Archive for Pope John Paul I
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.
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 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.
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. (1).
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.” (2).
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 (3). 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. (4).
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 (5). 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. (6). 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.” (7). 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.” (8)
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. Cornwell’s non-research is filled out with interviews with a bunch of gossipy Vatican monisignori, who clearly never met John Paul I during his papacy or at any other time. Cornwell accepted at face value their notions that he was “out of his depth” as Pope. Cornwell eagerly reproduce the words of one of these worthy informants that the Vatican “floats on a sea of brilliant bitchery,” (9) 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 ignores those insights in putting together his picture of the Pope.
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, but in a Vatican office in the presence of Marjorie Weeke, secretary of the Vatican’s Office for Social Communications). Weeke and the Pope’s niece, Lina Petri, have complained that Cornwell attributed to them things they never said. (10)
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 (11). 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 (12).
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).
Cornwell often distorts the character of words of his interviewers in other ways. I myself interviewed Don Diego Lorenzi, the Pope’s secretary in Venice and the Vatican, 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 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 his fellow papal secretary, Father (now Bishop) John Magee, are different from those they have given elsewhere, or are highly colored and exaggeratee 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.
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.
NOTES
(1) See Prof. Ron Rylchak, “The Morphing of a Book Cover,” on his website Hitler, Pope Pius XII, The Jews, the Catholics, the Truth.
(2) “The papacy.” The Economist, December 9, 2004, pp. 82-83; also in the U.S. ed., which is dated December 11.
(3) 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, and his subsequent book, El dia de cuenta, do the same.
(4) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, pp. 1-3.
(5) Desmond O’Grady, “A Thief in the Night: More Vatican Bashing?” Our Sunday Visitor, August 20, 1989, pp. 3-4.
(6) “Death in Rome: Was John Paul I murdered?” Time, June 19, 1989, p. 53; no author given.
(7) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 261.
(8) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 265.
(9) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, p. 62.
(10) Sister Irma Dametto, letter to editor of Humilitas (August 1991), p. 11; Tornielli and Zangrande, Papa Luciani: il sorriso di santo, p. 152.
(11) Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, pp. 257-58
(12) Tornielli and Zangrande, Papa Luciani: il sorriso di santo, p. 152, note; conversation of the authors with Dr. Lina Petri.
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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.
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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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Here is a link to an article in this week”s Pilot, the newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese, about the 30th anniversary of John Paul I’s death.
I was interviewed for the article, and discussed many aspects of John Paul I’s life and papacy with the author, Neil McCabe. Space restrictions evidently prevented a good part of that discussion from making the cut. I wish the article could have been longer. But at least it’s a beginning in spreading the word about this Pope.
Rocco Palmo, of Whispers in the Loggia fame, also has some cool things to say in the article.
And Rocco as also done us the service of providing then Cardinal Ratzinger of Munich’s moving memorial homily on Papa Luciani’s death here.
The future Pope Benedict commented of John Paul I: ostensus est nobis, non datus - he was shown to us rather than given. Only shown for a brief time, but lovingly remembered.
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I wasn’t able to write anything on the actual anniversary of Pope John Paul I’s death, because I had be away from home. Only today have I found time to post again. In an online article from the September 29 issue of Il Corriere delle Alpi, the paper from Papa Luciani’s home diocese of Belluno, I read that at the Mass in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice on September 28, Cardinal Angelo Scola, Luciani’s successor in that see, hinted that he may be beatified soon; he is “in the light of canonical sanctity.” All the evidence is gathered, and very shortly the last testimonies on the miracle attributed to him will be sent to Rome.
Also on September 28, Pope Benedict XVI recalled John Paul I in his Angelus address at Castel Gandolfo. It is up only in Italian at the Vatican’s web site; I’m translating the whole text here. This Pope is very devoted to his predecessor; I am praying that he will soon be able to preside at his beatification.
Dear Brothers and sisters!
Today the liturgy proposes to us the Gospel parable of the two sons sent by their father to work in his vineyard. One of them immediately says yes, but then does not go; the other, on the other hand, refuses at the moment, but then, repenting, complies with his father’s wishes. With this parable, Jesus stresses his prediction for sinners who convert, and teaches us that it takes humility to welcome the gift of salvation. St. Paul too, in the passage from the letter to the Philippians that we are meditating on today, exhorts us to humility. “Do nothing out of rivalry or vainglory,” he writes, “but each of you, with all humility must consider others superior to yourselves” (Phil. 2:3). These are the same feeling that Christ had, when, stripping himself of his divine glory for love of us, became man and humbled himself to the point of dying on the cross (cf. Phil. 2:5-8). The verb used – ekenôsen – literally means that he “empties himself,” and clearly demonstrates the profound humility and infinite love of Jesus, the humble Servant par excellence.
Reflecting on these biblical themes, I thought immediately of Pope John Paul I, the thirtieth anniversary of whose death falls today. He chose the same episcopal motto as Charles Borromeo: Humilitas. A single word that synthesizes the essential of the Christian life and indicates the indispensable virtue of the one who is called to the service of authority in the Church. In one of the four general audiences held during his pontificate, he said, among other things, with that familiar tone that he was noted for: “I will limit myself to recommending a virtue so very dear to the Lord. He has said: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart” . . . Even if you have done great things, say: ‘We are useless servants.’ (Luke 17:10). On the contrary, the tendency in all of us is rather the opposite: to put ourselves on display.” (Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo I, p. 51-52). Humility can be considered his spiritual testament.
Thanks to this virtue, 33 days were enough for Papa Luciani to enter into people’s hearts. In his discourses he used examples drawn from the concrete events of life, from his family memories and from popular wisdom. His simplicity was a vehicle for a solid and rich teaching that, thanks to the gift of an exceptional memory and a vast culture, he embellished with numerous citations from ecclesiastical and secular writers. In this way he was an incomparable catechist, in the footsteps of St. Pius X, from his native region, his predecessor first in the chair of St. Mark and then on that of St. Peter. “We must feel little before God,” he said in that same audience. And he adds: “I am not ashamed to feel like a child before its mama; we believe in our mamas, I believe in the Lord, in what he has revealed to me.” (ibid., p. 49). These words show the depth of his faith. While we thank God for have given him to the Church and the world, let us treasure his example, committing ourselves to cultivating the same humility that made him capable of speaking to everyone, especially the little ones and the so-called distant ones. Let us invoke for this purpose Most Holy Mary, the humble servant of the Lord.
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Because of a great overload of work, I have had to divide my study of Yallop’s latest work into two parts. I’ll put up the second one as soon as possible.
Update (October 11): I have come across more information in my research, referring to the “Cardinal Vagnozzi dossier” and the source for the information on it, so I have updated this section to reflect that..
In 2007, Yallop brought out a new edition of In God’s Name. The book is still attracting attention and sales. Little seems to have been changed or revised in the book, except for the new introduction and Postscript, in which Yallop does impart some new information, and answers his critics. I will pick out a few points to answer from both of those areas.
New Information?
Yallop says that his original sources are now dead. He still doesn’t name them directly, but he does bring forth some actual names of people who he says know the truth about the changes in the Curia that the Pope was supposedly going to make. So what do these people say? And does it support Yallop’s thesis? Yallop’s main points:
“Father Germano Pattaro brought from Venice by Pope John Paul I as an adviser has stated that among the documents that the Pope was studying were his notes covering the range of changes he had discussed with Cardinal Villot a few hours before retiring for the night.” (1)
As usual, Yallop’s statement is completely undocumented, so his exact source for this is not known. There is to my knowledge, however, only one place where Pattaro spoke of his meetings with John Paul I, and that was to Venetian author Camillo Bassotto, who reprinted an account of those conversations in his book Il mio cuore è ancora a Venezia (Venice: Adriatica, 1990) – an account that extends over more than twenty-five pages. Nowhere in those twenty-five pages is there any discussion of dismissing Marcinkus from the Vatican Bank getting rid of Freemasons or dramatic changes in the Curia. (2) No doubt Bassotto’s book is what Yallop meant, because he also mentions it elsewhere. But he could not have gotten his information from this book. He doesn’t seem to have gotten it directly from Pattaro, who died in 1986. So the information Yallop prides himself on apparently doesn’t exist.
“. . . Camilo [sic] Bassotto is also on record as having discussed with Luciani the various changes he was proposing to make.” (3)
This is another example of Yallop’s carelessness about details; he is wrong about Bassotto himself having had any discussion with the Pope on this subject. It was actually an anonymous “person in Rome,” who some people think was a highly placed prelate in the Curia, who sent Bassotto his notes of his discussions with Pope John Paul I in May 1989, and which, once again were published in his book about the Pope (4). There have been attempts to identify this person, none conclusive. (5) Once again, Yallop ends up using an anonymous source, though at least the actual text of this one is available.
I myself have some problems with the credibility with this part of Bassotto’s work. Once again, there are some twenty pages of lengthy reconstructed conversation; it’s not clear if any written notes were taken. And if the person in question really was a friend of and close to John Paul I, and specifically wanted to defend the late Pope, as he claims, why did he not allow his name to be published?
Yet the tone of the remarks and many of the details are far more consonant with Albino Luciani’s character than anything that Yallop puts forward. The great majority of this text is spiritual in tone, and in it the Pope supposedly discusses his plans for encyclicals, his upcoming travels, etc.
This account does, in fact describe a discussion between the Pope and Villot about the Vatican Bank. However, the details don’t agree at all with those of Yallop’s sources. The discussions supposedly took place about three weeks into his pontificate (roughly September 16-17), and not the night before his death, when Yallop says notification of these changes was given to Villot. The Pope is recorded as saying to his confidant:
One afternoon, before leaving me, Villot spoke to me about the IOR, saying to me: ‘the IOR is a hot potato which is sizzling in everyone’s hands. Some people may end up burning themselves.’ I answered that the Church must be transparent in money matters, it must work in the light of day. Its credibility is at stake.
I am also telling this to you, (6) the Church cannot have power, nor must it possess riches. I know that the Institute for Religious Works was established in its present form by Paul VI, in order to aid, assist and promote the works of religion and charity throughout the world. I want it to be the bishops and cardinals, through their representatives, who decide what to do about the IOR: whether to maintain it or suppress it, and what new structure to give it. I ask that its actions all be licit and clean and in harmony with the Gospel spirit. The world must know what it is, what the IOR does: what are its real ends, how the money is gathered and how it is spent. We must achieve transparency in the Vatican economic account books: we must publish the balances audited in their entirety.
The president of the IOR [i.e. Marcinkus] must be replaced: as soon as you think the time is right. It must be done in the proper way and with respect for the dignity of the person. A bishop cannot be chairman of and govern a bank. The See that is called the See of Peter, the See which is also called the Holy See, cannot degrade itself to the point that it mingles its financial activities with those of bankers, for whom the only law which holds good is profit, and where usury is practiced, a kind that is permitted and accepted, but it is still usury. We have lost the sense of evangelical poverty: we have made ours the rules of the world. I have already suffered bitterness and insults as a bishop because of events connected with money. I don’t want it to be repeated when I am Pope. The IOR must be completely reformed.
Don’t forget that Masonry, hidden or open, as the experts call it, has never died, it is more alive than ever. Just as that horrible thing called the Mafia has never died. They are two powers for evil. We must courageously set ourselves against their perverse actions. We must be vigilant, everyone: lay people, priests, and especially pastors, and bishops. We must protect the people of our communities. It is a subject that we will one day deal with more clearly in front of everyone. (7)
So this anonymous person not only has Villot in agreement with the Pope that something had to be done about the IOR, but actually being the first to broach the subject with him; in addition, he has the Pope saying that Marcinkus should be removed “as soon you [Villot] think the time is right” – in other words, no order by the Pope for an immediate removal of Marcinkus; it is left up to Villot’s discretion. Nor was the date given the last day of his life. Nowhere does the Pope speak of any wrongdoing on Marcinkus’ part. The reason is simply that a bishop should not run a bank.
The allusions to Masonry and the Mafia evidently refer to Gelli, Calvi and Sindona. However, this source has nothing about the long list of removals of Masons in the Curia that Yallop’s anonymous sources suggested to him. There is no evidence here that Villot objected to these changes, or John Paul distrusted him because he was a Mason. In fact, the source took pains to collect information from others in the Vatican who had spoken to Villot and who were able to confirm the admiration Villot had for the Pope and the close relationship between the two. In other words, more evidence that Villot could not have been involved in any conspiracy to kill the Pope – and his involvement, as I mentioned in Part IV, would be crucial if such a plan were to succeed. All in all, not very good evidence for any of Yallop’s theories. Yallop does not quote a single word from this source, yet brazenly contrives to make it support his theories when it does nothing of the kind.
This source does mention some changes that the Pope was planning to make in the Curia, but they did not have to do with getting rid of Freemasons, but simplifying the structures of the Church bureaucracy, and making it possible for the Pope to delegate some of the work to others. (8)
“Then there were others. Men such as Archbishop Giuseppe Caprio who had taken a leading role in the investigation ordered by the late Pope, or Monsignor Giovanni Angelo Abbo, the man chosen by the pope to replace Marcinkus, or Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the man the Pope planned to place in charge of the Florence archdiocese.” (9)
Yallop says that the authors of the Vatican memorandum about his book released in 1984, could have gained information from these men about the Pope’s plans. He himself conveniently comes out with their names after they are dead and cannot contradict him. (Msgr. Abbo, the secretary to the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See died in 1985, Cardinal Poletti in 1997, and Cardinal Caprio in 2005). Once again, Yallop gives no documentation of how he learned what these prelates supposedly knew.
But finally we come to Yallop’s triumphantly displayed “smoking gun.” He describes it as “the crucial dossier that the late Pope was studying shortly before his death. If there was ever within this entire affair a smoking gun it is the Vagnozzi dossier.” He goes on:
As of September 1978 Cardinal Egidio Vagnozzi knew more about the inner workings of Vatican finances than anyone else in or out of the Vatican. From 1967 he had been in control of the Prefecture of the Economic Affairs of the Holy See. His role was comparable to that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom or the Auditor General in the United States. Vagnozzi had intimate knowledge of the Sindona and Calvi relationships with the Vatican and their various dealings with the Holy See. As recorded earlier in this book in 1968-69 Vagnozzi was still struggling to prise out many of the Vatican’s financial secrets that lay buried but long before Pope John Paul I was elected he had the answers.
When Albino Luciani sought an urgent investigation the information that Vagnozzi had acquired over a decade ensured that a highly detailed dossier was soon in the pope’s hands. Immediately after the discovery of the Pope’s body, the Vagnozzi report along with the papers covering the various changes were removed by Cardinal Villot, whose deputy Caprio was most certainly aware of the contents of that report. An indication of just how explosive the contents were can be gauged by the fact that Roberto Calvi subsequently became aware of the Vagnozzi report and its contents and after being offered a copy by a Vatican contact for three million dollars haggled the price down to one point two million dollars then kept the copy close to himself for the rest of his life. (10).
Once again, Yallop provides absolutely no documentation, especially for the part about Calvi. Given Yallop’s habitual lack of accuracy, not to mention his penchant for sheer fantasy, an intelligent reader might wonder what if anything can be believed of all this.
Yallop refers what the Pope was holding in his hands as the “Vagnozzi dossier.” For all that Yallop trumpets Vagnozzi’s importance in the Postscript, he apparently merited only a couple of brief mentions within the actual text of his book, even in the same new edition that contains this postscript. Both of these mentions detailed Vagnozzi’s work drawing up a balance sheet for the various departments of the Vatican for the Prefecture. He evidently had difficulty doing so. Through the juxtaposition of these ideas in the Postscript, the reader is lead to believe that the “secrets” that Vagnozzi was unearthing referred to Sindona and Calvi, in the book itself, they refer only to getting the departments to release the actual total on their balance sheets. In reality, the Vatican Bank was not under the authority or jurisdiction of the Prefecture. In Yallop’s book itself, there is nothing detailing Vagnozzi’s supposed intimate knowledge of the relations between Marcinkus and Sindona (11).
Here is what appear to be the real facts behind this from documented source. First, there is an account by long-time Vatican analyst, Benny Lai, who had close ties to a number of Curial cardinals. As head of the Prefecture for Economic affairs, Vagnozzi had for some years been coordinating the economic administrations of the various departments under his control, and putting together an annual balance based on income and expenditures. He had written his first report on this for Pope Paul VI in 1969, more or less consonant with the facts and date Yallop mentions. But it was nothing more than a balance sheet, concerned exclusively with the various departments of the Vatican under the Prefecture — which did not include the Vatican Bank.
During the pre-conclave period in August 1978, Vagnozzi had written, at the request of Cardinal Villot, a report or balance sheet of income and expenditures to inform the cardinals meeting in the General Congregations about the general financial state of the Holy See. This was the first time that information like this had been shared with the majority of the Sacred College. Most of the cardinals would not even have known if the Vatican was solvent or not, or what its operating budget was. Villot had instructed Vagnozzi, nevertheless, to not dwell on the value of the Vatican’s stock portfolio, real estate holdings and gold reserves. “The African cardinals,” he said, “would not understand these things, and would draw from them who knows what conclusions.”
Someone who actually was known to have been collecting information on the Vatican Bank, Marcinkus, and his relationship with Calvi and Sindona, was Cardinal Pietro Palazzini, who was a member of the Curia, but not directly a part of the financial administration. During the General Congregations, Palazzini challenged the parameters of the report Villot had asked for, and asked why the Vatican Bank was not under the Administration of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs, and presumably also why its affairs could not be reported on to the cardinals. Cardinal Villot had at first dismissed his request. In all probability, he didn’t consider discussion of a lightning-rod issue like the controversial Vatican Bank appropriate at a moment when all the cardinals needed to work for unity in electing a new Pope. But Palazzini pressed his case, and a commission of cardinals was selected to look into the matter: they eventually reported that the IOR was not under the administration of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs. (12).
Palazzini’s request was going to have to wait until later. No doubt he would have been eager to take up the matter with the new Pope. And Cardinal Luciani, who regularly attended the pre-conclave General Congregations, would have been sitting in on these discussions. But whether Palazzini or Vagnozzi ever spoke to John Paul I about his information either before or after his election, has never been made clear, and certainly not by Yallop. Nor does it seem that at the time of John Paul I’s election, either Palazini or Vagnozzi knew much about the IOR’s relationship with Sindona or Calvi; they were simply trying to find information.
I think that Yallop’s source for his information about Vagnozzi was ultimately the story told by Francesco Pazienza, an associate of Roberto Calvi, who later went to prison for his part in the Banco Ambrosiano affair. In his memoirs, published from prison, Pazienza said that he in 1981 he was asked to do some work for a faction in the Vatican that wanted to oust Marcinkus; Pazienza was asked to dig up dirt on him.
Pazienza went to a rather dubious contact of his own — a man named Giorgio Di Nunzio, who moved in P2 circles and who peddled Vatican gossip to the right-wing magazine Il Borghese. Di Nunzio claimed to be in possession of a dossier on Marcinkus and Sindona drawn up by Cardinal Vagnozzi, who had died the previous year (1980), before he had any chance to use the information himself. Instead of taking this information to the Vatican, Pazienza sold it to Calvi to the tune of 1.2 million dollars.
If this dossier genuinely contained any dirt about Marcinkus and Sindona, it would have been ideal fodder for Calvi, who was looking for every possible way to blackmail Marcinkus and the Vatican bank into continuing to participate in his schemes. Pazienza, a convicted criminal, who has changed his story a number of times, was probably the “Vatican contact” mentioned, though he he is a very dubious source of information.
This account of Pazienza’s memoirs was given by Philip Willan in his 2007 book The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi. (Willan, coincidently, was Yallop’s original researcher for In God’s Name). The account in Willan’s book, however, makes no mention of Pope John Paul I. Pazienza’ original memoir may contain more, but so far, there is no real credible credible information behind Yallop’s statement. (13)
However, at least one statement Yallop reported can be connected with Vagnozzi. Shortly after John Paul I’s election, Vagnozzi spoke to author Lai. They talked about how John Paul I seemed hemmed in by the Curia and Vagnozzi said: “I don’t know how long this state of affairs will last, because he has his own ideas and will want to implement them. They have told me he has no love for Marcinkus. He once came to Rome to speak his mind about the sale of the Banca Cattolica del Veneto, and Marcinkus treated him brusquely. We’ll see how it will end up.” (13). Here is a very clear summary of Yallop’s own version of the relationship between Luciani and Marcinkus. But not that it was based on a rumor – “they told me” (m’hanno detto) — who is “they? In short, he had heard a rumor. Nothing here is evidence that Vagnozzi had any direct information from conversations with the new Pope.
So in the first matter, that of new evidence about John Paul I’s supposed changes in the Church, Yallop basically provides nothing of value.
(To be continued)
_______________________________________________
NOTES
(1) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 319.
(2) Bassotto, Il mio cuore, pp. 121-147
(3) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 319.
(4) Bassotto, Il mio cuore, pp. 227-248.
(5) For instance, Jesus Lopez Saez, a Spanish priest who has two books of his own theorizing that the Pope was murdered, has carried out an investigation to determine the identity of Bassotto’s source. He believes that it was the late Cardinal Eduardo Pironio, who did live in the Vatican in 1989, and who was a friend of Luciani’s. However, he is unable, at least in my opinion, to provide any convincing evidence for this claim. See his The Day of Reckoning (English version of the Spanish original El Dia de Cuenta) at http://www.comayala.es/Libros/ddc2i/. Incidentally, if Yallop, who apparently doesn’t know Italian, read any version of Bassotto’s work, it was probably the English translation of long extracts from it that are available on this website, including most or all of the revelations of “the person in Rome.” It is the only English translation so far available, except for the extracts I am providing here. Interestingly, Yallop consistently misspells Camillo Bassotto’s first name as “Camilo,” which is, in fact, the Spanish version of his name, and which Lopez uses even in the English translation on the website.
(6) Because of the general lack of quotation marks, and the somewhat confusing editing of Bassotto’s book, it’s difficult to tell whether this sentence alone is part of the apparent aside to his confidant, or whether the following sentences were supposed to have been spoken to him as well, or to Villot. I am presuming it was to Villot, for there is no reason to believe the confidant could have been anyone with any authority to fire Marcinkus.
(7) Bassotto, Il mio cuore, pp. 237-38. One of my problems with the credibility of this source, in fact, is the space given to John Paul I speaking about Freemasonry as an power for evil in the world. I have studied his writings for more than twenty-five years, and have translated a great many of them, and I have never come across a single mention of Freemasonry good or bad, in them. He was certainly not the type to be obsessed about Freemasonry, as many of the traditionalists are. That is why I think that the words attributed to him here were more than likely filtered through the sensibility and thought of the anonymous confidant, whoever he may have been. At most, the Pope’s original comment referred to the Masonic organization P2, and was expanded in transmission to Masonry in general.
(8) Bassotto, Il mio cuore, pp. 229-30.
(9) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 319.
(10) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed, pp. 319-320.
(11) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed, pp. 81, 94-95.
(12) Lai, I segreti del Vaticano, pp. 137-42. Cardinal Palazzini himself later testified in the Banco Ambrosiano bankruptcy trial that he had indeed pressed for access to the IOR’s accounts at the time of John Paul I’s election, but had not succeeded. See the Banco Ambrosiano bankruptcy verdict, April 16, 1992, pp. 3081-85; cited in Philip Willan, The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi (London: Robinson, 2007), p. 187.
(13) Willan, The Last Supper, p. 143.
(14) Lai, I segreti del Vaticano, p. 159.
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