Was Pope John Paul I Murdered? (Part II)
As I said in the first installment, understanding the origins of the controversy surrounding the Pope’s death requires me to backtrack a little to the morning his body was discovered. I am attempting to write this account chronologically as much as possible, however difficult it might be, because this is the best way to understand the origins of the conspiracy theory and the way it snowballed, beyond all the evidence, into certainty into so many people’s minds. In this installment, I will start with the events of a morning that aroused shock, grief and above all confusion all over the world, not the least in Vatican City itself, and how they gave rise to doubts and suspicions. Following that, I will go back and analyze what happened, and what the actual evidence is.
Many people don’t remember it well after thirty years, but the people of the world, and especially the people in Rome, felt Pope John I’s death deeply: the whole spring and summer of 1978 had been filled with an atmosphere of gloom in Italy because of the clash of left and right, and the terrorist attacks, especially by those of the Red Brigades who had kidnapped and executed Italian politician Aldo Moro just that May. And then John Paul I had been elected, and his smile, his joyful manner and his captivating words had dispelled the gloom. He was the Pope, the teacher, even the saint people had been waiting for. They reacted to him with instant love. Long-time Vatican watchers were amazed at his radiance. Father Diego Lorenzi, the new Pope’s secretary, who had come with him from Venice, vividly recalls a journalist who wrote for L’Osservatore Romano saying to him: “However did you manage to hide this man from the whole of humanity for so many years?”(1) No one could have remotely imagined what was to become of this bright beginning. And the reaction to what happened next was explosive.
From around 6:00 a.m. on the morning of September 29, 1978, early risers began to notice some unusual activities in St. Peter’s square, including prelates going in and out of the Apostolic palace at a very early hour, the arrival of a doctor, the movements of the Swiss Guards and the closing of the bronze doors of St. Peter’s basilica.
At 7:30, Vatican Radio interrupted its programming with the incredible news: The new Pope was dead, after just 33 days in office. Italian radio and TV gave the news at the same time. Within ten minutes wire services all over the world were typing out the news. Nothing but the bare fact of the Pope’s death was known until 7:42, when the Vatican Press Office distributed the following bulletin:
This morning, September 29, 1978, about five-thirty, the private secretary of the Pope, when contrary to custom, he had not found the Holy Father in the chapel of his private apartment, looked for him in his room and found him dead in bed with the light on, like one who was intent on reading. The physician, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, who hastened to the Pope’s room, verified the death, which took place presumably toward eleven o’clock yesterday evening, as “sudden death that could be related to acute myocardial infarction.”
The declaration was also published on the front page of that day’s Osservatore Romano in a story “Pope John Paul I in the Peace of the Lord.” The accompanying story said: “The first person to become aware of the Pope’s death was his private secretary, Father John Magee, who immediately informed the Secretary of State by telephone.” (2).
People were incredulous because the Pope’s health had seemed perfect at the audience just two days before. The people of Rome, who had immediately loved the Pope, were devastated. And in accordance with the general atmosphere I mentioned, some suspected a dark plot. In the neighborhood of Albergone in Rome, where a Communist youth had been shot to death the night before by a right-wing youth, a 16-year-old student said of John Paul, “He was a revolutionary Pope who wanted to get closer to the people. That’s why they eliminated him.”(3). Who “they” were didn’t really matter. It could have been any number of corrupt “higher-ups.” People didn’t need any evidence to suspect that their beloved Pope had been murdered.
Vatican Radio and various news agencies later announced that the Pope was reading the devotional classic The Imitation of Christ when he died. The next day, however, the Pope’s other secretary, Father Diego Lorenzi said that he was looking at some of his old sermons while working on his Sunday Angelus address. This seeming contradiction with the official source aroused suspicion. Father Andrew Greeley, an American priest in Rome, writing a book about the election of the Pope, told his tape-recorded diary: “If they [the Vatican] lie about little things, they’ll lie about big things. There’s no reason to trust anything they say’ (4). There was mounting talk about having an autopsy on the Pope.
By October 3, some of the common people of Rome were convinced that the Pope was killed by the Curia – or by whoever else they blamed for all the problems in the world. They cried out as they walked by his bier: “Who did this to you?” (5)
On October 4, John Paul I’s funeral Mass was celebrated in St. Peter’s Square in the pouring rain, amid universal grief. On October 6, Civilta` Cristiana’s spokesman Franco Antico said that his organization had “concrete evidence” to back up his calls for an investigation into the Pope’s death. Perhaps it was no coincidence that same day, a number of major papers published a story which the Italian news agency ANSA had obtained the day before from what it called a “good source.” It gave an account of the events surrounding the Pope’s death which seemed to suggest that he had spent his last hours in conflict with Villot and other members of the Curia. It said, without giving specific details or names, that John Paul was about to make some important personnel changes in the Curia and among the Italian bishops. and hinted that some in the Curia were opposed to these changes. It also said that the Pope had argued about them at length with Cardinal Villot on the day of his death, and that he had also spoken about them with Cardinal Colombo of Milan that evening. It was not a discourse nor notes for a homily, but four sheets of paper, containing notes for one of these executive acts, the source said, that the Pope took to bed with him that night, and which were found in his hands when his lifeless body was discovered in the morning.
The source also gave an account of the discovery of the Pope’s body that differed in many respects from that given by the Vatican’s official statement. It said that the first person to discover the Pope’s body was not Father Magee, but Sister Vincenza, a nun in the papal household, who then ran to wake up Father Magee, and that the discovery took place at 4:30 a.m., a whole hour before the time given in the Vatican press statement. (6). Before publishing the story, ANSA obtained from the Pope’s brother, Edoardo Luciani confirmation of the fact that Sister Vincenza had discovered the Pope’s body, which had been relayed to them by Don Diego Lorenzi when he gave them the news of his death. This apparently convinced the agency that the rest of the account was accurate, and it decided to publish it. (7). Of course, it caused a sensation in the world press.
This story about a disagreement between the Pope and Villot, and plans to remove some highly-placed prelates from their posts, seems to have come from a traditionalist source. Is there any direct link between it and Civilta Cristiana? In their popular 1983 book about the Vatican, Pontiff, Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts state that Antico received a very similar story early on September 29 in a phone call from “someone with good Vatican connections” and that he immediately afterwards phoned the story to ANSA. (8). Considering the notorious inaccuracy of this book, (for one thing, it gives the wrong date for the news story), I am cautious about accepting this at face value. However, I believe that it is quite possible some members of Civilta` Cristiana were the source behind the story. Did Antico’s statement that the “concrete evidence” could not yet be released perhaps mean that he thought that the news agency was still hesitating over whether to publish the story? However, the source may equally well have been another similar group of traditionalists.
In a 1981 interview, Giovanni Gennari, a former priest and a member of Italy’s leftist Catholic dissent, gave some details about the changes that the Pope was supposedly planning which he said he had obtained in 1978 from some Vatican employees. Like many other leftist Catholics, Gennari believed that Luciani was an extreme conservative. Unlike the traditionalists, Gennari had actually known Luciani personally. But, since he was also affected with ideological presuppositions — this time those of the left — he is scarcely the type of person to give an objective opinion of his views. Nevertheless, Gennari believed that Luciani was “the man most congenial to the Old Curia’s hopes for a restoration.” (9). In other words, he was going to replace all the liberals in the Curia and the Italian hierarchy with men who were favored by the most conservative faction in the Curia.
According to Gennari’s sources, Villot and Casaroli were among those to be removed. Another was Ugo Poletti, the vicar of Rome, who was known for his concern for the city’s working class population. Villot was to be replaced by Cardinal Benelli and Poletti by Cardinal Felici. When Villot heard of the proposal he became alarmed and told the Pope that such changes would be “a betrayal of the legacy of Paul VI, the end of Ostpolitik, and the complete triumph of the restoration.” Cardinal Colombo was also supposed to have strenuously opposed these plans during his telephone conversation with the Pope on the night of September 28. Gennari did not say that the Pope was murdered, but he said that he was “profoundly shaken” by the controversy, and hinted that the stress may have led to his death a few hours later.
Unfortunately, while the above story was given wide publicity, most journalists who speculated about it were ignorant of the real motives of Civilta` Cristiana and the other traditionalist groups who originated it. But Church officials understood these motives very well. While the controversy was raging in the days after the Pope’s death, Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia explained that Civiltà Cristiana was trying to prove that some “unidentified leftists, inside or outside the Vatican” had murdered the Pope, and as a result, suspicion was spreading like “a subtle poison” among people who did not know the group’s motive. “The American public has a right to know how the rumors started, and how the rightists used them to advance themselves and their cause,” Krol said. (10). But the damage was already done. His explanation was largely ignored while the press had a field day with the theory that the Pope was murdered.
The story that originated in this fashion has had a long and fruitful life in the past thirty years. Several books have been published amplifying the traditionalists’ beliefs about the Pope’s death. In 1984, Jean Jacques Thierry, who had been a correspondent for L’Aurore, the French newspaper that had launched accusations of Freemasonry against much of the Church hierarchy, published a novel called La vraie mort de Jean Paul Ier (The True Death of John Paul I), in which he suggested that if Villot was guilty of the substitution of a double for Paul VI, then he could well have been guilty of murdering John Paul I, and then covering up the murder, when the new Pope found out about him and his Freemason friends. (11). There have been other recent books, articles and even Internet pages, which I will discuss later.
In Pontiff, Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts give Civilta Cristiana` as the source for their account of the discovery of the Pope’s body. Their account agrees in many details with the ANSA story. Although the authors do not say directly that the Pope was murdered, they do say that Cardinal Villot lied about who discovered his body and about what he was reading at the time of his death. Though they follow the traditionalists’ story closely, the authors do offer a different explanation of the mysterious papers the Pope was holding: they contained a severe condemnation of the Jesuits, and their General, Father Pedro Arrupe, for their disobedience to the hierarchy and their support of Marxism and liberation theology. They add that Cardinal Villot was determined to conceal this condemnation, so he forbade its release and instead concocted the story that the Pope had been reading The Imitation of Christ (12).
Either version would certainly be pleasing to the right, where theories of conspiracies among the Jesuits are also common. For instance, in his book The Jesuits, Malachi Martin, who is famous for his accusations against those in the Church whom he believes to be leftists, insinuates that the Jesuits were in league with the Freemasons who worked in the Vatican, and that John Paul I planned to “liquidate” the Society of Jesus if it did not reform itself immediately. Nothing would be more natural to those who believe in these theories than to suspect Cardinal Villot of obeying Masonic orders to prevent the condemnation of the Jesuits from being publicized. (13).
Now for the analysis. First, and most important, the motives for the murder are all utterly without credibility, because the picture of John Paul I presented in this theory is completely at odds with his real beliefs as evidenced by his actions and writings as a bishop and cardinal (This is what my whole book is going to prove). He was a strong supporter of all the Vatican II reforms and Pope Paul’s Ostpolitik as well. There is no way he would have been responsible for the “restoration” of the pre-Vatican II Church some were hoping for. Second, he was anything but sympathetic to the traditionalists’ claims against Paul VI and the Church hierarchy, and began speaking out against them, especially after the Lefebvrites began spreading their accusations against the hierarchy in his diocese. When in 1977 Lefebvre launched accusations against some bishops he considered leftists or outright Communists, Cardinal Luciani responded in an article in the city newspaper of Venice, Il Gazzettino, in which he pointed out that Lefebvre’s statements about leftist bishops were “not backed up by any proof.” Besides, he added, “isn’t the French prelate aware of the almost daily accusations [of the left] against the episcopate in Italy because it declares that Christianity and Marxism are incompatible?” He also expressed his pain that the French archbishop had launched similar charges against Pope Paul VI, “to whom Lefebvre professes himself, in words to be so devoted. I said ‘in words’; in deeds, he aligns himself with Voltaire, who used to say: ‘The Pope is a holy person; therefore let us kiss his foot, but tie his hands.’” (14). When a Lefebvre supporter wrote a letter to the editor criticizing his article, and denouncing Pope Paul for receiving Hungarian Communist Party Secretary Kadar at the Vatican, Luciani replied, “I simply cannot understand this criticism from Catholics. With his mandate to evangelize the world, and with two-thirds of which is under the influence of Communism, the Pope must try every means. There are some risks, and he knows it better than we do; let us help him, not by criticizing him, but by praying for him and supporting him.” (15)
Luciani was well aware, as were all other sensible Catholic bishops, of the fanaticism exhibited by many of Lefebvre’s followers. It is absurd to suggest that as Pope he would have actually believed the accusations of Masonry that they directed at their enemies.
Nor did John Paul have any animosity against the Jesuits or their leader. In fact, when he was still studying at the seminary, he had ardently desired to enter the Jesuits himself, but his bishop would not allow it, because of the great need of priests in the diocese. He had had a Jesuit confessor, Father Leandro Tiveron, in Venice. The activities of some Jesuits may have caused problems, but John Paul was sensible enough not to apply them to the order as a whole, or to Arrupe. In fact, a few days after becoming Pope, he had written a warm letter to Arrupe, in which he recalled that he had admired the Jesuit General’s intervention at the 1977 Synod enough to personally ask him for a copy of it. (16) The Pope had indeed been planning to deliver an address to a meeting of the Jesuits in Rome on Saturday, September 30. However, no one in the Vatican ever tried to conceal the text of this speech. In general, undelivered or unpublished documents that a Pope leaves at his death are not made known unless his successor wishes it. What happened here was no different. Father Arrupe had asked Cardinal Villot if the Jesuits could have the text of John Paul I’s talk, and the cardinal, now John Paul II’s secretary of State, delivered it to him on November 18, 1978, with the approval of the new Pope.
The address was published in the Acta Apostolica Sedis, which contains all the official papal texts. There is no condemnation in it, and certainly no hint of the immediate demise of the order. It did warn the Jesuits against secularist tendencies and abandoning the order’s spiritual mission for tasks that could be better left to the laity, but it also said that the Jesuits should concern themselves with social problems, and urged them to announce the Christian message with fidelity, but also in a language adopted to the modern mentality, something that neither Martin or the traditionalists would agree with. (17).
So whatever the Pope may have had in his hands, he most certainly would not have been holding papers detailing the suppression of the Jesuits or a traditionalist restoration in the Church. So why all the discrepancies in the Vatican accounts? And why the lie about who discovered the Pope’s body?
The first official statement, which witnesses later said that Villot put together, said that a secretary discovered the body, when it was really Sister Vincenza. According to Father Magee (now the bishop of Cloyne, Ireland), who had been alerted by Vincenza, he insisted that his name not be put into the statement, because he didn’t want to be a party to the fabrication. But Villot insisted that he couldn’t release the information that a nun was in the Pope’s bedroom. (18) This might seem surprising to American readers, but the Vatican is very straight-laced. It would be regarded as scandalous to admit that a woman had been in the Pope’s bedroom at that early hour of the morning. And in fact, there was actually some reason for this uneasiness. If the frequently anti-Catholic secular press in Italy, or, much worse, the Communist press, got hold of the facts, they would make the most of it. When questioned, the Vatican had to admit that the secretary in question was Fr. Magee. This is an attempt at a cover up of sorts, the truth of which was not admitted by the Vatican until much later. The issue of who discovered the Pope’s body certainly does not offer any evidence that the Pope was murdered; it only evidence that Cardinal Villot wanted to protect the Pope’s memory from salacious gossip.
How did the Imitation of Christ story begin? It was later traced it to speculation among the journalists from around the world who are accredited to the Holy See to cover Vatican events for their periodicals back home. (19). The speculation eventually found its way onto Vatican Radio as a news report, as well as out to wire services. After it was given on Vatican Radio, it erroneously acquired the status of an official Vatican statement and was cited as such. Contrary to what many people think, Vatican Radio does not get all of its news from directly inside the Vatican. It uses all the regular news sources as well. The important thing to notice is that in these stories, the book was not said to be in the Pope’s hands, but open on the bed beside him; so that there is no real contradiction with Fr. Lorenzi’s statement (20). On October 2, Vatican Radio announced that “after making the necessary inquiries,” it was able to state that the Pope was holding his personal notes and homilies, as Don Diego had said (21). At any rate, the Imitation of Christ story was nowhere given in an official statement by the Vatican, and can in no way be traced to Cardinal Villot.
In fact, even though it may have been speculation the story was certainly credible. The Pope loved the Imitation of Christ, he had been making his morning meditations on it in the papal chapel with Fr. Magee, and all the listening world had heard him quote from it in his last general audience just two days before, on September 27. (22) In fact, the story may even have been based on a genuine piece of information leaked from inside the Vatican, for according to Sister Vincenza, in a later statement, when she found his body, the Pope, in addition to the papers on his hand, did have a book open beside him on the covers, though she didn’t identify it as The Imitation of Christ (23).
The accusation that Villot was trying to cover up what the Pope was holding in his hands simply don’t hold water. If he had wanted to conceal that the Pope had controversial changes in his hands, he certainly did a very poor job of it. The first official statement, reproduced in full above, states only the bare fact that the Pope was reading. Instead of being a well-concocted cover-up story that placed something definite in the Pope’s hands we have a vague statement of the type that could only give rise to endless speculation, which is in fact, what happened. Nor, as we have seen, was the Imitation of Christ story traceable to any official Vatican statement that Villot would have been responsible for. In fact, two days later, on October 1 – thus even before Vatican Radio’s correction of its earlier story — Villot told a French journalist that the Pope had the text of an upcoming discourse in his hands, certainly reasonably close to what Fr. Lorenzi said (24). Oddly, everyone seems to have overlooked this article, and Villot’s actual statement on the matter.
The ANSA story said that Vincenza said that the Pope’s body was discovered at 4:30, which it said was the hour the Pope normally went to the chapel. This is also in total contradiction to what the eyewitnesses stated about what time he normally rose. I will discuss this, as well as the question of the autopsy more in the next installment, when I discuss Yallop’s claims.
The fantastic nature of these stories certainly calls into question the conclusions of any author who makes use of them. David Yallop is one of these authors. In his book In God’s Name, he states that it was several members of the group that was the source for the ANSA story who convinced him to undertake his investigation into the death of John Paul I. (25). His claims will be the subject of the next installment.
NOTES
(1) Diego Lorenzi, “Luciani, una lezione vivente per il mondo,” interview in Gente Veneta, September(?) 2003; this article is online in Italian at www.amicipapaluciani.it/dondiego.htm.
(2) L’Osservatore Romano, September 29, 1978, p. 1.
(3) Corriere della Sera, September 30, 1978, p. 3.
(4) Andrew Greeley, The Making of the Popes 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1979), p. 182
(5) Greeley, Making of the Popes, p. 181.
(6) Corriere della Sera, October 6, 1978, p. 2.
(7) Chicago Tribune, October 7, 1978, p. 2.
(8) Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Pontiff ((Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1983), pp. 267-68.
(9) Giovanni Gennari, “Papa Luciani mori` cosi`,” L’Espresso, 25 October 1981, p. 24.
(10) Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 11 October 1978; see Supplement to the New York Times News Service, 12 October 1978, p. 54.
(11) Thierry, La vraie mort, especially pp. 149-153.
(12) Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, pp. 255, 263.
(13) Malachi Martin: The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Linden Press, 1987), pp. 43-48, 76
(14) Il Gazzettino, June, 1977.
(15) Il Gazzettino, June 14, 1977
(16) The letter to Arrupe is in Nicolini, Trentatre Giorni, p. 49.
(17) The text of the address was also published for the Jesuits in the Notizie dei Gesuiti d’Italia, 79, no. 1, pp. 3-7.
(18) John Cornwell, A Thief in the Night (New York, Viking, 1989), p. 196.
(19) Giulio Nicolini Trentatre Giorni: Un pontificato, 3rd ed. (Bergamo: Editrice Velar, 1983), p. 180-81. This was some five years before John Cornwell carried out a similar investigation and reached the same results.
(20) See, among others: “Open on the becovers was a copy of the bok The Imitation of Christ,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1978, p. 1; the Pope “lay with The Imitation of Christ open beside him” Time, October 9, 1978, p. 68; the book “was at his side,” The Brazilian magazine Veja, October 4, 1978, p. 28.
(21) David Yallop, In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of John Paul I (New York: Bantam Books, 1984, p. 236.
(22) The passage goes: “The one who loves, runs, flies and is happy.” See L’Osservatore Romano, September 28, 1978; I also used the actual recording of the talk: Ricordo di Papa Luciani. Vatican Radio “Quattro Voci” program, 28 September 1979.
(23) The recollections of Sister Vincenza, as given to Sister Irma Dametto, can be found in Saverio Gaeta, “La profezia di Papa Luciani,” Jesus, September 9, 1998. This is one of several written versions of the oral accounts that Sister Vincenza gave about her discovery before her own death in 1983. She spoke at various times to Fr. Mario Senigaglia, Luciani’s secretary in Venice, to the Luciani family, to Sister Irma, and to Venetian author Camillo Bassotto; but this is the only version that contains this detail.
(24) Robert Serrou, “J’ai vecu aupres de Jean-Paul Ier ma plus riche experience spirituelle,” Paris Match, October 13, 1978, p. 89; the date of the interview is given by Villot’s friend Fr. Antoine Wenger, who was present, see his Le Cardinal Jean Villot: secretaire d’etat de trois papes (Paris: Desclée de Brower, 1989), p. 238. Wenger notes that Cardinal Villot carefully reviewed the text of the article for accuracy.
(25) Yallop, In God’s Name, p. 241-42