Archive for October, 2008
I’m finally getting around to posting my debunking of Cornwell’s book about John Paul I. This little project has grown considerably as I’ve worked on it, so again it will have to be divided into several parts.
[Last updated: Feb 11, 2009]
Yallop’s book was the first English-language bestseller to sensationalize and distort John Paul I’s life and death. But it was not to be the last. In May 1989, a little over ten years after the Pope’s death, John Cornwell, an English journalist, published A Thief in the Night: The Death of Pope John Paul I (New York: Viking, 1989). In it, he suggested that rather than being murdered, John Paul I was an incompetent Pope who didn’t want the job, and who helped bring about his own death. His work received a better reception from the critics, who had lambasted Yallop’s work. Even today, some otherwise well-informed Catholic writers who reject Yallop’s book cite Cornwell’s as a solid investigation that really clears up the mysteries about the Pope’s death. (1) This is unfortunate, but almost inevitable, given that the only book-length treatments of John Paul I’s life and papacy in English put out by major publishers are Yallop and Cornwell’s books, and both are equally unreliable.
Cornwell’s reputation later plummeted, however. In 1999, a decade after A Thief in the Night, he went on to write Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking) only to meet with massive criticism of his book for being one-sided, sensationalistic, unscholarly, even fraudulent. He had not only repeated the frequent accusation that Pius had remained silent about the Holocaust, he openly charged him with anti-Semitism and aiding Hitler’s rise to power.
Along with many other errors, numerous critics pointed to a good solid lie right on the front cover of the book: a photo of the future Pope Eugenio Pacelli as papal nuncio to Germany leaving a government building surrounded by German soldiers. In the original edition published in England, the photo was identified inside the book jacket as one taken of Pacelli in March 1939 while Hitler was ruling Germany, suggesting that Pacelli had a close relationship with the Nazis. In fact, the photo was actually taken in 1927, during the Weimar Republic, years before Hitler came to power. On the cover of the American edition, the photo was even cropped to eliminate details that would aid in dating it. (2).
In the end Cornwell was forced to take back many of his conclusions. In 2004, he said, “I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.” (3).
Yet while there have been plenty of scholars who were ready and able to defend Pius XII against Cornwell’s attacks, there have been few or none writing in English to do the same for his treatment of John Paul I (4). This is what I want to accomplish here. And with any luck, I will force him to take back his conclusions about John Paul I as well, although he has largely repeated them in one of his latest books The Pontiff in Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II (New York: Doubleday 2004).
Cornwell, who worked for the London Observer, had also published two novels. In his book he said that while he was visiting the Vatican in the fall of 1987, to get some information about the Vatican’s views on the apparitions at Medjugorie and other supernatural phenomena, Archbishop John Foley, President of the Vatican Commission for Social Communications, had urged him to his surprise to write a book about the death of John Paul I, a subject he originally not been intending to pursue. Foley, he says, wanted a book that would tell the Vatican’s side of the story and dispel the rumors of murder fueled by Yallop’s book. He promised the British author that he could “open up the Vatican” to him. After some hesitation, Cornwell says, he agreed. Though Cornwell, a former seminarian, had since left the practice of the Catholic faith, he felt that he could be objective on the matter. (5).
The Vatican tells the story differently. Archbishop Foley denied that he promised to open up the Vatican, and a journalist who knew Foley said he believed the prelate, and found the statements attributed to him in Cornwell’s book not very credible (6). Other reports indicate that the Vatican only agreed to cooperate with Cornwell on the book after it had received a letter from England’s Cardinal Basil Hume vouching for his integrity. (7). This suggests that it was Cornwell who approached the Vatican, not the other way around.
Like Yallop, Cornwell enjoyed great success and notoriety with this book. His subsequent sensationalistic works on the papacy, including Hitler’s Pope, which have sold well, demonstrate that he has clearly learned where his bread and butter lie, though his honesty and scholarship have frequently been questioned.
In spite of his reputation, A Thief in the Night has been seen by some as the definitive work on Pope John Paul I’s death. But is it?
Cornwell’s Theory
Cornwell rejects the murder theory but believes that John Paul I was faced with a job beyond his capabilities as Pope. He really had the mentality of a simple country priest. As a bishop and cardinal, he “had been sheltered from political conflict and had no time for theological dispute.” (8). Cornwell says that John Paul found himself lost when trying to cope with important Church problems. He told others in the papal apartment that he shouldn’t be Pope and that he was begging God to allow him to die. At the same time, Cornwell says, he was mortally ill, and no one in the Vatican showed a proper interest in his medical care.
Cornwell believes that John Paul was suffering from phlebitis in his legs, a dangerous condition that can lead to an embolism or blood clot in the lungs, but neglected to take necessary medication. Though he experienced severe pain in his chest on September 28, 1978, he forbade his secretaries to summon a doctor. As a result, he suffered from a massive embolism while alone in his room that night, and died within moments. In the end, the Pope, no longer wanting to live, had hastened his own end. Cornwell asks:
“What is the dividing line between ‘giving up,’ suicide by deliberate neglect, and ‘resignation’ or ‘abandonment in a religious sense? There is no evidence that Pope John Paul abandoned himself to despair, but he was ready to die, and there was not only a sense of ripeness, but a strong desire. It took only his refusal to see a doctor and the heedlessness of others to assure him the end he so devoutly wished for.” (9)
Is there any truth in all this?
Whatever criticisms I have about the book in other regards, I will say that one thing Cornwell actually did do well was to prove the sheer ridiculousness of the murder plot theory put forward by Yallop. The few clear facts he documents demolishes that theory, and Yallop’s claims of a deliberate cover-up by the Vatican. He even defends Marcinkus. Particularly helpful in this regard is his inclusion in an appendix of the 1987 article in the Wall Street Journal detailing the charges against Marcinkus and the point-by point refutation by the lawyers for the Vatican Bank.
Of course, once the murder theory was done away with, Cornwell still had to justify his work for the modern book market by coming up with something sensational. He ended up putting forward a real character assassination of the late John Paul I, who was in no way the insecure, whiny character, hopeless in despair and the near suicide that Cornwell makes him out to be.
Cornwell’s book is filled with distortions. As an investigative reporter, he perhaps can’t be faulted for not being a rigorous historian. But even as a journalist, he is unforgivably sloppy, and also suspiciously casual about the truth. As a preliminary to further discussion, I will list these major failings:
1) A lack of in-depth research. Cornwell’s actual summing up of the pre-papal career of Albino Luciani, which takes up at most 2 or 3 pages, is very superficial and at times completely inaccurate. What Cornwell needed to do, and clearly didn’t have the capacity to do, is to really investigate the Pope’s earlier life, study his writings and talk to people who knew him and who could discuss his theological and pastoral approach as a bishop and a cardinal in depth. If he had done so, he would have reached a very different conclusion about the Albino Luciani’s qualifications to be Pope.
In addition, if Cornwell really wanted to know what John Paul I did and thought as Pope, why not turn to the actual texts of his few talks and writings during his short papacy, which have been available from the beginning in English? For a former seminarian, Cornwell seems strangely uninterested in what the Pope thought theologically. Maybe he no longer has a taste for such things, but he should have done his research.
2) Depending on the wrong sources, or distorting and misusing them. Cornwell’s non-research is filled out with interviews with a bunch of gossipy Vatican monisignori, who clearly never met John Paul I. Cornwell accepted at face value their notions that he was “out of his depth” as Pope. Cornwell eagerly reproduces the judgment of one of these worthy informants that the Vatican “floats on a sea of brilliant bitchery,” (10) evidently relishing the poor image that this give of the Vatican. But he does himself little credit by apparently accepting without question everything told him by such “bitchy” sources.
The few times Cornwell did interview someone with actual insight into Luciani’s personality and his strengths through lifelong acquaintance with him, such as his niece Lina Petri, he ignored those insights in putting together his picture of the Pope.
When it comes to John Paul I’s life in the Vatican, Cornwell depends heavily on his interviews with the two papal secretaries, Fr. Diego Lorenzi, who had come with Luciani from Venice, and Fr. (now Bishop) John Magee. These are certainly the most crucial interviews, and the ones of most interest to readers. But they are filled with problems and not very believable.
I myself interviewed Don Diego Lorenzi some years ago, and corresponded with him for several years. I found him far from the buffoon that Cornwell makes him out to be. Cornwell has Lorenzi, who studied in England, speaking near-perfect English in a distinct British idiom (even using words like “bloody’), where the real Lorenzi speaks and writes English well, but in a distinctly Italian way, making mistakes in grammar and usage typical of an Italian. Perhaps these changes are a kind of hangover from Cornwell’s career as a novelist.
Many details in Cornwell’s interviews with Lorenzi and Magee, are different from those they have given elsewhere, or are highly colored and exaggerated versions of things they are on record elsewhere as saying. And in many cases, they are exaggerated in just such a way as to shore up Cornwell’s own sensational theory.
In addition, those who actually did speak to John Paul I frequently as Pope – Cardinal Villot, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Caprio, and Cardinal Casaroli — left accounts of their own, which were available while Cornwell was doing his research, but which he ignored. They provide a completely different picture.
3) Inaccuracy and fictionalizing. The few times I have been able to check a source that Cornwell used, suspicious things crop up. Sister Irma Dametto complained that Cornwell completely invented the circumstances of her interview with him (which did not take place at tea alone with him, as he said, but in a Vatican office in the presence of Marjorie Weeke, secretary of the Vatican’s Office for Social Communications). After the book’s publication, Archbishop Foley, Marjorie Weeke and the Pope’s niece, Lina Petri, have complained that Cornwell attributed to them things they never said. (11)
Some of the inaccuracy is due to Cornwell’s lack of knowledge of Italian, or his deliberate distortion in translation. For instance, in his interview with Lina Petri, he quotes her as saying that when she saw her uncle’s body in his room in the Vatican on the morning of September 29, he was dressed in a white cassock with torn sleeves. Cornwell naturally speculates feverishly about the reason for these torn sleeves. He makes it part of an imagined scenario in which the secretaries actually found the Pope shortly after his death (around midnight), and took off his cassock, tearing it in the process, in order to put on his pajamas, and arrange him in a sitting position in bed, to make it look as if he had died there (12). But Lina later pointed out that she had really only said that the sleeves were wrinkled (stropicciate), not torn (strappate). All the speculation was based on a faulty translation (13).
Certainly, there must be dozens of other such inaccuracies, in addition to the smaller mistakes, such as Cornwell’s consistent misspelling of the name of Luciani’s first diocese as bishop, Vittorio Veneto (which he calls Vittoria Veneto).
All of this raises a gigantic red flag about Cornwell’s accuracy. I will discuss these as well as other more serious inaccuracies in the next installment. (Go to Part II)
NOTES
(1) The most extensive and thoughtful discussion I know of is by Sandra Miesel, “A Quiet Death in Rome: Was John Paul I Murdered?” Crisis, 21 (July-August 2003): 12-18. She has made some of the same points I did in debunking Yallop’s book on this site (independently of me, since I only recently ran across her article). But she unfortunately trusted Cornwell’s investigative work too much, and even accepts his very distorted portrait of John Paul I’s character. She says “the grave deficiencies of [Cornwell's] later work, Hitler’s Pope, do not taint A Thief in the Night” (p. 14). Unfortunately, as I will show, Cornwell exhibits exactly the same tendencies to poor or non-existent research, exaggerated statements, distortion and just plain lies in Thief as he does in his later work.
(2) See Prof. Ron Rychlak, “The Morphing of a Book Cover,” on his website Hitler, Pope Pius XII, The Jews, the Catholics, the Truth.
(3) “The papacy.” The Economist, December 9, 2004, pp. 82-83; also in the U.S. ed., which is dated December 11.
(4) When the book first came out, I wrote an article refuting the author’s claims: Lori Pieper, “Controversial Theory about Pope’s Death Proposed.” Our Sunday Visitor, August 20, 1989, pp. 3-4. Jesus Lopez Saez’s book, Se pedira cuenta, originally written in Spanish, defended John Paul I’s strong character (while still pushing the absurd murder theory); his subsequent book, El dia de cuenta/The Day of Reckoning, with more of the same, is available on the web in a poor English translation, but is far from reliable itself.
(5) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, pp. 1-3.
(6) Desmond O’Grady, “A Thief in the Night: More Vatican Bashing?” Our Sunday Visitor, August 20, 1989, pp. 3-4.
(7) “Death in Rome: Was John Paul I murdered?” Time, June 19, 1989, p. 53; no author given.
(8) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 261.
(9) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 265.
(10) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 62.
(11) Sister Irma Dametto, letter to editor of Humilitas (August 1991), p. 11; Tornielli and Zangrande, Papa Luciani: il sorriso di santo, p. 152.
(12) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, pp. 257-58
(13) Tornielli and Zangrande, Papa Luciani: il sorriso di santo, p. 152, note; conversation of the authors with Dr. Lina Petri.
Filed under: Pope John Paul I | |No Comments
The Archbishop of my diocese of New York, Edward Cardinal Egan, has just written this in his weekly column. It’s so hard-hitting I had to put it here.
Just Look
The picture on this page is an untouched photograph of a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks. Please do me the favor of looking at it carefully.
20-week old baby in womb
Have you any doubt that it is a human being?
If you do not have any such doubt, have you any doubt that it is an innocent human being?
If you have no doubt about this either, have you any doubt that the authorities in a civilized society are duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if anyone were to wish to kill it?
If your answer to this last query is negative, that is, if you have no doubt that the authorities in a civilized society would be duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if someone were to wish to kill it, I would suggest—even insist—that there is not a lot more to be said about the issue of abortion in our society. It is wrong, and it cannot—must not—be tolerated.
Read the rest of what the Cardinal had to say here:
He is right, there’s not a lot more to be said about the issue at this point. The choice in this election seems pretty clear to me. We don’t have a choice, unfortunately, between an unequivocally pro-life and an unequivocably pro-abortion candidate. (McCain is not wholly against embryonic stem-cell research).
But we do have an unequivocably pro-death candidate (let’s call him by his right name), who would withdraw ALL protection from this baby and millions of others. I say he should be stopped.
I say this as a registered DEMOCRAT who longs to see a candidate with a “seamless garment” approach. I long to vote as a Democrat to ensure social justice and programs that would help the poor and the helpless on a variety of issues — but have been unable to do so for the past 30 years because the party supports the death of this baby and millions of others. And Obama has pledged to do away with all laws on the books supporting unborn children through the FOCA act.
My choice is clear. I hope you will think about yours.
Filed under: Life Issues | |No Comments
The St. Elizabeth documentary has been moving slowly the last few months. But something wonderful has been shaping up.
On November 15-22, I will be at the Manreza Spiritual Center near Esztergom Hungary for the General Chapter of the SFO, to film the ceremonies that close the two-year centenary celebrations for St. Elizabeth.
And I have a new DP (Director of Photography). He is Michael Eaton, who has shot video for a number of productions, and who co-directed a DVD released by a major distributor, Lionsgate, called The Case for Christ. You can watch the trailer for it here. Like me, Michael is an alumni of the Act One program.
My brother Nick had originally planned to come with me again, and do the taping, but had to drop out because of business problems.
Among other things, we will attend the closing Mass of the centenary, celebrated by the former primate of Hungary, the Franciscan Cardinal Laszlo Paskai, tour Esztergom castle, the seat of the medieval royal family of Hungary, where Elizabeth would have lived as a young child, and take a day-long tour of Budapest.
And we will be filming this partly for the documentary, but also because the Order wants a record of this historic chapter, and will make their own video of it.
It should be quite an adventure. Please pray for its success. I will be posting updates here. You can find out more and also donate funds for completion of the documentary at this website.
Filed under: Writing | |2 Comments
Here is the last installment of my response to Yallop. It is something of a catchall, and I did have to repeat some things I said earlier, so I hope it is coherent. I may have to take a little break for now because of upcoming work, but I will get to Cornwell as soon as I can.
Yallop’s Answers to his Critics
The first statement from the Vatican about Yallop’s book came in the form of a memorandum released in June 1984, immediately after In God’s Name was published. It admitted officially for the first time that Sister Vincenza had indeed discovered the Pope’s body. However, it insisted that no changes in the Curia were being planned (though it said nothing specific about the Vatican bank, Freemasons or most of Yallop’s other charges) and above all, it insisted that the Pope’s health had not been good. About this it said:
While the death of Pope John Paul I came as a great surprise only a month after his election to the papacy, the Cardinals who gathered in daily meetings in preparation for the (next) conclave saw no reason to question the report of Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, Director of Vatican Health Services that the death of Pope John Paul I was attributable to natural causes.
In addition there was the fact that the Pope’s health had been rather frail. Some time previously, he had complained of swollen ankles. His close relatives did not have any doubts regarding the naturalness of his death, but cited no less than three cases of similar deaths among relatives. (1)
This memorandum was certainly not an extensive treatment of the Pope’s medical problems; it lacked a great deal of detail that was available even back then. In the Postscript to the new edition, Yallop ridicules this memorandum and accuses it of having “assisted immeasurably in the growth of a myth that is still vibrant twenty-eight years later” that is, the myth that Albino Luciani was in poor health when elected Pope.” (2) He spends considerable time in the postscript trying to prove that “Albino Luciani’s condition was far from frail as a study of his factual medical history would have confirmed.” (3)
Yallop once again conveniently ignores the fact that the “factual medical history” contains a statement by Dr. Rama which Yallop himself quotes in his book, that the Pope had a vascular problem that could have led to his death (see Part IV) (4)
Yallop says that Dr. Buzzonetti wasn’t qualified to speak because he wasn’t Luciani’s doctor and had never examined him, and that Buzzonetti’s conclusion that the Pope died from myocardial infarction – a heart attack “has been dismissed . . . by members of the medical profession in Italy, the U.S. Australia New Zealand and the United Kingdom.” (5)
None of the doctors he mentions in different countries had every treated Luciani, any more than Dr. Buzzonetti had. In addition, they didn’t have the advantage Buzzonetti had of actually examining his body, so it’s strange that Yallop should bring them forward as proof.
Yallop then makes one of his most odious claims. He says that the Pope’s relatives and collaborators, nearly all of whom denounced his book for false statements, were lying and changing their stories Again referring to the memorandum, he says:
Confronted with the implications of this book in 1984, ‘close relatives’ of the dead Pope recalled three relatives who had ‘similar deaths’ events which lay forgotten in 1978 and again between 1980-84 when I was engaged in active research. For example the Pope’s brother Edoardo’s response in 1978 when asked if Albino had heart trouble was ‘As far as I know absolutely none.”
Once the allegations contained within the book became public knowledge the memories of a number of the people that either I or my researchers had interviewed underwent remarkable transformations. This phenomenon occurred on both sides of the Tiber. Albino Luciani was in fact in excellent health at the time of his sudden death and his ankles were not swollen.” (6)
Yallop has previously made similar allegations. He was interviewed by John Cornwell, for his book A Thief in the Night, which appeared in 1989. When Cornwell confronted Yallop with the fact that some of his interviewees were saying that things took place differently than Yallop had claimed and that he had attributed to them things they had not said, Yallop said, “but of course they’re all going to be got at; they’re all going to say that black is white now.” (7) He presumably meant that the Vatican had “got at” them. But he doesn’t say how he knows this. Yallop did nothing to prove his own case, however; Cornwell was apparently not allowed to see any of the tapes or transcripts of Yallop’s interviews.
The truth is that the Pope’s family all stress that he died a natural death, and have done so since the beginning. Contrary to Yallop’s insinuations, some family members mentioned the various relatives who had died suddenly – and this was in interviews given immediately after his death. In one of these interviews, Agnes Lacotte, a relative of the Luciani family who lived in Dordogne, near Paris, spoke of those relatives who had died suddenly, including John Paul I’s aunt; she believed they had died of heart attacks (8)
Other close family members have maintained that the Pope did not die of a heart attack, but they certainly believe his death was natural. His niece Amalia Luciani, who was an obstetrical nurse in Trieste, said in an interview immediately after his death; “Almost none of us believe that it was a myocardial infarction that killed my uncle. He was never cardiopathic, he never showed disturbances of that kind. I think his death was due above all to a collapse.” She also noted that hypotension or low blood pressure, which can lead to circulatory collapse, ran in the Luciani family (9)
Yallop also alludes to statements the Pope’s family made after the release of his book in 1984 in regard to the close relatives who died suddenly. He contrasts this to a statement by Edoardo Luciani immediately after the Pope’s death; in it he said his brother had no heart trouble. Yallop neglects to add that it was Edoardo who gave the interview to Gente in 1985, in which he said that the three relatives had died suddenly — see part IV) It’s no clear if Yallop meant to include the Pope’s brother among those who changed their stories. If so, it should be pointed out that Yallop’s investigator never interviewed Edoardo, so he could never have told Yallop something different than he told the press in 1985. (10)
Yallop also spends considerable time trying to prove the Pope’s ankles weren’t swollen, against all the evidence:
Fellow Papal secretary Father John Magee was yet another whose memory post-publication of In God’s Name and more than six years after had “improved” greatly. Interviewed on my behalf by researcher Phillip Willan he had observed “on the last evening he was perfectly fit. During his papacy this business of leg swelling did not occur.” To John Cornwell, Father Magee said, “. . . they were terribly swollen.” (11)
However, Yallop leaves out something crucial in that ellipsis right before “they were terribly swollen.” What Cornwell’s text says in full is “He would walk around the roof garden for around two hours, because he thought the exercise helped his ankles. One day he showed them to me. They were terribly swollen.” (12). Is it possible that all that Magee was saying in the first interview is that the Pope’s ankles were swollen but that his legs were not?
Later on, as further evidence that the Pope was not ill, Yallop quotes an interview given by Dr. Da Ros in 2003. For all of Yallop’s trumpeting that the Pope did not have swollen ankles, Dr. Da Ros does mention them! He called it “a slight swelling up, which had also to do with the fact that life in the Vatican was much more sedentary than in Venice.” (13). That the Pope’s whole legs were swollen was clearly a rumor rampant in the Vatican, and it is probably what Magee was refuting. Many of the people Cornwell quotes in this regard who say the Pope’s whole legs were swollen were those who were repeating rumors, and who weren’t in the papal apartments. The sources most likely to know all speak only of the ankles, including the official Vatican memorandum, the the Pope’s doctor and Fr. Magee.
Even though Edoardo Luciani and the majority of the family members say that John Paul didn’t die of a heart attack –- a conclusion that Yallop produces triumphantly, it’s of little help to his case, for there are a number of other causes of sudden death.
There are in fact, plenty of statements on record that were made by people immediately after the Pope’s death and long before Yallop began his research that confirm his health troubles, specifically those in the weeks and months leading up to his death. See, for example, part IV of this series for statement of Bishop Gottardi, made the day after John Paul I’s body was discovered, disclosing the chest pains he was having in the spring of 1978.
Lastly, Yallop also quotes the interview with Dr. da Ros, who says that Pope had not been to the Stella Maris Institute for medical treatment in August 1978, but only to rest! “No, he had gone to spend seven days on holiday. To be able to read, to walk and to rest.” (14)
This is a particularly important point, because it deals with the medical situation immediately before Luciani’s election as Pope. It turns out that Dr. Da Ros’ reply is far from complete. He does not mention the treatment that Luciani was undergoing at the Lido, the sunbathing for rheumatic pain. It is also well-documented that he was in the hospital and undergoing various medical tests a week before he left for the conclave. I have documented this in Part IV (15).
If Yallop still doesn’t want to believe this, here is incontrovertible evidence from Albino Luciani himself, down in black and white before he became Pope. It comes from a passage no one has noted from his famous interview on the first test-tube baby. Alberto Michelini, an Italian journalist who worked for RAI, had phoned him on August 3. Luciani said to him: “It is not easy for me to answer your question like this, on the spur of the moment, from the telephone in my hospital room, where I am now, without books that I can consult.” (16). His secretary, Mario Senigaglia, confirmed that he was indeed having medical tests at the time (see part IV). This took place three days before Paul VI’s death, and just three weeks before Luciani was elected to succeed him.
Immediately after John Paul I’s death, his brother Edoardo said that Albino had recently suffered “some bad feelings around the heart,” but that a checkup had revealed nothing wrong (17). I believe he must have been referring to this occasion.
There is other evidence as well. At the audience on September 3 for the people from Venice, the Pope said to a group of young nuns: “Before the conclave I was the guest of some sisters and I was rather ill (mezzo malato). One of them had been designated to bring me meals, because at times I ate in my room. I said to her: “You are Sister Disturbata, and when I left well, I said to her ‘Now you are sister Liberata.”(18) This a clear reference to his stay at the Stella Maris Institute.
Perhaps Dr. Da Ros wanted to downplay this episode to prevent questions about why Luciani’s medical condition wasn’t properly diagnosed at the time. (I wouldn’t accuse him of anything without more information). But one thing is clear: the statement isn’t proof that Luciani was perfectly healthy.
Yallop keeps saying John Paul I was not in poor health – yet is forced to admit that he was on medication; Yallop couldn’t do without this, because the medication was supposedly the way the deadly dose of digitalis was delivered. Yet if the Pope was in “excellent health,” as Yallop claims, why was he on medication?
But above all Yallop constantly neglects the distinction between “poor health” and “a fatal medical condition.” A person can have poor health for decades, and not die, because he doesn’t have a fatal condition. Pope John Paul II was ill for more than a decade with Parkinson’s disease, but it wasn’t fatal to him; in the end died at the age of 84 from complications from a urinary tract infection and cardio-circulatory collapse. On the other hand, many people who die of strokes or aneurysms, some of them even in their thirties, are not ill at all before the sudden fatal event. Why Yallop insists that Luciani could have died suddenly without being seriously ill first is beyond me.
In summary, Yallop has not proved his case about anything. His basic scenario is without any credibility.
He is not credible about motives. There is sufficient evidence, even from outside his book, that John Paul I may have wanted to remove Marcinkus from the IOR, but none at all that anyone in the Vatican would have wanted to prevent him from doing so, or participated in the murder or the cover-up. And inside Vatican cooperation would have been absolutely necessary for a such a plot. The whole Masonic conspiracy theory falls apart on examination. The birth-control motive is likewise not credible.
He is not credible about opportunity. There is simply no way the crime could have been committed. Even Vatican insiders are not allowed inside the papal apartment at any time without an invitation, and the doors are locked at all times with only the trusted secretaries possessing the keys. If there was a way this system could have been breeched, Yallop gives us no clue to it. Even if the would-be murderer managed to get inside the papal apartment, he would have to know where the Pope’s medications were kept, and gain access to them, and Yallop gives the name of no one who would have been able to do this.
He is not credible about means. Yallop says that a liquid medication (Effortil) for low blood pressure that the Pope was taking was doctored with digitalis, but according to his family, he was no longer taking it at the time of his death.
Furthermore, even after doing his utmost, Yallop cannot offer a shred of evidence that the Pope died anything but a natural death. In fact, the evidence in favor of natural death is overwhelming, and even the sources Yallop himself relies on to bolster his case prove the opposite.
In particular, the Pope’s medical history right before coming to Rome is very disquieting. It is about his health and his state of mind while in the Vatican that John Cornwell draws his equally scandalous conclusions in A Thief in the Night. So let’s leave Yallop now and look at this book.
—————————————————————-
NOTES
(1) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 320. Cornwell gives an English translation of the whole memorandum, A Thief in the Night, Appendix, pp. 282-83.
(2) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 320
(3) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 321.
(4) Yallop, In God’s Name, p. 255.
(5) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 320.
(6) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 321.
(7) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 143.
(8) Corriere della Sera, September 30, 1978, p. 2.
(9) In an interview with Il Messaggero; cf. Corriere della Sera, September 30, 1978, p. 2; and Jornal de Brasil, October 3, 1978, for another part of the interview.
(10) Antonietta Luciani to the author.
(11) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed, p. 323.
(12) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 185.
(13) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 327.
(14) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 327; the original interview with Andrea Tornielli was published in Il Giornale, September 27, 2003
(15) According to La Stampa, September 30, 1978, p. 4, it was on the advice of Dr. Da Ros that he went to the Stella Maris Institute for treatment, also Bassotto, Il mio cuore, p. 203.
(16) Prospettive nel Mondo, August 1978.
(17) Chicago Tribune, October 1, 1978, p. 22.
(18) Norberto Valentini and Milena Bacchiani, Il papa buono che sorrideva (Milan: Sperling and Kupfer, 1978).
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I could write so much about the patron saint of my order (the Secular Franciscans) on his feast day, but this will have to do — check out this lovely post by Rocco Palmo and be to click and see the new brick-by-brick replica of the Portiuncula chapel in San Francisco!
The Portiunucula is the birthplace of the Franciscan movement, the place where St. Clare and St. Francis met, and the woods blazed with light, the place where the first Franciscan missionaries left for Germany, where Elizabeth would learn of them in her castle in Thuringia, and dedicate herself heart and soul to Francis and his apostolic movement and to the same love for the poor. The place were St. Francis died, on October 3, 1226.
I was in the real Portiuncula chapel a year ago — how I’d love to return!
Pray for us, Seraphic Father, along with St. Clare and St. Elizabeth.
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