Authors: David Yallop
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 was 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.’
Among those unimpressed by this denial were a number of the cardinals still arriving in Rome for the next Conclave. At the meeting of the congregation of cardinals which took place on October 9th their unease surfaced. Cardinal Villot in particular found himself under attack. As Camerlengo he had taken the decisions and authorized the statements which clearly indicated that the death of Luciani had been followed by a cover-up. Many of the non-Italian Princes of the Church demanded to know exactly what was being covered up. They wanted to know why the cause of death had not been precisely ascertained and why it had merely been presumed. They wanted to know why there was not greater clarification about the time of death. Why a doctor had not taken official responsibility in putting his name to a death certificate that could be made public.
They were unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain these facts. The next Conclave was fast approaching, thanks to the decision made by a minority the day after the discovery of the Pope’s body. The minds of the cardinals began to concentrate on the lobbying and the intrigues surrounding the problem of who should succeed Albino Luciani: an indication that the men of the Roman Curia, with an inherited
experience of nearly two thousand years, have indeed learned a great deal from their predecessors.
On October 12th, less than forty-eight hours before the next Conclave, the Vatican made its final public statement concerning the furore over the death of Albino Luciani. It was issued by Vatican press secretary Father Romeo Panciroli:
At the end of the ‘Novemdiales’, when we enter a new phase of the Sede Vacante, the director of the Press Office of the Holy See expresses words of firm disapproval for those who in recent days have indulged in the spreading of strange rumours, unchecked, often false and which sometimes have reached the level of grave insinuations, all the more grave for the repercussions they may have had in those countries where people are not accustomed to excessively casual forms of expression. In these moments of mourning and sorrow for the Church one expected greater control and greater respect.
He repeated that ‘what happened has been faithfully reported in the communiqué of Friday morning, September 29th, which maintains its full validity and which reflected the death certificate signed by Professor Mario Fontana and Dr Renato Buzzonetti so faithfully as to render its publication unnecessary’.
He also noted with satisfaction, ‘the rectitude of many professionals who in such a difficult moment for the Church, showed loyal participation in the events and informed public opinion with considered and objective reports’.
Wishing to avoid ‘grave insinuations’ I will make instead a categoric statement. I am completely convinced that Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani, was murdered.
To this date no death certificate has ever been made public and despite repeated requests the Vatican refused to make one available to me. Undoubtedly it would state that the cause of death was myocardial infarction. The continued refusal to make the death certificate available means that no doctor is prepared to accept publicly the legal responsibility for diagnosing Albino Luciani’s death. The fact that the diagnosis was based on an
external
examination which is unacceptable medically may have something to do with that Vatican refusal.
The fact that a full autopsy or post mortem was not performed despite international unease and concern is powerful evidence that the
Pope was murdered. If Luciani’s death was natural then why not have an autopsy and allay that concern?
It is clear that, officially at least, the Vatican does not know when Luciani died or what killed him. ‘Presumably towards eleven o’clock’ and ‘sudden death that could be related to’ are statements that clearly demonstrate a high degree of ignorance, of presumptions and assumptions. The body of a beggar found in the gutters of Rome would be accorded a greater degree of professional care and attention. The scandal is all the greater when one is aware that these examining doctors had never medically cared for the living Albino Luciani. When I spoke to Dr Renato Buzzonetti in Rome I asked what medicines the Pope had been taking in the weeks before his death. He replied, ‘I don’t know what medicines he was taking. I was not his doctor. The first time I saw him on a doctor/patient relationship he was dead.’