John Paul I

John Paul I

His bestselling books and the films that followed have made Dan Brown famous around the world. But this American is not the only author to be fascinated by conspiracies involving the catholic church and the Holy See.   For centuries, the high walls surrounding the Vatican have inspired stories of

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Thu 23 Sep 2010 12:00 AM

His bestselling books and the films that followed have made Dan Brown famous around the world. But this American is not the only author to be fascinated by conspiracies involving the catholic church and the Holy See.

 

For centuries, the high walls surrounding the Vatican have inspired stories of mystery and intrigue. One such recent story even went as far as to suggest that a newly elected pope had been murdered.

Following the death of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Albino Luciani became pope after four ballots on August 26, 1978. The first pope in the history of the papacy to take two names, Luciani chose the name Pope John Paul I, combining the names of the very popular Pope John XXIII, who had made him a bishop, and his immediate predecessor, who had appointed him patriarch of Venice and a cardinal. Despite the length of his new name, his was to be the shortest pontificate since the death of the Medici pope, Leo XI, in April 1605. In fact, just 33 days after his election, Luciani was found dead in his bed.

 

Officially, he was said to have died of a heart attack, but the suddenness of his demise and discrepancies in reports about the exact time of death almost immediately fanned speculation.

In In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of John Paul I, published in 1984, British journalist and writer David Yollop argues that Luciani was murdered because of fears that he would expose ties existing between the Vatican, the mafia and the deviant Freemason lodge P2 and would reveal corruption tied to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the Vatican Bank and the Diocese of Chicago. Yollop maintains that in order to silence him, the pope was killed with an overdose of digitalis, which leaves no physical trace in the body. Thinking along similar lines, Spanish Jesuit priest Jesus Lopez Saez took an unprecedented step and called for the pope’s body to be exhumed. He believed that Luciani, who did not appear to have manifested any prior heart disease, was injected with a poisonous substance that caused his death.

 

To quell growing suspicions, the Vatican commissioned its own investigation in 1987. Headed by John Corwell, the brother of the writer John Le Carré, the inquiry’s conclusion was that there was no conspiracy and that Luciani had died of a pulmonary embolism provoked by overwork and stress. Also supporting the idea that he had died of natural causes, Don Diego Lorenzi, the pope’s secretary, stated in a 1987 interview that Luciani had suffered some chest pains and oppression on the evening he died. But sceptics were curious to know why Lorenzi had waited until 10 years after the pope’s death to disclose this.

 

The son of a working class socialist bricklayer father and devout catholic mother, Luciani was born in Forno di Canale, in the Dolomite Alps of northeastern Italy, on October 17, 1912. He entered the seminary at age 11, and on completion of his military service, he was ordained as a priest in 1935. After studying at the Gregorian University in Rome, he served briefly as curate in his local parish before being appointed to teach dogmatic and moral theology at the Belluno seminary in 1937. Years of teaching followed until Pope John XXIII made him bishop of Vittorio Veneto in 1958. In 1969, he became patriarch of Venice and, in 1973, a cardinal.

 

His famously engaging smile and amiable manner caused some of his peers to be condescending towards him, assuming naivety, especially as he had no prior experience within the Curia’s internal government or the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. But they underestimated him. A reformist and a born communicator, Luciani quickly captured the media and popular support. He was also a simple man who did not endorse some of the Church’s more opulent or formal accoutrements. For instance, instead of an elaborate ceremony that would include crowning him with beehive-shaped papal tiara, he preferred an unpretentious inauguration mass. His belief that ‘it is the inalienable right of man to own property. But, it is the inalienable right of no man to accumulate wealth beyond the necessary and ignore the basic human needs of little children’ was also likely to have frightened those around him who were used to privilege and affluence. Moreover, this deep belief could have made him ruthless enemies among some outside the church who profited from supplying its luxuries.

 

His brief papacy was overshadowed by that of his successor, for after Pope John Paul I’s second-shortest documented papacy, Karol Józef Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, reigned over the Catholic church for 26 years, the second-longest documented pontificate in history.

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