In God's Name

by David Yallop

  Others criticized the fact that he had re-confirmed all the Curia heads in office. They neglected to point out that this had also been done by the last three Popes before Luciani and that he retained the power and authority to move any of them at any time.

  Much of the world’s news media had, in the days following the Pope’s death, carried stories about the Vatican ritual that surrounds this moment. The newspapers were full of accounts of how Cardinal Villot had approached the inert body and proclaimed three times, ‘Albino, are you dead?’, each question being followed by the symbolic striking on the Pope’s forehead with a small silver hammer. The Press also gave dramatic descriptions of how Villot had then taken the Fisherman’s Papal ring from Luciani’s hand and subsequently smashed it to pieces.

  With the death of Albino Luciani there was, in fact, no head tapping, no calling of names. These ceremonies had been abolished in Paul’s lifetime. With regard to the Papal ring, Luciani’s reign was so brief that the Vatican had not even created the ring. The only ring on Luciani’s hand throughout his entire Papacy was the one given to all bishops who had attended the Second Vatican Council.

  Why this highly inaccurate reportage is worth considering, when one is aware not only of how much Luciani did achieve in such a brief span, but also the very high regard in which such men as Casaroli, Benelli, Lorscheider, Garrone, Felici and many others held Luciani, is the fact that this was an orchestrated campaign. Not one single critical obituary or article carried any of the facts recorded in the previous chapter. One of the many expressions they are fond of quoting within Vatican City states, ‘Nothing is leaked from the Vatican without a very specific purpose’.

  On October 1st, the pressure for an autopsy on Luciani increased. Italy’s most respected newspaper Corriere della Sera carried a front page article with the title, ‘Why say no to an autopsy?’ It was by Carlo Bo, a highly talented writer with considerable knowledge of the Vatican. That the article appeared at all is significant. In Italy, thanks to the Lateran Treaty and subsequent agreements between the Italian State and the Vatican, the Press is seriously muzzled when writing on the Catholic Church. The libel laws are very stringent. Critical comment, let alone an outright attack, can rapidly result in the newspaper concerned being brought to court.

  Carlo Bo cleverly avoided any such risk. In a style rather reminiscent of Mark Antony’s speech to the Roman populace, Bo talked of the suspicions and allegations that had surfaced after the sudden death. He told his readers that he felt confident that the palaces and cellars of the Vatican had been free from such criminal actions for centuries. Because of this very reason he said he simply could not understand why the Vatican had decided not to perform any scientific checks, ‘in humble words why there was no autopsy’. He continued:

  . . . The Church has nothing to fear, therefore nothing to lose. On the contrary it would have much to gain.

  . . . . Now to know what the Pope died of is a legitimate historical fact, it is part of our visible history and does not in any way affect the spiritual mystery of his death. The body that we leave behind when we die can be understood with our poor instruments, it is a leftover: the soul is already, or rather it always has been, dependent on other laws which are not human and so remain inscrutable. Let us not make out of a mystery a secret to guard for earthly reasons and let us recognize the smallness of our secrets. Let us not declare sacred what is not.

  While the fifteen doctors who belonged to the Vatican’s health services refused to comment on the desirability of performing autopsies on dead Popes, Edoardo Luciani, newly returned from Australia, failed to help the Vatican’s position when he was asked about his brother’s health:

  The day after the enthronement ceremony, I asked his personal doctor how he had found him, bearing in mind all the pressures he was now subjected to. The doctor reassured me, telling me that my brother was in excellent health and that his heart was in good condition.

  Asked if his brother had ever had any heart trouble, Edoardo replied, ‘As far as I know absolutely none’. It did not fit very well with the Vatican-orchestrated fantasy.

  By Monday October 2nd the controversy surrounding the Pope’s death had become world-wide. In France at Avignon, Cardinal Silvio Oddi found himself the object of many questions. As an Italian cardinal surely he could tell his French questioners the true facts? Oddi advised them that the College of Cardinals ‘will not examine the possibility of an enquiry at all and will not accept any supervision from anyone and it will not even discuss the subject’. Oddi concluded: ‘We know in fact, in all certainty, that the death of John Paul the First was due to the fact that his heart stopped beating from perfectly natural causes.’ Clearly Cardinal Oddi had achieved a major medical breakthrough for the entire world – the ability to diagnose without an autopsy what is only diagnosable with an autopsy.

  Meanwhile the protests of Father Lorenzi and other members of the Papal Apartments about one particular lie had finally borne fruit. The Vatican announced:

  After the necessary enquiries, we are now in a position to state that the Pope, when he was found dead on the morning of September 29th, was holding in his hands certain sheets of paper containing his personal writings such as homilies, speeches, reflections and various notes.

  When the Vatican had previously announced that Luciani had been holding The Imitation of Christ, Father Andrew Greeley records in his book, The Making of The Popes, ‘some reporters openly laughed’.

  These papers, detailing the crucial changes that Albino Luciani was about to make, have undergone some extraordinary metamorphoses over the years: a report on the Church in Argentina; notes for his next Angelus speech; sermons made in Belluno/Vittorio Veneto/Venice; a parish magazine; the speech he was about to deliver to the Jesuits (in fact this was found on his study desk); a report written by Pope Paul. When a Head of State dies in apparently normal circumstances his last actions are of more than academic interest. When a Head of State dies in the circumstances surrounding Albino Luciani’s death, the need to know becomes a vital matter of public interest. The fact that Luciani was holding his personal notes on the various crucial changes he was proposing to make has been confirmed to me from five different sources. Two are direct Vatican sources; the other three are external non-Vatican residents. With the Vatican officially retracting The Imitation of Christ version the Curial machine was beginning to show signs of strain.

  The strain grew even greater when the world’s Press began to comment on a number of disturbing aspects. For a Pope to have no one monitoring his welfare from mid-evening until the following day struck many observers as wrong. The fact that Dr Renato Buzzonetti worked mainly at a Rome hospital and consequently was not able to guarantee absolute availability seemed outrageous. If the observers had known the full scenario of Vatican inefficiency the outrage would have been even greater. The full facts illustrate not only the potential for a premature natural death but the scenario for murder.

  In Spain, as in other countries, the controversy broke into public debate. Professor Rafael Gambra of the University of Madrid was one of a number who complained of the Vatican ‘doing things in the Italian manner or in the Florentine manner as in the Renaissance’. Urging that an autopsy should be performed, Gambra voiced fears that a Pope who was manifestly going to bring a much needed discipline back into the Church might have been murdered.

  In Mexico City the Bishop of Cuernavaca, Sergio Arceo, publicly demanded an autopsy declaring, ‘To Cardinal Miranda and me it seems that it would be useful’. The Bishop ordered a detailed statement to be read out in all churches in his diocese. The Vatican machine moved fast. The detailed statement, like much else in this affair vanished from the face of the earth and by the time the Vatican had finished with Cardinal Miranda he was able to declare upon his subsequent arrival in Rome that he had no doubts whatsoever with regard to the death of the Pope.

  On October 3rd, as people continued to file past the Pope’s body at the rate of 12,000 per hour, t
he controversy roared on. The Will of Albino Luciani had vanished but by its extraordinary behaviour the Vatican was ensuring a bitter legacy. A Pope with an ability to speak openly, directly and simply was surrounded in death by deviousness and deceit. It was clear that the loss felt by ordinary people was immense. From the Vatican there was scant acknowledgment of that widespread feeling – rather a bitter rearguard action to protect not the memory of Albino Luciani but those to whom the evidence of complicity in his murder clearly pointed.

  Non-Curial priests were now debating in newspapers the merits and demerits of an autopsy. Pundits and Vatican observers were castigating the Vatican for its obduracy. What had become abundantly clear, as Vittorio Zucconi observed in Corriere della Sera, was that, ‘Behind the doubt about the Pope’s death lies a vast dissatisfaction with “official versions”’.

  The organization of traditionalist Catholics known as Civiltà Cristiana indicated just how deeply dissatisfied they were. Secretary Franco Antico revealed that he had sent an official appeal for a full judicial enquiry into the death of Pope John Paul I to the Vatican City State’s chief justice.

  The decision to make the appeal and the reasons for it made headlines around the world. Antico cited a number of the inconsistencies which had emerged to date from the Vatican. What his group wanted was not merely an autopsy but a full judicial enquiry. Antico said: ‘If President Carter had died under such circumstances, you can be sure the American people would have demanded an explanation.’

  Antico told the Press that his organization had initially examined the possibility of a formal allegation that the Pope had been killed by a person or persons unknown. Displaying a wonderful example of the complexity of the Italian mind, he said that they had refrained from such a step because ‘we are not seeking a scandal’. Civiltà Cristiana had also sent their request to Cardinal Confalonieri, Dean of the Sacred College. Some of the issues they raised were the gap between the discovery of the body and public announcement of death, a Pope apparently working in bed without anyone checking on his welfare and the fact that no death certificate had been issued. No Vatican doctor had, via an official death certificate, taken public responsibility with regard to the diagnosis of the cause of Albino Luciani’s death.

  The rebel Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s supporters who had already announced that Luciani had died because God did not want him to be Pope now announced through Lefebvre’s right-hand man, Abbot Ducaud-Bourget, a different theory: ‘It’s difficult to believe that the death was natural considering all the creatures of the devil who inhabit the Vatican.’

  Having previously been obliged to retract the statement that Papal autopsies were specifically banned, the Vatican was confronted on Tuesday October 3rd with the efforts of some tenacious probing by the Italian Press. Autopsies had been performed on other Popes. For example, Pius VIII had died on November 30th, 1830. The diary of Prince Don Agostini Chigi recorded that the following evening an autopsy was performed on the body. The result of the autopsy is officially unknown because officially the Vatican has never admitted that it took place. In fact apart from some weakness in the lungs all the organs were found to be healthy. It was suspected that the Pope had been poisoned.

  On the evening of October 3rd at 7.00 p.m. a curious event occurred. The gates of St Peter’s were closed to the public for the day. The church was deserted except for the four Swiss Guards posted at the corners of the catafalque, the traditional 24-hour protection accorded to the body of a dead Pope. At 7.45 p.m. a group of about 150 pilgrims from Canale d’Agordo, Albino Luciani’s birthplace, accompanied by the Bishop of Belluno, were quietly let into the church through a side entrance. The group had only just arrived in Rome and had been granted special permission by the Vatican to pay their last respects to a man many of them knew personally, after the official closure for the day. Clearly someone in Vatican City with plans of his own in regard to the body of the Pope was not advised. Within a few minutes of their arrival the pilgrims found themselves being bundled out unceremoniously into St Peter’s Square.

  Vatican officials had appeared together with a group of doctors. Everyone else was ordered to leave. The four Swiss Guards were also dispensed with. Large crimson screens were placed all around the body preventing any onlooker who chanced to be still within St Peter’s from observing precisely what the doctors were doing. This sudden unannounced medical examination continued until 9.30 p.m. When it was concluded, a number of the pilgrims from Canale d’Agordo who had remained outside asked if they could not finally pay their last respects to the corpse. The request was refused.

  Why with less than 24 hours to the funeral did this examination take place? Many working in the news media were clearly in no doubt. An autopsy had been performed. Did the Vatican finally make a move to allay public anxiety? If it did, then the subsequent Vatican statements concerning this medical examination lead inexorably to the conclusion that the examination confirmed all those fears and anxieties that the Pope had been murdered.

  There was no announcement after the examination and, despite being deluged with questions by the news media, the Vatican Press Office continued to maintain a total silence on what had occurred in St Peter’s until after the Pope was buried. Only then did it give its version. Previously, off the record, it had advised the Italian news agency ANSA that the medical examination was a normal check on the state of preservation of the body and that it was carried out by Professor Gerin and Arnaldo and Ernesto Signoracci among others. ANSA was also told that several more injections of the embalming fluid were made.

  When the Vatican Press Office finally spoke officially, it reduced the ninety-minute examination to twenty minutes. It also stated that everything was found to be in order and that subsequently the pilgrims from Canale d’Agordo were allowed back in. Apart from the errors or deliberate lies inherently contained within the Press statement there are a number of other disquieting facts. Professor Cesare Gerin, contrary to the Vatican informants questioned by ANSA, was not present. Furthermore when I interviewed the Signoracci brothers, they were adamant that they too were not present during this bizarre event. It was clearly a conservation check without the conservationists.

  If, as many believe, an autopsy was indeed performed, even a partial autopsy – for in ninety minutes it could not have been the full standard post mortem – then the results, if negative, would have been announced loudly and clearly. What better way to silence the tongues? Corriere della Sera stated that ‘at the last minute a famous doctor from the Catholic University joined the special team’. Subsequently the ‘famous doctor’ has vanished in the morning mists rising from the Tiber.

  Catholic psychologist Rosario Mocciaro, commenting on the behaviour of the men entrusted with controlling the Roman Catholic Church during this period of the empty throne, described it thus: ‘A sort of mafia-like “omertá” (silence) disguised as Christian charity and protocol’.

  The dialogue of love that Albino Luciani had inspired between himself and the people continued until the bitter end. Ignoring the continuous rain nearly 100,000 people were in St Peter’s Square for the open air Requiem Mass on October 4th. Nearly one million people had filed past the body during the previous four days. The first of the three readings, taken from the Apocalypse of St John, ended with the words, ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give water from the well of life free to anybody who is thirsty.’

  The body of Albino Luciani, hermetically sealed in three coffins, cypress, lead and ebony, went to its final resting place inside a marble sarcophagus in the crypt of St Peter’s. Even as his mortal remains went into the cold Roman dusk to take their place between John XXIII and Paul VI the discussion continued as to whether before his death Albino Luciani had been given something other than water from the well of life.

  A great many people remained disturbed about the sudden death, among them Albino Luciani’s own doctor, Guiseppe Da Ros.

  With the Pope buried within three coffins, it wa
s clearly going to be virtually impossible to persuade the Vatican to change its mind. The formal request by Civiltà Cristiana to the Vatican Tribunal rested with a single judge, Giuseppe Spinelli. Even if the man had earnestly desired that there should be an autopsy and a full investigation it is difficult to see how he would have overcome the power of the Vatican City and the men who ran it – men who claim as an historical ‘fact’ that they and their predecessors have nearly two thousand years of practice at controlling the Roman Catholic Church.

  It was all very well for the Jesuits to compare Luciani’s death to a flower in a field that closes at night, or for the Franciscans to talk of death being like a thief in the night. Non-aesthetes continued to seek a more practical explanation. Sceptics could be found on both sides of the Tiber. Among those who were most disturbed within the Vatican was the group who knew the truth about the discovery of the Pope’s body by Sister Vincenza. Concern mounted as the official lies increased. Eventually, with the Pope buried, several of them talked. Initially they spoke to the news agency ANSA and recently to me. Indeed it was several members of this group who convinced me that I should investigate the death of Albino Luciani.

  On October 5th, shortly after lunch-time, they began to give ANSA the factual details of Sister Vincenza’s discovery. Their information even correctly identified that the notes Luciani was holding in death, concerned ‘certain nominations in the Roman Curia and in the Italian episcopate’. The group also revealed that the Pope had discussed the problem of Baggio’s refusal to accept the Patriarchship of Venice. When the story exploded on the public the Vatican response was very reminiscent of Monsignor Henry Riedmatten’s when confronted with questions about the Luciani document on birth control. That document, it will be recalled, was dismissed by Riedmatten as ‘a fantasy’. Now confronted by literally hundreds of reporters demanding a Vatican comment on the latest leaks, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Father Panciroli, issued a one-line laconic denial. ‘These are reports devoid of all foundations.’