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Léo Taxil, originally Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès (March 21, 1854–March 31, 1907), was a French hoaxster who duped the pope and the French prelates.
He was born in Marseille. He first became known for writing scurrilous anti-Catholic books; in 1879 he was tried at the Seine Assizes for writing a pamphlet "A Bas la Calotte", which was accused of insulting a religion recognized by the state, but he was acquitted.
In 1885 he professed conversion to Catholicism, was solemnly received into the church, and renounced his earlier works. He then started a campaign against Freemasons, charging their lodges with worshipping the devil and alleging that one Diana Vaughan had written for him her confessions of the Satanic "Palladism" cult. That book had a great sale among Catholics, although Diana Vaughan never appeared in public. In 1892 Taxil also began to publish a paper La France chrétienne anti-maçonnique. In 1887 he had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, who rebuked the bishop of Charleston for denouncing the anti-Masonic confessions as a fraud and in 1896 sent his blessing to an anti-Masonic Congress in Trent.
At that time, however, doubts about Vaughan's veracity and even on her existence began to grow, and finally Taxil promised to produce her at a lecture to be delivered by him on April 19, 1897. To the amazement of the audience (which included a number of priests), he announced that Diana was one of a series of hoaxes. He had begun, he said, by persuading the commandant of Marseille that the harbour was infested with sharks, and a ship was sent to destroy them. Next he invented an underwater city in Lake Geneva, drawing tourists and archaeologists to the spot. He thanked the bishops and Catholic newspapers for facilitating his crowning hoax, namely his conversion. Diana Vaughan was revealed to be a simple typist in his employ, who laughingly allowed her name to be used by him.
The audience received these revelations with indignation and contempt, and Taxil was mobbed on leaving the hall so that policemen had to escort him to a neighbouring café. He then moved away from Paris. He died in Sceaux.