, they see things like a shopper and a vendor haggling over prices in an ancient marketplace.

And they watch and listen to a speech given by a famous philosopher, Cicero.

They even catch a millennial old play at a since been lost to time.

At some point in mid-January of 1956, Ernetti and his colleagues find what they're looking for.

The Chronovisor zeroes in on an event from 33 CE.

The last supper.

Ernetti supposedly watches as Jesus goes into the garden to pray, then his disciple Judas betrays him before he sees him get arrested, convicted, and nailed to a cross.

Most of these events play out just like he expects them to with some minor exceptions.

The Bible says a man named Simon helped Jesus carry his cross through town before his crucifixion.

But the Chronovisor shows Roman soldiers forcing Simon to do it.

There are also legends of a woman named Veronica comforting Jesus in his final hours by wiping blood and sweat off of his face.

But Ernetti and his colleagues never see her caring for him.

However, the story of Veronica is not in the Bible, and everything Ernetti sees is consistent with the Gospels, including Jesus' final hours.

After watching the crucifixion play out in what seems like real time, Ernetti knows he will never be the same.

In fact, he thinks more people need to see them.

The good news is the team makes films of what the Chronovisor shows, so he copies the crucifixion so he can share the footage later.

He also captures clips of what happens after Jesus's death, namely his burial and resurrection.

Now, Ernetti hasn't spoken much about this footage, so it's hard to say exactly what he saw or what the resurrection actually looked like.

But he's adamant he watched it happen.

And he shows the footage to the Pope so he can watch it too.

Then, Ernetti and his colleagues do something strange.

After dedicating years of their life to making this thing, they take the Chronovisor apart piece by piece.

They say the technology is too dangerous to leave intact.

Because even though Ernetti and his colleagues have been using it to view ancient events, people could use it to spy on more recent developments.

Like, say, a Pentagon meeting that ended five minutes ago or private conversations that can influence the stock market.

Basically, the Pope and his supporters don't want the Chronovisor to fall into the wrong hands.

So they lock its pieces in the archives, which is the vault underneath the Vatican, with a restricted library full of all the materials the Vatican doesn't want the public to see.

We don't know exactly what the Vatican keeps in its archives, but there are a lot of theories.

Enough so that we could probably do an entire episode on them.

So if you want that episode, just let us know.

Some people say the archives hold letters written by the Virgin Mary.

Even alien technology is supposed to be in there.

There are also magical objects and the text of unfilful prophecies, even the remains of the saints.

And of course, now, the Chronovisor.

Yeah, I believe all of that.

You know, Gina and I go to Italy every single year and we've been to the Vatican many times and we've actually gone underneath where you can see the saints and the popes.

And I know there's a whole nother vault with all of that stuff that you just mentioned.

I'm certain of it, you know, so it would be fascinating to know more about it.

Right after the church sees the device, they forbid Ernetti and his team from building another one or from telling anyone how it works.

At one point, they even say that if any Catholic is caught constructing or using a Chronovisor or anything similar, they'll be excommunicated from the church.

In other words, Ernetti's life work is being hidden away and treated like a massive secret.

I mean, I gotta imagine he is devastated and it's safe to say the cover up ways heavily on him, especially given what happens a decade later in the early 1960s.

By this point, Ernetti is in his late 30s and he's living in an abbey in Venice.

At one point, he decides to visit the mainland of Italy.

So he walks out to the docks to catch a ferry and he spots another priest there, a French man named Father Francois Brune.

Francois has been studying theology at a Biblical institute in Rome, but he recently graduated and is now doing some sightseeing before returning home.

He and Ernetti strike up a conversation while they wait for the boat.

Eventually, Francois mentions his frustrations with the growing movement inside the Catholic Church and how they are treating many Biblical stories as metaphors rather than literal descriptions of real historic events.

Francois doesn't like that this movement is also being taught in schools.

Ernetti then tells Francois he can prove all of his teachers wrong. Evidence exists that the Bible is true.

Ernetti invites Francois to come to the abbey the following day so they can discuss it further.

And the next afternoon, Ernetti tells him everything about the chrono visor.

As you can imagine afterwards, Francois doesn't know what to think. He doesn't think Ernetti would lie, I mean he's a sincere man of God.

So Francois figures if Ernetti says he built a chrono visor, it must be true.

And if he witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection for himself, the world needs to know about it.

That way people can believe the truth and stop thinking the Bible is a metaphor.

So for years, Ernetti thinks about the conversations and debates over what he should do.

Should he tell the world about this or should he keep the Vatican secret?

Finally, in 1972, Ernetti decides he's going to share what he knows.

That year, he gives his first interview with an Italian newspaper.

Translated into English, the headline reads,

a machine that photographs the past has finally been invented.

The rest of the article describes all of Ernetti's claims about the historical events he watched on the chrono visor.

And after this publication comes out, he talks to even more Italian reporters to spread the word.

However, each time Ernetti speaks to the press, he's careful not to say too much about how the chrono visor works.

He still doesn't want anyone to build one for themselves.

I mean, for example, he says the chrono visor had antennas and a so-called direction finder to help it tune into specific moments from history.

But he won't describe how the direction finder worked or what it looked like.

He also claims the chrono visor was made of, and this is a quote, mysterious metals.

But he doesn't explain what the metals are or what makes them so mysterious.

Of course, this also means there's no way for anyone to verify Ernetti's claims.

Other researchers can't check his science to see if it holds up.

And with the chrono visor locked away, there's also no way to test it.

Which is why people suggest Ernetti is lying and this is all just a big hoax.

So to disprove the skeptics, Ernetti offers some tangible proof.

Apparently, when he made that recording of the crucifixion, he's saved stills of a few key moments.

So he now has a photo of Jesus' face shortly before he died.

And Ernetti releases this picture to the press.

And remember how he supposedly watched an ancient Roman play?

Well, the play in question is called Thiestes, written by Quintus Inius.

Historians know for a fact that Inius was a real person and he really did write a play called Thiestes.

The plot is based on a famous Roman legend.

It's a story of two brothers, Etrius and Thiestes, and they hate each other, basically.

So one day, Etrius murders two of Thiestes' three sons, butchers them, and makes a meal out of their bodies.

Then he feeds it to Thiestes, who has no idea he's eating human flesh, let alone his own family members.

So once Thiestes realizes the truth, he places a curse on Etrius.

So then his third son, the one who wasn't murdered, gets his revenge by killing his uncle.

And that is the play in a nutshell.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to watch that play.

That's way too much to intake, so so dark.

Okay, but nobody knows much more detail beyond that because the script has been lost to time.

Or at least, it was lost until Arnetti and his colleagues watched it.

They didn't think to record it at the time, but they did write down every word each actor said.

So Arnetti has the transcript published so everyone can read Thiestes for themselves and to prove the chronovisor is real.

But of course, the skeptics still have their doubts.

They say the photo and the play might be forgeries.

Meanwhile, true believers insist Arnetti didn't fake the evidence and wouldn't have because he's an honest man with no motive to lie.

It seems like the matter might never be settled until 1994 when a death-bed confession reshapes the entire story.

In the world of true crime, the real story isn't always in the headlines. It's in the evidence.

I'm Brandy Churchwell, host of 13th-Year Podcast, and I'm here to take you past the news cycle and straight into the courtroom.

Every week, I'll break down the investigation, the prosecution, the defense, and everything that unfolds beyond the jury box.

We'll examine every testimony, every exhibit, and every hidden motive.

Listen to 13th-Year, wherever you get your podcasts.

Father Marchello Pellegrino Arnetti spent his whole life insisting he built something called a chronovisor for the Vatican.

But he was never able to prove his claims were real.

The device was supposedly dismantled and locked away in their archives, and the evidence he gave to reporters has been heavily disputed.

Take the alleged photo of Jesus at the crucifixion. It's an extreme close-up, so you can only see Jesus from the chin to the top of his head.

You can't see any of his entire body. He's frowning and looking up with a distressed expression on his face.

And if you're an admirer of art, you might think the image looks a bit familiar, because it's very similar to a famous statue of Jesus in a church in Central Italy.

If someone were to take a grainy black and white photo of that statue's face, it would look an awful lot like Arnetti's picture.

Others say the image reminds them of a postcard that a different Italian church sells.

Again, it's not an exact match, but if someone made a copy of that postcard and doctored it, they'd end up with something very similar to Arnetti's photo.

Basically, nobody can prove Arnetti's picture is a forgery because it's not an exact match for any other work of art, but it is possible that it's a hope.

I mean, I just have to say we both looked at this picture, and it definitely looks like a copy of a painting.

I've spent many, many, many, many hours in Italy going to several museums, and I'm just saying it didn't look real to me.

It looks like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.

But experts have also examined his alleged transcription from Thiestes, and they say it has its own set of problems.

For starters, it's really short, roughly a tenth as long as a typical play from this time period, and the plot seems wrong.

In Arnetti's transcript, Thiestes' brother, Atrius, never murders his sons.

There's no cannibalism. Everything is different from what the historians say should be included in the play.

Aside from the plot, Arnetti's transcript is written very simply, with basic words that are reused over and over again.

Professional linguists think it sounds like it was written by someone who doesn't speak much Latin.

Which would make sense if Arnetti wrote the script himself, he knows some Latin, but he wasn't fluent.

So once again, the experts say this is evidence of a hoax.

But Arnetti insists it's all real, he isn't lying.

It's a stance he maintained until 1994.

That year, Arnetti was 68 years old, and his health was failing.

He knew he didn't have much longer to live.

So at one point in the spring, he called the distant relative who he considered a friend.

Now we don't know this person's identity because it hasn't been made public, but we'll just call him Mario.

Arnetti asked Mario to come visit him, and Mario rushed to Venice.

When he arrived, Arnetti told him he felt like he was going to die any day.

And before he passed away, he needed to make a confession.

Then Arnetti said he never built a working chronovisor.

His transcript of thiestes was a hoax.

He wrote it himself to trick his critics, and all of his claims about watching the crucifixion and viewing the past were a lie.

But Arnetti also said some parts of the story were true.

He really tried to build a chronovisor, but he couldn't make it work.

And he didn't have a team of 11 scientists helping him.

He only had one assistant, a student who eventually became a priest.

But here's where it gets wild.

During this deathbed confession, Arnetti also said he'd been reincarnated multiple times,

and he could remember all of his past lives.

Arnetti claimed in one lifetime he was a scientist who worked closely with Nostradamus.

Even back then, they understood that it was possible to detect and listen to sound waves from a past.

And he and Nostradamus tried to make their own version of a chronovisor.

However, they weren't successful because they didn't have access to advanced equipment.

But on his deathbed, Arnetti felt like he was incredibly close to finally figuring out what went wrong.

And he was worried that he might die again without finishing the machine.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be the case.

On April 8, 1994, he died at the age of 68.

Afterward, Mario anonymously published Arnetti's confession, revealing the chronovisor was never real.

So you would think that that would settle it, right?

Well, Arnetti came flat out and admitted the chronovisor was a hoax.

Except nobody can verify if this confession is authentic.

We don't know Mario's real identity, so it's impossible to say if he spoke to Arnetti in the days before his death.

Or if the two of them even knew each other.

Mario could have made the whole thing up for all we know.

And here's where things get tricky.

You'd assume that if Mario or Arnetti were lying, the Vatican would clear everything up with a public statement.

They could say something like, nobody listened to this priest's wild claims about a television that they can see in the past.

He's not telling the truth.

Like they would be very specific in coming out and saying that.

The problem is, the Vatican has never confirmed or denied Arnetti's claims about the chronovisor.

And their silence speaks volumes.

It could be evidence the story is real after all.

One rumour says the conspiracy actually goes all the way up to the top to Catholic officials,

including the Pope and his supporters who never told Arnetti to take the chronovisor apart.

The theory says that high-ranking Vatican leaders have a working chronovisor to this day.

And they may use it to keep tabs on world events.

They listen in on meetings between political leaders and high-ranking executives.

Then they use that information to serve the interests of the Catholic Church.

But the problem with that theory is, it doesn't explain why Arnetti would have released fake evidence.

Which maybe why author Peter Kressa suggests a different theory in his book, Father Arnetti's chronovisor.

It was published in 1997.

And in his book, Peter said Arnetti faked the Thiastes tax and the photo of Jesus to hide hidden messages in them.

According to Peter, both the crucifixion and Arnetti's version of Thiastes are stories of people suffering horribly,

and then becoming better versions of themselves.

So there's a nice message there that anyone can overcome adversity and improve themselves?

I mean, Peter also noted that Arnetti had believed in other spiritual concepts that weren't exactly approved by the Catholic Church.

His works included references to astrology, reincarnation, astral projection, magic, and one of our favorite words, fate.

He even implied that people could become gods, which isn't exactly a pope-approved message.

Peter believes that at some point during Arnetti's lifetime, he rejected the Catholic teachings and instead came to believe in something more occult, more new age, even more supernatural.

And he may have used the chronovisor as a cover story to talk about his new faith without drawing the wrath of the Church.

But what if the chronovisor gave Arnetti information that directly contradicted Catholic teachings?

Maybe he had proof that the world doesn't work the way the Church says it does, and maybe the Church brushed it under the rug because they knew the truth was just too dangerous.

This is all just a theory, but I gotta say it's fascinating to think about, and it just makes me wonder.

As y'all know, someone who is often suspicious about the government, what if we've been looking at the wrong people?

Maybe the answers to humanity's biggest questions aren't hidden in those Pentagon files or the FBI vaults?

Maybe they've been tucked away in the Vatican archives this entire time.

If that's the case, I'd give just about anything to peak inside that vault, or to even have a chronovisor of my very own.

Because as much as I love reality TV, we all know it's a lot of Hollywood-smoking mirrors, but there is nothing like learning the real truth.

This is So Supernatural, an audio chuck original produced by Crime House.

You can connect with us on Instagram at SoSupernaturalPod and visit our website at SoSupernaturalPodcast.com.

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I think Chuck would approve.

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