who is the first lady pope?

Answer 1

--is Catholic-

By definition, a Pope cannot be female. Additionally there never was a "Pope Joan", which is the reference you are looking for.

MYTH of Pope Joan was that she “reigned” from 855-858 A.D. The problem with this is that Pope Benedict III happened to be on the Chair of Peter at the time.

The Newsletter of the Catholic Society of Evangelists for December 1997 includes this information:

Anti-Catholic polemicists make much of the alleged female Pope, who disguised as a man was ordained, became a Cardinal and eventually Pope. Going by various names, Joan, Agnes, Gilberta, or Jutta, or sometimes unnamed, this personage is described in legends contained in the “Universal Chronicle of Metz”, attributed to the Dominican John of Metz between 1240 and 1250 and repeated by the Dominican Martin of Trooppau who died in 1297.

At the time of the Protestant reformation it added much fuel to the anti-papal fires burning in Europe. However, it was a French Protestant Historian, David Blondel (1590-1655) who proved its mythical nature, in studies published in Holland in 1647 and 1657. Ignatius von Dollinger (1799-1890) gave the “coup de grace” to whatever remained in the legend in 1863 when he showed it to have been an adaptation of a Roman folk tale. The non-Catholic author of “The Oxford Dictionary of Popes” comments (p. 329) “It scarcely needs painstaking refutation today.”

When we look in to the historical evidence, we find that both classically anti-Catholic Protestants and secularists who study history call "pope joan" a myth without historical basis. They have the most to gain by proving that she existed but they do not, instead saying that she did not exist. The best evidence for when something is true or false is when your "enemy" agrees with you.

Also a good article
http://www.holyspiritinteractive.net/columns/guests/patrickmadrid/popejoan.asp

Answer 2

The story of a pope named Joan, writes historian J.N.D. Kelly in his Oxford Dictionary of Popes, "was accepted without question in Catholic circles for centuries." Only after the Reformation, when Protestants used the story to poke fun at Roman Catholics, did the Vatican begin to deny that one of its Holy Fathers had become an unholy mother.

The story is as enduring as it is dubious: A millennium or so ago in Rome, the pope was riding in a procession when suddenly she–that's right, she–went into labor and had a baby.

The female pope reportedly was born in Germany of English missionary parents and grew up unusually bright in an era when learned women were considered unnatural and dangerous. To break the glass ceiling, it was said, she pretended to be male. At 12, she was taken in masculine attire to Athens by a "learned man," a monk described as her teacher and lover.

Disguised in the sexless garb of a cleric, she "made such progress in various sciences," Martin of Troppau wrote, "that there was nobody equal to her." Eventually, it was said, she became a cardinal in Rome, where her knowledge of the scriptures led to her election as Pope John Anglicus. Martin of Troppau's account had her ruling male-dominated Christendom from 855 till 858, specifically two years, seven months, and four days. Her original name, according to some, was Agnes. Others called her Gilberta and Jutta. Many years after she died–assuming she ever lived–scribes began calling her Joan, the feminine form of John.

But by no name would she win a place in the Vatican's official catalog of popes. The church insists that its papal line, dating back to St. Peter, is an unbroken string of men. Scholars tend to agree. An array of reference books, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Oxford Dictionary of Popes, dismiss Pope Joan as a mythical or legendary figure, no more real than Paul Bunyan or Old King Cole.