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)
_______________________________________________
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.
(13) Willan, The Last Supper, p. 143.
(14) Lai, I segreti del Vaticano, p. 159.
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Here is the first part of the discussion of the Pope’s death I promised. Much of it is only slightly rewritten from the book that I tried to have published back in the 80’s and early 90’s. It will, however, include a discussion of the second (2007) edition of David Yallop’s book In God’s Name. In time, I hope to do more research and put together the definitive treatment of the subject.
Many of the people who were close to Pope John Paul I have always been reluctant to talk about the controversy surrounding his death. This is not because they want to conceal anything, but rather because they are weary of being questioned on the subject. They wonder why there is so much interest in the theory that the Pope was murdered and so little in his life. They feel betrayed by those who have distorted the facts they have provided in order to write scandalous books, and angry because those who read these books seem to be more interested in sensationalism than they are in the truth. When I spoke with the Pope’s brother and sister-in-law and his secretaries, Father Lorenzi and Father Senigaglia, about his death back in 1985, they told me that they were afraid that attempting to refute these lies would only add to the furor, and that no one cared about the truth anyway.
I am sure that Senigaglia and Lorenzi’s feelings are the same today, though the Pope’s brother Edoardo and his wife Antonietta are now dead (Antonietta died in 2006 and Edoardo in March 2008). I am not dwelling on the details of John Paul’s death out of any love for sensationalism, but only out of love for the truth. In this case the truth is not difficult to determine. There is not a shred of evidence to support any of the claims that Pope John Paul I was murdered on the evening of September 28, 1978.
The most famous of these claims is contained in David Yallop’s sensational international best-seller In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (Bantam Books, 1984, 2nd ed 2007), in which the author claims that several people actually living inside Vatican City told him that John Paul I was murdered, and gave him evidence to prove it. Who exactly are these people, and why would they make such an extraordinary accusation? This is the most important question, because the credibility of these sources is vital to the credibility of Yallop’s book. Explaining the nature of these sources is the best refutation of Yallop’s claim that some highly placed cardinals, the Grand Master of an illegal Masonic Lodge and some corrupt Italian financiers plotted together to murder a Pope.
While Yallop’s book is perhaps the most famous, there have a dozen or more other books in different languages exploring the same territory, including both support and refutation. The most famous of the latter is John Cornwell’s equally scandalous best-seller A Thief in the Night (1989). He does poke holes in the murder theory, but then he comes up with an almost equally scandalous theory of his own. I will have more to say about Cornwell’s book later on.
But most of the treatments of the Pope’s death are ultimately based on the same story, or some version of it, that was told to Yallop by his sources, a story that goes back to the morning of the Pope’s death. That’s why I want to begin by tracing the origins of this story as fully as possible, so that the strength or weakness of the evidence it presents will be clear. Its origin lies with some followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the traditionalist leader who was in conflict with the Vatican at the time. In order to talk about them, I will first have to sketch in some background.
The Traditionalists and the Freemasons
Catholics in the U. S. are familiar with the refusal of Lefebvre and his followers to accept any aspect of the Second Vatican Council, and their belief that those who accept it are heretics. But in Europe, especially in France, the traditionalists, or “integralists,” as they are often called, also refuse to accept anything that has happened in social or intellectual history since the French Revolution. Many of them still believe in absolutist government in both Church and state and are opposed to modern democracy. Archbishop Lefebvre himself showed sympathy towards the cruel right-wing dictatorship in Argentina and the Franco dictatorship in Spain. One of the beliefs that the traditionalists share with others on the extreme right is their hatred of Masonry because to them it represents everything wrong with the modern world.
The organization that the traditionalists find so evil actually began in the Middle Ages as a perfectly respectable Catholic stonemasons’ guild. In later centuries, the Masons began to develop strange religious rituals at variance with Catholic teaching. As a result, beginning in 1738, the Church forbade Catholics to become Masons. Some branches of Masonry, particularly those in Italy and France, were sympathetic to Enlightenment thought, Deism, and anticlerical and revolutionary movements. In 19th-century Italy, many Risorgimento leaders belonged to Masonic Lodges of the “Grand Orient” Rite, which were famous for their attacks on the papacy. Because of this, Masonry became a hated word to many Catholics. For the Catholic ultraconservatives in France who refused the accept the French Revolution in the 18th century, and their descendants, who reacted the same way to the beginnings of modern democracy in the 19th and 20th, Masonry remains the root of all evil.
In line with these beliefs, many of the followers of Lefebvre attribute not only the Council but all of modern thought to the workings of a sinister Masonic plot. Lefebvre himself has described it as “a secret pact, which existed even before the Council, between high dignitaries in the Church and in Masonic Lodges.” (1)
Even before the Council was over, a number of conservative Catholics began claiming that there was clear evidence of connivance between some members of the Vatican Curia and the Freemasons. The charge was repeated again in the 1970’s, based on a distorted version of events that were then taking place in the Church. What actually happened was this: It was generally recognized that Masonry in England and the United States has not been revolutionary, and hostility towards the Church among Masons in these countries has always been much rarer. For a long time many Masons, particularly in England, have said that the Church was misrepresenting them when it called them anti-Catholic. Some Church officials, including the well-known Italian Jesuit, Giovanni Caprile, also urged a re-examination of the Church’s attitude toward Masonry. Cardinal Villot was also said to be in favor of this idea.
The re-examination of the question resulted in a confidential letter written in July 1974 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the episcopal conferences of England and several other countries, explaining that the provision in canon law which stated that Catholics who join Masonic Lodges are to excommunicated should be interpreted to mean only those Lodges that were anti-Catholic or plotted against civil governments. This was in line with the modern policy of the Church to reduce as far as possible the number of automatic excommunications in canon law, and was also a gesture of good will towards Masons. Soon, however, the English hierarchy, as well as Father Caprile and other writers, suggested that the ending of the automatic excommunication could be taken to mean that Catholics could, under certain circumstances, be Masons and still good Catholics. This idea was never officially adopted by the Church, and in fact was eventually rejected by Pope John Paul II. (2) The Church still insists that because of Masonry’s beliefs and rites, it is incompatible with Catholicism. But for the traditionalists, the very fact that some prelates were even considering a re-examination of the Church’s attitude towards Masonry meant that those in power in the Church had totally abandoned the Catholic faith and sold out to the ideas of the modern world. All of this is the sole basis for the accusation that some Vatican prelates themselves were Masons. It obviously has no basis in fact.
The accusation erupted again with surprising force in 1976, when Pope Paul began warning Lefebvre that he was heading for schism and asked him to stop ordaining priests. It was at this time that articles began appearing in several right-wing periodicals, including the Italian journal Il Borghese, and the French newspaper L’Aurore, accusing a number of Curial cardinals and even Pope Paul himself, of secretly belonging to Masonic lodges. The authors of these accusations naturally thought that this persecution of themselves, the only remaining faithful Catholics, could only be due to Masons infiltrating the Vatican. The accusations were largely directed against the members of the Curia who were loyal to the Council and Paul VI’s policies, especially those who carried out the Pope’s directives against Lefebvre and his movement.
Among the accused were Cardinal Villot, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, who had sent to Archbishop Lefebvre the ultimatums of the Pope telling him to stop his unauthorized ordinations of priests at his seminary in Econe, Switzerland, and Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, who as head of the Congregation of Bishops, had suspended Lefebvre from his faculties as a priest and a bishop in 1976 when he refused to comply with Pope Paul’s orders. Also among the accused was Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, then the Secretary of the Council for Public Affairs of the Church, and later Cardinal Secretary of State. The traditionalists believed that Casaroli was in league with the Communists because he was implementing the Ostpolitik, that is, the Vatican’s policy of negotiating with East European Communist governments to obtain religious freedom for Catholics in those countries. (3)
Many traditionalists wanted to believe that it was not really Pope Paul who was responsible for the condemnation of Lefebvre, but the supposed Masons in the Curia. It was a very important point, because papal authority is, after all, infallible. Very elaborate theories were developed to prove that the “real” Pope had not condemned Lefebvre. In 1977, a man named Theodor Kolberg published a pamphlet The Deception of the Century, in which he claimed that in 1975 Cardinals Villot, Casaroli and Benelli had imprisoned Pope Paul in the Vatican and put in his place an exact double who was responsible for the actions taken against Lefebvre. Kolberg and others reasoned that the Pope’s infallible authority was not behind these actions, since it was not the real Pope who was taking them. The author relied in part on the revelations of Veronica Lueken, a supposed visionary of Bayside, New York, who claimed that the substitution of an impostor for Pope Paul had been revealed to her by the Virgin Mary. (Lefebvre himself is said to have rejected this absurd story). After Pope Paul’s death, Kolberg claimed that his body had not been embalmed and he been buried in the bare ground instead of a stone sarcophagus so that his body would decay more quickly and no one would discover that it was really the double in the grave!
Of course, all traditionalists do not believe in this type of story. But there are a few of them — and they are certainly to be pitied — who are so emotionally and mentally affected by their distress over changes in Church and society that they cannot accept that they fail to distinguish fantasy from reality. This is exactly what happened to them in the case of John Paul I.
Origins of a Conspiracy Theory
When John Paul I was elected, many Catholics on the extreme right expressed great hope in him. The Italian right wing paper mentioned above, Il Borghese, hoped that Cardinal Luciani’s election would “bring Catholics to a new commitment in the battle [against Communism] as militant disciples of the Church of Rome . . . not as followers of Popes enslaved to an Ostpolitik pleasing to Pravda.” (5) Even though Archbishop Lefebvre was suspicious because John Paul I had taken the names of the Popes of the Council, many traditionalists in Rome were pleased at his election. Later Franco Antico, the secretary of the Rome-based traditionalist organization Civilta` Cristiana, would say that he believed that John Paul I would have reversed many of the changes in the Church under Paul VI, and that he was “deeply displeased” that Lefebvre had not sought an audience with him before his death. (6) It was with similar hopes that the believers in the Masonic conspiracy had stepped up their campaign by sending lists of curial “Freemasons” to the Vatican, hoping that this would persuade John Paul I to discharge the culprits.
However, if these traditionalists believed that Pope John Paul I shared their views, then they could have known very little about him. He was a great supporter of the Council and Paul VI’s reforms. It is true that he was denounced by the leftist Catholic dissent in Italy as a reactionary because he had taken a strong stand again Christian activists who adopted Marxist ideology, and because he had tirelessly fought against the legalization of divorce and abortion. It was also said that several conservative cardinals in the Curia had supported his election, including cardinal Felici and Vagnozzi. This, plus a great deal of wishful thinking, may have led some traditionalists to believe that John Paul I would champion their cause. He was actually anything but sympathetic to their views. In fact, he had already written a number of articles while he was Patriarch of Venice refuting the beliefs of Lefebvre and his followers, and decrying their disobedience. (I will go into this more later). Nevertheless, the ultra-traditionalists’ belief that Luciani was favorable to them was so strong that when he died, some of the more extreme began to claim that he was murdered by leftists in the Vatican.
It began almost as soon as the Pope’s body was discovered. The Abbé Ducaud-Bourget, an associate of Archbishop Lefebvre, said in Paris on the morning of September 29: “Perhaps agents of Satan in the flesh is what was the cause of the two heart attacks in such a short time in the Vatican” [i.e. those of Paul VI and John Paul I]. He later elaborated: “It is hard to believe that the death was natural, considering all the creatures of the devil that inhabit the Vatican.” (7). For Ducaud-Bourget and some of the more extreme traditionalists, “creatures of the devil” could be none other than Cardinal Villot and the other prelates in the Curia who they suspected of destroying the Church simply because they were faithfully carrying out the reforms of Vatican II. Now they suspected these prelates of murdering Pope John Paul I. Then Rafael Gambra, a professor at the University of Madrid, wrote a letter to the conservative Spanish newspaper El Imparcial saying that John Paul had been planning to bring “discipline” back to the Church, and may have been murdered by those who wanted to prevent him from carrying out his plans. He called for an autopsy. (8) Fuerza Nueva, a Spanish religious group with ties to the Franco regime, made similar accusations. But a traditionalist organization in Rome, Civilta` Cristiana, was the most persistent one.
When the spokesman for this group, Franco Antico, met with the press on October 3, 1978, he said that his organization was considering charges that “a person or persons unknown” had murdered Pope John Paul, and that he was going to ask the Vatican to start an inquiry. “We have information we will put at the disposal of the authorities, if they decide to make an inquest,” Antico said. He would not discuss this information, but he did say that the circumstances of the Pope’s death gave rise to doubts. Why was there no doctor on duty in the Vatican that night? he asked. Why had the light continued to burn all night in the Pope’s room, with no one apparently noticing it? And why had the Vatican failed to issue a death certificate? (9)
Antico seemed to be hinting that the Pope’s murder was an “inside job.” If that is the case, it is not hard to guess who the suspects were: the evil Masonic Cardinals in the Vatican. Some French-speaking Catholic journalists covering the story quickly concluded that Civilta Cristiana’s insinuations were directed mainly at Villot, whom they described as “the be^te noire of Msgr. Lefebvre’s Roman friends.” (10) The traditionalists seem to have particularly hated the French cardinal because he was among the more liberal minded prelates in the Curia, and because he had defended his fellow French bishops in their struggle to restrain Lefebvre and his followers. The rumor that Villot was supposed to have urged allowing Catholics to become Freemasons only added fuel to their suspicions. It certainly would have fueled those of Antico, the author of a pamphlet attacking Masonry. (11)
On October 6, Antico presided over a press conference in which he further described the charges that his organization was making. He continued to insist that the Vatican’s version of events surrounding the Pope’s death was “full of holes.” He added, “We have concrete evidence to back up our demands for an investigation, but we can’t release it at this time.” (12)
What was this concrete evidence? It was revelation that was to be at the origin of much of the controversy. Understanding it will require a discussion of what happened on the morning of John Paul I’s death.
Continue
NOTES
(1) Yves Congar, OP, Challenge to the Church: The Case of Archbishop Lefebvre (Huntingdon, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1976), p. 92
(2) Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of The Freemasons (New York: Stein and Day, 1984), pp. 252-53.
(3) Congar, Challenge to the Church, p. 92.
(4) Theodor Kolberg, Der Betrug Des Jahrhunderts (Munich: Privately published, 1977); see Jean Jacques Thierry, La Vraie Mort de Jean-Paul Ier (Paris: J.C. Godefroy, 1984), pp. 17-24.
(5) Monthly Review (July-August 1982), p. 34.
(6) Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1978, p. 2.
(7) Correio do Povo, 30 September 1978. p. 2, Yallop, In God’s Name, p. 239.
(8) Washington Post, 2 October 1978, p. 10.
(9) Ibid.
(10) “The bête noire of Msgr. Lefebvre’s Roman friends,” Jean Bourdarias, Bernard Chevalier and Joseph Vandrisse, Les fumées du Vatican: De Paul VI à Jean Paul II (Paris: Fayard, 1979), p. 151; see also Robert Serrou, “Jean Paul II: Tous les chemins de L`Eglise passent par l’homme,” Paris Match, 23 March 1979, p. 72.
(11) Franco Antico and Franco Andreini, La Massoneria (Palermo: Thule n.d.).
(12) Chicago Tribune, 7 October 1978, p. 2.
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I am now continuing with my promise to put up more about Pope John Paul I. I don’t think that I could do better than to begin my commemoration of these two months that mark the 30th anniversary of his election and death than by posting his homily on the death of Pope Paul VI, who died 30 years ago this month, on Agust 6, 1978. Patriarch Luciani gave this homily at the memorial Mass in the basilica of San Marco in Venice on August 9. This beautiful homily acquires a special significance in light of the fact that less than three weeks later, Luciani himself was asked to take on the task of governing the Church in its “universal dimensions” when he was elected Pope John Paul I.
What is particularly moving to me about this homily is Luciani’s just judgment of Pope Paul’s work for the Church, his compassionate understanding of his personality, and the stress that the Pope’s job is often to suffer. In his first Angelus talk, in fact, on that unforgettable day after his election, on August 27, 1978, Papa Luciani said, “In the fifteen years of his pontificate, this Pope showed not only me but the whole world how to love, how to serve, and how to work and suffer for the Church of Christ.” No, the Smiling Pope was not blind to the suffering of his job. But neither was he overwhelmed by it, as some have said.
It also should be noted that Luciani supported and defended the Pope’s decision to release the encyclical Humanae Vitae in spite of the majority opinion of the papal commission on birth control. Luciani himself had hoped for a change. But he always resolutely defended the decision. Popularity, he stresses here, is not the Pope’s aim. I should add that there have been false things written about John Paul I’s possible plans in regard to artificial contraception as Pope, and I hope to address them in a subsequent post.
The homily was translated from the printed Italian version, but the last paragraph of it was an addition to the text that was later reported, probably taken from the video or audio tape of the event.
“I WILL BE CALLED PAUL”
“By what name do you wish to be called?” he was asked fifteen years ago at the end of the conclave. He said: “I will be called Paul.” Those who knew him would have sworn to us that this would be the name he would choose. Cardinal Montini had always been a passionate lover of the writings, the life, and the dynamic energy of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. And he lived his “Pauline quality” fully and to the last. Last June 29, he spoke of the fifteen years of his pontificate, and he made his own the words that Saint Paul, also near his end, had written to Timothy, “I have preserved and defended the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). That the faith should be preserved and defended was the first point of his program. In his coronation address, on June 30, 1963, he had declared: “We will defend the Holy Church from the errors in doctrine and morals, which, from within and from without her borders, threaten her integrity and dim her beauty.”
St. Paul had written to the Galatians: “If an angel from heaven should preach to you a Gospel not in accord with the one we have delivered to you, let a curse be upon him.” (Gal. 1:8). In our day we might think of culture, being modern, and being up-to-date, as “angels,” and these are all things which Pope Paul cared about very deeply. But when they appeared to him to be contrary to the Gospel and to sound doctrine, he said no inflexibly. It is enough to mention Humanae Vitae, his “Creed of the People of God,” the position that he took in regard to the Dutch catechism, and his clear affirmation of the existence of the devil. Some people have said that Humanae Vitae was suicide for Paul VI, the collapse of his popularity, and the beginning of savage criticism. Yes, in a certain sense, but he had foreseen it and again, along with St. Paul, he said to himself: “Who would you say I am trying to please at this point — man or God? . . . If I were trying to win man’s approval, I would surely not be serving Christ” (Gal. 1:10).
St. Paul had also said of himself: “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:19). Paul VI confided: “Perhaps the Lord has called me to this (pontifical) service, not indeed because I had any aptitude for it, or so that I might govern the Church and save her from her present difficulties, but so that I might suffer something for the Church, and that it might be clear that He, and no one else, guides her and saves her.” He has also said, “The Pope has the difficulties that come first of all from his own human weakness, which, at every moment, is faced with, and almost in conflict with, the enormous and immeasurable weight of his duties and responsibilities.” At times that can even become agony.
The Corinthians made the following evaluation of Paul: “His letters are severe and forceful, but when he is here in person, he is unimpressive and his word makes no great impact.” (2 Cor. 10:10). We have all seen Paul VI on television or in photographs embracing Patriarch Athenagoras: he looked like a little child, disappearing between the arms of a giant with an imposing beard. Even when he spoke, his voice was rather somber; rarely did it reveal the conviction and enthusiasm that were boiling inside him. But his thought! But his writings! These were truly clear, penetrating, profound, and sometimes finely sculpted. “Today the peoples in hunger,” he has written, for example, “are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance. The Church shudders at this cry of anguish and calls on each one to give a loving response of charity to his brother’s cry for help.” Development, yes, but the full development “of every man and of the whole man.” “Every man,” and not only the fortunate class, “the whole man,” meaning that man must have the means to develop and progress, not only in the economic dimension, but also in the moral, spiritual, and religious dimensions. “To do more, know more, and have more, in order to be more” (Popularum Progressio, nos. 3, 13, 34, 6).
But St. Paul was above all the Apostle of the Gentiles, of those who then were considered outsiders to the Jews. He fought for them, in spite of the perplexity of the other apostles, and he traveled and suffered so much on their behalf. He wrote: “Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes less one, three times I was beaten with rods; I was stoned once, shipwrecked three times; I passed a day and a night on the sea. I traveled continually.” (2 Cor. 11:24-26). Like him, Paul VI has traveled 80,000 miles by air: Palestine, India, the headquarters of the United Nations, Fatima, Turkey, Colombia, Africa, and the Far East, have been the principal stages of his travels. All of these travels, perhaps, have not obtained any conversions, but they have created a feeling that the Church is close to the peoples of the world and their problems.
Another type of closeness — or better rapprochement — that Paul VI has sought, is that of contacts with governments that profess themselves atheist. A sensitive point, this: the Pope has been criticized on it by some. Undoubtedly, there was a risk. But a limited and calculated risk. Limited, because he did not give way on principles, on the basis of the Gospel saying iota unum aut unum apex non praeteribit a lege [not the smallest letter of the law, nor the smallest part of a letter, shall be done away with] (Mt. 7:18). Calculated, because, although with sometimes slender hope, he sought the advantage of religion. There is the problem of so many Catholics living under persecuting governments: the Pope really must send them bishops or try to obtain for them a few crumbs of religious liberty. The atheists themselves are a problem: there are so many, so many; can the Church shut itself off from them? St. Paul had written “I have made myself all things to all men, in order to save at least some of them.” (I Cor: 9:22). Why then, not admire the courage of a Pope who takes risks? When Pius VII was negotiating the concordat with Napoleon, he had open opponents even among the cardinals. “Negotiate with that criminal!” they said. “And sweep away from their dioceses all the old bishops, many of whom can be considered martyrs for the faith! And put in their place the bishops that the First Consul wants!” Pius VII, with anguish in his heart, asked the old bishops to suffer, or made them suffer, not only for the Church, but also from the Church; he made to the First Consul all the concessions that were morally legitimate in order to have, in return, tremendous advantages for religion. Naturally, the happy outcome of the negotiations were not seen immediately, but with time. History runs its course and repeats itself. So does the history of the Church.
In the patriarchal archives, there still exist some letters exchanged between Patriarch Roncalli and the deputy Secretary of State Montini. The Pope, Roncalli writes in one, wants a certain priest in Rome: granting this is a heavy sacrifice for Venice, but I am granting it, because in the Church “we must see broad and far.” Thank you, Montini answered him; thank you for the priest you gave up, and for the “broad and far.”
My brothers and sisters, no man is perfect; even Paul VI, who we mourn so deeply, may perhaps have done some things imperfectly. It seems to me, however, that, very cultured as a man, exemplary as a priest, as Pope he truly saw “broad and far.”
All of us must lift our gaze beyond every boundary and all work in a truly evangelical spirit, beyond every limit, with the Church of Christ, in universal dimensions.
Translated by Lori Pieper
From Albino Luciani, Opera Omnia, 8:584-86.
This is a photo of the event John Paul mentioned in that same Angelus talk, when Paul VI, in a prophetic gesture, “invested’ him with the papal stole in front of the Basilica of San Marco, on September 16, 1972. He said, laughing, “I have never turned so red!”
Filed under: Christian Writers, Church issues, Pope John Paul I, Pope Paul VI | |2 Comments
