Authors: David Yallop
Some of the key evidence that would have established the truth had already been destroyed by Villot – the medicine and the notes Luciani had made that detailed the vital changes. A measure of Villot’s panic can be gauged from the disappearance of Albino Luciani’s Will. It contained nothing of significance with regard to his death yet it was destroyed along with the other vital pieces of evidence. Why the Pope’s glasses and slippers also vanished remains a mystery.
Rumours swept through the Vatican village. It was said that the alarm light on a panel in the Papal Apartments had glowed throughout the night and that no one had responded to the call for help. It was said that signs of vomiting had been found in the bedroom, staining various items, and that was why the slippers and glasses were now missing. Vomiting is frequently one of the earliest symptoms of a digitalis overdose. Groups of bishops and priests huddled in various offices and recalled the curious incident of the sudden tragic death of the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Leningrad, Nikodim. He had been received in a special audience by Albino Luciani on September 5th. Suddenly, without warning, the 49-year-old Russian prelate had slumped forward in his chair. Moments later he was dead. Now the word went around the Vatican that Nikodim had drunk a cup of coffee intended for Albino Luciani.
Nikodim was of frail health and had previously suffered a number of heart attacks. In the frightened City State these facts were swept aside. His death was now seen in retrospect as a sign, a warning of the awful events that had now occurred in the Papal Apartments.
During the course of the day everything else within the Papal Apartments belonging to Albino Luciani was removed, including his letters, notes, books, and the small handful of personal mementoes such as the photograph of his parents with an infant Pia. Villot’s colleagues from the Secretariat of State removed all the confidential papers. Rapidly all material evidence that Albino Luciani had ever lived and worked there was boxed and carried away. By 6.00 p.m. the entire 19 rooms of the Papal Apartments were totally bereft of anything remotely associated with the Papacy of Luciani. It was as if he had never been there, never existed. At 6.00 p.m. the Papal Apartments were sealed by Cardinal Villot. They were to remain unopened until a successor had been elected.
Unobtrusively the nuns and the two secretaries left. Magee kept as a memento the cassette tapes used by Luciani to improve his English. Lorenzi took with him a jumble of images and memories. Carefully avoiding the waiting reporters, the group took up residence in a house run by the Sisters of Maria Bambina.
John Magee was destined to be a secretary to a Pope for a third time, a unique and remarkable achievement. Diego Lorenzi, the intense young Italian, was totally devastated by the death of a man he loved. He would return to northern Italy to work at a small school. Vincenza would be sent even further north to an obscure convent. The Vatican machine would ensure that neither was easy to locate with this virtual banishment.
After the doors of the Clementina Hall closed to the public at 6.00 p.m. on Friday September 29th, surely the most relieved man in the Vatican was Villot. Finally the work of the body technicians could begin. Once the body had been embalmed it would be a difficult task during any subsequent autopsy to discover and establish poison within the body. If the Pope had indeed died because of acute myocardial infarction the embalming fluids would not destroy the naturally damaged blood vessels.
In what was presumably an ironic coincidence the Rome Association of Pharmacy Owners chose this of all days to issue a press release that a number of medicines essential for the treatment of certain cases of poisoning and heart ailments were not available. Of greater pertinence perhaps was the statement that the Italian reporters
had finally managed to extract from Cardinal Villot: ‘When I saw His Holiness yesterday evening, he was in perfectly good health, totally lucid and he had given me full instructions for the next day.’
Behind closed doors in the Clementina Hall the lengthy process of embalming continued for three hours. The care and preservation of the body was the responsibility of Professor Cesare Gerin, but the actual embalming work was performed by Professor Marracino and Ernesto and Renato Signoracci. When the two Signoracci brothers had examined the body before it had been moved to the Clementina, they had concluded from the lack of rigor mortis and the temperature of the body that death had taken place not at 11.00 p.m. on the 28th but between 4.00 a.m. and 5.00 a.m. on the 29th. They were given independent confirmation of their conclusion by Monsignor Noè, who advised the brothers that the Pope had died shortly before 5.00 a.m. I have interviewed both brothers at length on three separate orcasions. They are adamant that death occurred between 4.00 a.m. and 5.00 a.m. and that the Pope’s body was discovered within one hour of his death. If they are accurate then either the Pope was still alive when Sister Vincenza entered his bedroom or he was barely dead. Only a full autopsy would have resolved these conflicting opinions.
At the Vatican’s insistence, no blood was drained from the body, neither were any organs removed. Injections of formalin and other preserving chemicals were made into the body through the femoral arterial and vein passages. The entire process took over three hours. The reason the process took so long was because, contrary to normal practice when the blood is drained or cleared with a solution of salt water that is circulated around the body, the Vatican was adamant that no blood should be drawn off. A small quantity of blood would of course have been more than sufficient for a forensic scientist to establish the presence of any poisonous substances.
The cosmetic treatment given to the body eliminated the expression of anguish upon the face. The hands that had gripped the now missing sheets of paper were clasped around a rosary. Cardinal Villot finally retired to bed shortly before midnight.
Pope Paul VI, in keeping with Italian law, had not been embalmed until twenty-four hours after his death. Although there had been allegations of medical incompetence after Paul had died, there had not been a single suggestion of foul play. Now with not only the general public but radio and television stations and the press urging an autopsy, the body of Albino Luciani had been embalmed some twelve hours after it had been discovered.
By Saturday September 30th, one particular question was being asked with increasing urgency. ‘Why no autopsy?’ The news media began to seek an explanation for such a sudden unheralded death. The Curia had been very quick to remind enquiring reporters of an off-the-cuff remark Albino Luciani had made during his last General Audience on Wednesday, September 27th. Turning to a group of sick and handicapped people in the Nervi Hall, Luciani had said, ‘Remember your Pope has been in hospital eight times and had four operations’.
The Vatican Press Office began to respond to requests for details of Luciani’s health by repeating the late Pope’s phrase. They used it so excessively it began to take on the quality of a telephone answering machine, with a comparable lack of satisfaction to callers.
The various media recalled that – Luciani had not appeared to be in ill health during his brief Papacy. On the contrary, they observed, he appeared to be the picture of health, full of life and zest. Others, who had known Luciani for considerably longer, began to be contacted for their views.
When Monsignor Senigaglia, Luciani’s secretary in Venice for over six years, revealed that the late Pope had undergone a full medical check up shortly before leaving Venice for the Conclave and the medical examination had ‘been favourable in all respects’ the demands for an autopsy grew louder.
When a variety of Italian medical experts began to state categorically the need for an autopsy to ascertain the precise cause of death the panic within the Vatican reached new heights. It was clear that while doctors were prepared to put forward a variety of reasons that could have been contributory factors (the sudden stress of becoming Pope was a particular favourite), none was prepared to accept without an autopsy the Vatican’s assertion that Albino Luciani died of myocardial infarction.
The Vatican countered by stating that it was against Vatican rules for an autopsy to be performed. This was yet another lie passed out to the world’s Press. Further questioning by Italian journalists established that the Vatican was referring to the Apostolic Constitution announced by Pope Paul VI in 1975. This was the document which laid down the procedures for electing his successor, with its search for bugs in the Conclave area and its instructions on the size of voting cards. Careful reading of the document establishes that Paul had failed to cover the possibility of any controversy over the cause of his death. An autopsy was neither banned nor approved. It was simply not referred to.
The subject of Paul’s death then became a matter of public debate. It is abundantly clear that Paul’s life could have been prolonged. The medical treatment he had been given during his last days, had in the opinion of many of the world’s experts, left a great deal to be desired. From his Cape Town Hospital, Dr Christian Barnard, when informed that Pope Paul had not been placed in an intensive care unit, said: ‘If this was to happen in South Africa, the doctors responsible would have been denounced to their Medical Association for negligence.’
One of the principal doctors in control of Pope Paul’s treatment had been Dr Renato Buzzonetti, the deputy head of the Vatican medical services. Now the same doctor, who in Dr Barnard’s view had acted negligently in August, had performed a medical impossibility in determining the cause of Albino Luciani’s lonely death. Without an autopsy his conclusion was totally without meaning.
It was against this background that Cardinal Confalonieri presided over the first meeting of the Congregation of Cardinals, the group which watches over and controls Church affairs in the interim after a Pope’s death. This group comprises every cardinal – if they happen to be in Rome. When this initial meeting took place, at 11.00 a.m. on Saturday September 30th, the vast majority of cardinals were still scattered around the world. Of the 127 cardinals only 29 were present, and the majority of these were, naturally, Italian. This minority made a number of decisions. They decided that Albino Luciani’s funeral would take place on the following Wednesday, October 4th. In the meantime the massive public desire personally to visit the Pope’s body was causing havoc to Vatican officials. They had anticipated a similar degree of interest to that shown when Paul died – yet another example of how badly the Curia failed to understand Luciani’s impact. The decision was taken to move the body that evening to St Peter’s Basilica. The two most significant decisions taken that morning, however, were that the next Conclave should take place at the earliest possible date, October 14th, and that there would be no autopsy.
The doubts and concern of men like Benelli, Felici and Caprio about Luciani’s death were overruled. Acutely aware that the controversy would grow until the public were given something to distract and deflect them, Villot and his colleagues totally reversed the way they had reasoned in August. Then the Conclave had been delayed until nearly the longest permissible time. Now it was to be the shortest. It was a shrewd ploy. Curial cardinals, in particular, reasoned that after the funeral the media would become preoccupied with Luciani’s possible successor. If they could hold out until the funeral took place
in a few days’ time, they would be safe. Further, any of the majority of the cardinals yet to arrive, who felt like insisting on an autopsy, would be confronted with decisions already taken. To reverse such decisions in the limited time before the funeral would be a virtual impossibility. ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’, Jesus tells us, an injunction that 29 cardinals chose to ignore on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church on the morning of September 30th, 1978.
After the meeting had adjourned, Cardinal Confalonieri gave his considered opinion as to why the Pope had suddenly died.
He couldn’t stand the solitude; all Popes live in a kind of institutional solitude, but perhaps Luciani suffered from it more. He, who had always lived among the people, found himself living with two secretaries whom he did not know and two nuns who did not even raise their eyes in the presence of the Pope. He did not even have the time to make any friends.
Father Diego Lorenzi had worked closely and intimately with Luciani for over two years. Sister Vincenza had worked with Luciani for nearly twenty years. Far from casting her eyes upon the ground at his approach she was a source of great comfort to Luciani. Indeed the man was cut off; but would a bevy of intimates have been able to prevent a solitary, mysterious death?
There can be no doubt that the Curial hostility and arrogance displayed during his last thirty-three days had not made for the happiest of experiences, but Albino Luciani had fought clerical hostility and arrogance for nearly a decade in Venice.
At 6.00 p.m. on Saturday September 30th the embalmed body was moved, uncovered, to the Basilica of St Peter. Much of the world watched on television as the procession, including 24 of the cardinals and 100 bishops and archbishops passed through the First Loggia, the Ducal Hall, the Hall and Stairway of the Kings and through the Bronze Door and out into St Peter’s Square. At that point the singing of the Magnificat was unexpectedly drowned by one of those gestures that is so peculiarly Italian. The massive crowds broke into loud sustained applause, the Latin counterpart of Anglo-Saxon silence.
Throughout the world informed and uninformed opinion attempted to assess the life and death of Albino Luciani. Much of what was written tells a great deal more about the writers than about the man. The belief that minds could be quickly diverted from the death to the
succession, expressed in the morning by the Curia, rapidly began to prove accurate. In England
The Times
neatly mirrored the transitory nature of life with an editorial entitled, ‘The Year of The Three Popes’.