The Sack of Rome in 1527 is a Meditation for the Church Today

Edit: the Sack of Rome in 1527 is a terrible event, which offers both meditations if loyalty and bravery from the most noble, like the Swiss Guards:

The oath to swear in the Swiss Guards takes place every year on May 6th, in remembrance of the "Sack of Rome" in 1527.  It was then that 147 Swiss soldiers fell defending Pope Clement VII.  Today they are counted as the "smallest army in the world."  It was their valor and that of their leader, Captain Röist, who fell, even as his wife looked on, which gave the Pope time to escape to down the Borgo, a secret passageway, to the Castel Sant'Angelo and to be safe for a time from the depredations of Charles V's Lutheran and Spanish soldiery. 

They also valiantly defended the Pope on September 20th, 1870, when the Masonic armies of Italian unification breached the walls of Rome.

It also offers a meditation on the current state of the Church, as we see these events from afar this from Ludwig Pastor as cited by Roberto de Mattei:

This unlimited license to steal and kill lasted eight days and the occupation of the city nine months. We read in a Veneto account of May 10, 1527, reported by Ludwig von Pastor “Hell is nothing in comparison with the appearance Rome currently presents” (The History of Popes, Desclée, Rome 1942m, vol. IV, 2, p.261). The religious were the main victims of the Landsknechts’ fury. Cardinals’ palaces were plundered, churches profaned, priests and monks killed or made slaves, nuns raped and sold at markets. Obscene parodies of religious ceremonies were seen, chalices for Mass were used to get drunk amidst blasphemies, Sacred Hosts were roasted in a pan and fed to animals, the tombs of saints were violated, heads of the Apostles, such as St. Andrew, were used for playing football on the streets. A donkey was dressed up in ecclesiastical robes and led to the altar of a church. The priest who refused to give it Communion was hacked to pieces. The City was outraged in its religious symbols and in its most sacred memories”. (see also André Chastel, The Sack of Rome, Einaudi, Turin, 1983; Umberto Roberto, Roma capta. The Sack of the City  from the Gauls to the Landsknechts, Laterza, Bari 2012).

AMDG