Updated July 31, 2009 - I revised this recent post because due to my reading, it seems that this subject and John Paul I’s treatment of it is even more important than I first imagined.
One of the members of the heavenly choir who must be most happy at the appearance of Charity in Truth is John Paul I. Luciani was always very attentive to the Church’s social teachings. And especially to Populorum Progressio, the 1967 encyclical by Paul VI on which Benedict based his own just-published letter. Luciani based much of his own thought on Pope’s Paul’s encyclical. He commented on it at the time of its first appearance, and ten years later, in 1977, he recalled it as being like “one of the tongues of fire” that descended on the apostles at Pentecost, because like those tongues of fire, “it too put forth light, strength, and heat, it too was addressed to all peoples and treats the problems of all peoples.”(1)
Luciani’s own attention to the needs of the poor in the Third World was one of the hallmarks of his episcopate in Vittorio Veneto and in Venice. He also fortunately lived long enough to give a shout-out to Populorum Progressio as Pope. It was during his last public audience the day before he died.
I think there is something important about his few simple words that day that tie them to Benedict’s encyclical. He too spoke about Populorum Progressio in the context of love. That is, he saw the teaching of Paul VI revolving around the twin poles of justice and love. But his talk that day was about love, and that is the context in which he put the encyclical. John Paul I had set out to give talks on each of the three theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) and four moral or cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude). Perhaps it’s a good thing that it was during his talk on love, rather than the one on justice, that he spoke about the encyclical, for he didn’t live long enough to deliver the one on justice.
Why is this so important? Well, according to some (such as this article), in Populorum Progressio, Paul VI departed from the traditional balance of charity and justice in Catholic social teaching, to favor an outright emphasis on justice and even the taking of specific positions on government intervention in the economy, limitations on the private property of the wealthy, and the redistribution of wealth from poor nations to rich ones — all positions that some identified with leftist political positions and the solutions of technocrats. What about old-fashioned Christian charity? The same people see Benedict’s new encyclical as a return to sanity with its emphasis on charity.
I doubt that Paul VI himself saw his encyclical this way, and, from his words that day, it’s clear that his immediate successor didn’t either.
Here are John Paul I’s words:
And how [are we to love our neighbor]? Not only in our words, but in our actions. We will take an exam at the end of our lives, and Jesus has already said what the questions he will ask us will be. I was hungry in the persons of the least of my brothers: did you give me anything to eat? I was sick, I was a prisoner, did you come to visit me? These are the questions. Here we will have to give an answer (cf. Mt. 25:34).
Taking these words and some others from the Bible, the Church has made two lists, seven corporal works of mercy, and seven spiritual ones. They are not complete. We should update them. For example: hunger. Today it is no longer a question only of this or that individual. It is whole peoples who are hungry. We all remember the great words of the great Pope Paul VI. “The peoples who are hungry are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples who live in opulence. The Church shudders at this cry of anguish and calls on everyone to respond with love to his brother.” (Populorum Progressio, no. 3) And then, here justice is united to love. Because the Pope says, still in Populorum Progressio: “Private property is not a undeniable and absolute right for anyone. No one has the right to be able to make use of his goods exclusively for his own benefit, when others are dying because they have nothing.” (Ibid., no. 22). Hence “every debilitating arms race is an intolerable scandal” (Ibid., no. 53). . . In the light of these words, we must ask ourselves not only as nations, but as private individuals, especially we who are members of the Church: have we really carried out the plan of Jesus, who has said: “Love your neighbor as yourself”?(2)
By quoting those ringing words of Paul’s work, John Paul I made it clear that the principle it was based on was love: the cry from the heart of Christians responding to brothers and sisters in need. Also of note is his insistence that we must move from a purely individual concept of charity to one that equally embraced individuals and whole peoples, another thing he had in common with both Paul and Benedict.
The main part of his talk, which I’ve translated above, was in Italian. Here he is, saying it in English for the English-speaking pilgrims, from 2:18 to 3:18 (As far as I know, there isn’t any actual video of this part of the audience, so I put the audio together with images and other video):
A transcription, for those who might have trouble following his English (which he had only recently learned to speak)
There is also love of neighbor. These two loves are twins and they go together. Jesus spoke about the importance of loving our neighbors when he said: “I was hungry and you gave me food.” And Paul VI reminded us that there are whole peoples who are hungry and waiting for our fraternal love. Private property is not an absolute right, and the arms race is a scandal. From these things, we can see that as individuals and peoples we have still not fulfilled the command of Jesus: to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Many people may have wondered as I have what a social encyclical by Pope John Paul I might have been like. If we can believe the “person in Rome,” the anonymous source whose account was published in Camillo Bassotto’s book Il mio cuore è ancora a Venezia (My Heart is Still in Venice), he did indeed plan to write one, and from the description the Pope gave of it, it would have been very much along the lines of Populorum Progressio:
‘I will write and speak on “The poor and poverty in the world.” From the lands of famine and drought, of hunger and epidemics, voices are incessantly raised asking for help. The peoples of hunger, where the children die by thousands every day, are appealing to the peoples and the cities of opulence. There are peoples in the heart of Africa, in the countries of South America and in the communities of Vietnam and Cambodia that are struggling for survival, they are the poorest, the most wretched on earth. Those forms of poverty are the scandal of the western world, of the rich and of the Christians. The rich peoples must give life to a chain of solidarity and justice which will drastically reduce the debt of the peoples of the Third World: we must institute a vast worldwide network of exchanges and cooperation for the rebirth, development and independence and the religious, economic, cultural and racial freedom of those peoples who for centuries have been the prey and the servants of Europe and of the West. There will not be peace until justice is done to the underprivileged peoples.(3)
Much has happened in regard to poverty, the globalized consciousness of Christians, and especially the growing culture of death, that makes Charity in Truth a fitting update to Populorum Progressio. If Pope John Paul I had lived, his social encyclicals certainly would have done so too.
NOTES
(1) “La Populorum Progressio dieci anni dopo,” Homily for the feast of Pentecost, June 6, 1977, in Albino Luciani /Pope John Paul I Opera Omnia 8:143.
(2) The text is from L’Osservatore Romano, September 28, 1978; but I have also followed the recording of the Pope’s words (which sometimes differs slightly from the official text because the Pope delivered it from memory); the video and audio are available here on YouTube, courtesty of Italian TV RAI; the translation from the Italian is mine
(3) Camillo Bassotto, Il mio cuore è ancora a Venezia (Venice, 1990).
Charity in Truth, Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, has been in preparation for some time. It was intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, which took up the problems of human solidarity and justice on a large scale, in particular the problems of the poor nations of the Third World, a trend toward the globalization of the Church’s social teaching that grown during the pontificate of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. The anniversary actually fell in 2007, but the encyclical has been delayed by over a year; partly it was because of updates necessitated by the world economic crisis that began last fall.
Pope Benedict looks at the question of “integral human development in charity and truth.” He tells us that “love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth.” The focus of the encyclical then, is that love is the motive for social action, but only truth can set love free to act and direct its course. The truth about humankind and the means to human justice can be sought only in God. A particularly bold challenge for a relativistic time.
Reading it — and I’m trying to go slowly to savor it — is re-acquainting me both with the force and vigor of Pope Benedict’s mind as well as the sweetness of his devotion, if I can put it that way; as I recall from Jesus of Nazareth, he has a powerful connection with Christ and what His love can do.
I wanted to put down some of my own thoughts, but first, it seems necessary to clear away some misunderstandings.
I’ve spent some time looking at the reactions to the encyclical. I’ll spare you the sillier ones from the professional pundits right and left, who fall all over themselves trying not to notice Benedict’s criticisms of their own social and political views, while loudly trumpeting his criticisms of their opponents. Misunderstanding is rife here, but it’s the type of misunderstanding anyone could easily predict.
Skipping all that, I’ll get right to the basic misunderstandings found among Catholics in blog comment boxes. I’ve noticed over time that the number of those who have made any study of Catholic social teaching or papal encyclicals on the subject is relatively small. At times the wildest misunderstandings of the Pope’s words occur.
Misunderstanding #1 Context, context, who has the Context?
Some errors come out of a near-total lack of knowledge of the history of Catholic social teaching, which forms the context in which the encyclical is written. For instance, the misunderstanding of those who read Bendict’s words about the need for “a true world political authority” and decided at once that he meant there should be a “one world government” that would absorb the powers of all other nations, whose governments would then presumably disappear. They reacted with tremendous — and completely unnecessary — alarm. What the Pope actually wrote was:
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, (Pacem in Terris no. 84) and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth.
For those who have read Pacem in Terris, the encyclical of John XXIII that Benedict refers to, and who are familiar with subsidiarity, one of the principal aspects of Catholic social teaching he refers to, there is no difficulty in interpreting this passage. John XXIII wrote in the cited passage: “one must bear in mind that, even when it regulates the relations between States, authority must be exercised for the promotion of the common good. That is the primary reason for its existence.” So good Pope John wanted an authority to regulate relationships between states, and was probably thinking of the model of the U.N., certainly not of one world government. And subsidiarity, clearly stated again and again in Catholic social thought, teaches that the smallest, most local and most de-centralized authority that has the competence is the best one to make decisions. In short, a “world political authority” would not have the authority to do those things that could best be done by the member states themselves.
But few Catholics are genuinely familiar with these things. This is a rather sad reflection in general on Catholic education. But on the other hand, if final encyclical texts were a little clearer, and made a greater effort to explain things to ordinary Catholics, some of this harm might be avoided. Benedict’s thought, as I said, is vigorous and well-expressed, but it’s also possible to tell when a text has been through the curial committee wringer one too many times.
And if I could make a small suggestion to the people who draw up the final text of an encyclical and its footnotes — would it really hurt to cite papal texts by their paragraph numbers, instead of their page numbers in the printed edition of the Acta Apostolica Sedis, which exists only in a few specialized libraries? This is especially helpful for those who want to look up the citations on the Vatican’s own website, as I have been trying to do today. It took me a long time to find the citation from Pacem in Terris by the Vatican webiste, because, of course, there are no page numbers there. The other method would make more sense considering the way most people get information today through the Internet. And, while we’re at it, why not put hyperlinks to the citations of other papal documents? (I put the paragraph number in the text above, so you can find it as well).
Misunderstanding #2: What does a Pope know about Economics Anyway?
“I don’t like the Pope’s ideas about one world government (sic). And why should I pay any attention to him anyway? I’m sure he knows very little about economics. After all, he never cites economists, just other Popes.”
This as actually said by someone in a combox yesterday, on a thoroughly Catholic site. And this is a pretty basic misunderstanding.
When a Pope writes an encyclical, he is primarily writing as a pastor, as a theological and moral authority. He is not writing to make specific social economic proposals — a task for Catholic economists, social scientists and politicians. At the same time, it would be very difficult for him to make the application of moral principles clear without any knowledge of the specifics of economics and social realities. In fact, papal social encyclical are all written after consultations with experts. Often there is a whole team of them overseeing the work, as with John XXIII’s encyclical above.
Now I’m going to bring in a little and (to readers of this blog) very familiar help. As it happens, I have been translating just this week a very pertinent text by Pope John Paul I on the subject of the preparation of one papal social encyclical Rerum Novarum, the grand-daddy of them all, written in 1891 by Leo XIII, when the problems of the working class became acute in industrialized Europe. One of the economists who helped Pope Leo with the encyclical was Giuseppe Toniolo, who lived in the diocese where Albino Luciani was bishop, Vittorio Veneto. Speaking in the Church of the Assumption in Pieve di Soligo, where Toniolo is buried, in 1961, for the 70th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Luciani spoke of the preparation and inspiration of the encyclical, and the mutual part of the Pope and social and economic thinkers in it. As usual his treatment is clarity itself.
But I must clarify in what sense and within what limits Toniolo contributed to preparing the encyclical. Rerum Novarum, like other papal documents on social themes, contains three sorts of truths: truths of faith, of reason, and of simple observation.
Truths of faith: for example, in Rerum Novarum, the supernatural destiny of man is present from beginning to end; the reasoning that emerges, now here, and now there, is this: “Yes, let’s seek a good arrangement for the workers, but let’s recall that no arrangement can be good if it puts the other arrangement of heaven in danger!” In this area of truth, obviously, Toniolo had nothing to suggest to Leo XIII.
Nor did he in the sector of “truths of reason,” which is the sector of good sense, of natural law, old as the centuries, which the Pope interprets authentically. To this sector belong, for example, the statements of Rerum novarum about the right to property and the right of workers to unite in associations.
It is instead in the sector of observation that the advice of Toniolo could be useful. Social phenomena formed the material for observation. Society, in fact, changes as life changes, and to the changes there must correspond, on the part of the Church, not a different truth, but a different dose of the same truth. Hence a constant adaptation, an opening of our eyes to quickly register the signs of the new times.
I will supply an example: it is a truth of reason that the state must intervene in favor of the workers, in cases where they are not succeeding in reaching just and reasonable goals on their own. Well then, in Quadragesimo anno we hear Pius XI concerned with indicating the limits of state intervention and it is understandable; it was in 1931, the period of totalitarian governments that actually intervened too much in social questions.
In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII urged the state to intervene in favor of the workers. This means that the Pope was convinced that in 1891 the workers could not do it alone and that the states were taking little action. But from where did this conviction come to him? Not from Sacred Scripture or from philosophy, but from the world itself, which from the observatory that is the Vatican, he sought to read as though in a book. He tried to make the reading easier for himself with the help of Catholic thinkers, who, however, were divided on this point.
“The state is like pitch,” said some; “if we dip our finger in it, we will not get it out again; the workers must act alone without the state!” “If the state does not intervene with its massive power, the workers will remain as miserable as they are, the power of the employers are too great!” answered the others, and they were the flower of bishops, thinkers and politicians, in France, Belgium, Germany and England. Among these was none other than Giuseppe Toniolo and he was distinguished among them by the moderation of his tone and the acuteness of his reasoning.
Did he have an influence on inserting the thesis of state intervention and other points in the encyclical? The decree of introduction of the cause of Giuseppe Toniolo says the Leo XIII “doctissimos in hac encyclica conscribenda consuluit viros, quos inter Servum Dei Josephum Toniolo [consulted very learned men in the writing of this encyclical, among them the Servant of God Giuseppe Toniolo].”
(Toniolo was actually declared Venerable by Paul VI in 1971).
***Update July 12
Here’s an equally interesting passage Luciani wrote on this subject a few years later, in 1971, after the appearance of Populorum Progressio, in a Lenten sermon he gave in Venice called “We and the Third World”:
But does the Pope, does the Church, have the right to touch on these questions, beyond the generic call for justice and charity? I know: the Magisterium of the Church must limit itself to declaring what God has revealed. Now, God, by His revelation, has opened new spiritual horizons for humanity, but He has not directly proposed the solution to social problems. Jesus expressly denied being a social revolutionary; he urged us to be just and to share our substance with the poor, but he did not specify how society and property should be regulated in specific periods in history; he has said that people as individuals are the goal, the protagonists and the foundation of human institutions and activities (the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath), but he did not descend to details in socio economic matters.
The ecclesiastical Magisterium, therefore, can only touch on these questions indirectly, by expounding the principles of Christ and setting them beside the various concrete social situations. The analysis of these situations, on the other hand, is up to the experts, whose collaboration the Magisterium must humbly seek and accept. This might explain, for example, why private ownership of the means of production, although stated and reconfirmed as necessary to human liberty and dignity in Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio, occupies a less important place than at one time. And why the Pope, among other things, calls upon the responsible authorities for suitable international laws and an international authority capable of making them respected by the nations.
*** End of update
As for why Popes never cite economists — just as Toniolo went uncited — I’m sure it’s so no one economist or school of economics were be pinpointed as identical with the Pope’s views; since this would not be true in any case, and would be detrimental in some cases to the spiritual point he is making.
I dearly miss the encyclicals John Paul I would have written — something makes me think they would have excelled in clarity and readability as well as in charity and truth. And he did actually speak as Pope on social justice, very briefly, but in a way that resonates with the new encyclical.
But that’s a subject for another post. In fact, I’ll make it my next post.
While I was looking around for information about blogging bishops, I came across this gem on YouTube. Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, who lived in the Vatican with Pope Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, tells what it was like to work with them. He has a great story about John Paul I at 3:18 (I already knew this story from a print interview with the cardinal, but never knew it was on tape). Rather fitting to put this up, for it was just a year ago today, the feast of St. Peter and Paul, if I remember right, that I began putting up my posts about John Paul I.
Now that this series is concluded, I’m posting links to all the parts here in order for readers’ convenience. They will also be available on a permanent link on the sidebar (under Pages).
Was Pope John Paul I Murdered? David Yallop’s In God’s Name
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.
Updated again March 6, 2009, in regard to Don Germano Pattaro and Francesco Pazienza’s accounts.
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. However, I think it can be traced to Vaticanist Giancarlo Zizola’s diary of those days, excerpts from which he later published, which has in the entry for September 30, 1978, “The notes that Luciani was holding in his hands at his death were — according to Don Germano (Pattaro) — notes about the two-hour conversation the Pope had with the Secretary of State Villot the night before.” This evidence isn’t of the best, for while Don Germano Pattaro was or had been in Rome and had met with the new Pope several times, there’s no evidence that he spoke to him on the evening of his death, nor has anyone placed him at the Pope’s bedroom when his body was discovered. So how did Fr. Pattaro, not an eyewitness, know what the Pope had in his hands? Once again, clear statements by the eyewitnesses say something completely different. Furthermore, there is to my knowledge, 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 a meeting with Villot, dismissing Marcinkus from the Vatican Bank getting rid of Freemasons or dramatic changes in the Curia. It also seems clear from this that John Paul I did not meet with Pattaro on the evening of his death, so he could have learned about the meeting with Villot secondhand. (2) I suspect that Zizola was just recounting a rumor, or even speculation by Pattaro himself, but once again, rumor and speculation aren’t evidence.
“. . . 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)
Yallop goes on to say:
“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).
Yallop has apparently dropped his original contention that the Pope was holding a list of Masonic cardinals who were to be replaced, and replaced it with the notes about his conversation with Villot and the Vagnozzi dossier. Once again, he 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.
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, titled Il Disubbediente, 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. The dossier resided in a strongbox in a Swiss bank. Instead of taking this information to the Vatican, Pazienza sold it to Calvi to the tune of 1.2 million dollars. He also claimed that he later used the fact that he knew of this dossier and had kept it out of the Vatican’s hands to get into Marcinkus’ good graces.
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, is a dubious source of information at best.
This account in Pazienza’s memoirs was repeated 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). Neither Pazienza’s memoir nor the account in Willan’s book, however, make the slightest mention of Pope John I ever having seen this dossier. In fact, Willan, on the whole, seems to have distanced himself somewhat from Yallop’s conclusions about the Pope’s death (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)
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NOTES
(1) Yallop, In God’s Name, 2007 ed., p. 319.
(2) The diary excerpt was published in Giancarlo Zizola, Il Conclave: storia e segreti: l’elezione papale da San Pietro a Giovanni Paolo II. Rome: Newton Compton, 1993, p. 289, note; see also 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.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history."
Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament, Sept 22, 2011.
