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For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has tried to bury her story. But of all the legends suppressed by the Vatican over the years, this is one that refuses to go away. Now, a new film has brought to life the story of the only female pope - and it is being shown this week in cinemas cheek by jowl with the Vatican. And there are plans to bring it to Britain.
For a Church that still treats women as second-class citizens, it is a source of considerable embarrassment and will once again raise the question of whether Pope Joan, as she is called in medieval chronicles, really did exist.
The Vatican claims that she was a mythical figure used by early Protestants to discredit and embarrass Rome.
But the film - which stars John Goodman from Roseanne, David Wenham, last seen with Nicole Kidman in Australia, West End regular Iain Glen and, in the title role, German actress Johanna Wokalek - is billed as 'a true story'. And it is a pretty extraordinary story: a woman of devout faith disguises herself as a man to become a priest and is then elected pope.
Only when she gives birth in the street while in a procession in full papal regalia is her true identity revealed - after which, inevitably, she meets a grisly end. What is more, the legend has it that she was English. Catholics have long been told there has only been one English pope - Adrian IV in the 1150s. But according to many medieval chronicles, John Anglicus - John the English - reigned from AD855 for two years, seven months and four days before the astonishing revelation that he was, in fact, a she called Joan.
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