Authors: David Yallop
Villot, Cody, Marcinkus, Calvi, Sindona, Gelli: each had a powerful motive. Might Cardinal Villot have murdered to protect his position as Secretary of State, to protect other men who were about to be moved, and most of all to avoid the furore that undoubtedly would have ensued when Albino Luciani took a different stance publicly on the issue of birth control?
Might Cardinal Cody, aided by some of his many friends within the Vatican, attempting to cling corruptly to office in Chicago, have silenced a Pope who was about to remove him?
Might Bishop Marcinkus, sitting at the head of a demonstrably corrupt bank, have acted to ensure he remained President of the IOR?
It is possible that one of these three men is guilty. Certainly Villot’s actions after the Pope’s death were criminal: destruction of evidence; a false story; the imposition of silence. It is conduct that leaves much to be desired.
Why was Bishop Paul Marcinkus wandering in the Vatican at such an early hour? A normal police investigation would demand many answers from these three men, but over five years later such vital interrogations are impossible. Villot and Cody are dead and Marcinkus is hiding inside the Vatican from the Italian police.
The most pertinent evidence in defence of these three men is not their own inevitable protestations of innocence. It is the very fact that they were men of the cloth; men of the Roman Catholic Church. Two thousand years has taught such men to take the long view. The history of the Vatican is the history of countless Popes eager to make reforms and yet hemmed in and neutralized by the system. If the Church in general and Vatican City in particular so wishes it can and does dramatically influence and affect Papal decisions. It has already been recorded how a minority of men imposed their will upon Paul VI on the issue of birth control. It has also been recorded how Baggio flatly refused to replace Luciani in Venice.
As for the changes Luciani was about to make, many within the Vatican would have welcomed them, but even those most deeply opposed were more likely to react in a manner less dramatic than murder. This does not rule out Villot, Cody and Marcinkus. Rather it places them at the bottom of the list of suspects and moves Calvi, Sindona and Gelli to the top. Did any of these men have the capacity for the deed? The short answer is yes.
Whoever murdered Albino Luciani was clearly gambling that the next Conclave and the next Pope would not reactivate Luciani’s
instructions. All six men stood to gain if the ‘right’ man was elected. Would any kill merely to buy a month’s grace? If the ‘right’ man was elected, that month would extend into the future. Two of these men, Villot and Cody, were in the perfect position to influence the next Conclave. Marcinkus was not without influence. Neither were Calvi, Sindona and Gelli.
It was at the villa of Umberto Ortolani that the final plans were made by a group of cardinals that resulted in the election of Pope Paul VI. Gelli, as the ruler of P2, had access to each and every part of Vatican City, just as he also had access to the inner sanctum of Italian Government, the banks and the judiciary.
On a practical basis how could the murder of Albino Luciani have been achieved? Surely Vatican security could not be penetrated? The truth is that Vatican security at the time of Luciani’s death could be penetrated with consummate ease – with the same ease that a man called Michael Fagin calmly entered Buckingham Palace in the middle of the night and, after wandering about, sat in Her Majesty’s bedroom and asked the Queen of England for a cigarette.
Vatican security in 1978 could be penetrated as easily as the security surrounding President Reagan was penetrated when John Hinckley wounded the President and members of his staff. Or as easily as it was on Wednesday May 13th, 1982, when Mehmet Ali Agca fired three bullets into Pope John Paul II.
John XXIII had abolished the practice of the Swiss Guard maintaining an all-night vigil outside his apartment. Nevertheless Albino Luciani really did deserve better protection than he was accorded. Vatican City, a little larger than St James’s Park in London, with six entrances, presented no serious problem to anyone intent on penetration.
The Conclave that had elected Luciani was in theory one of the most stringently guarded places on earth. The reader may recall the extraordinary lengths that Pope Paul VI had gone to to ensure that no one could get in or out during the sessions that chose the new Pope. After his election, Luciani kept the Conclave in session on Saturday, August 26th. Yet one simple unassuming priest, Father Diego Lorenzi, has graphically recounted to me how, anxious to join Luciani, he had wandered unchallenged into the very heart of the Conclave. Only when he was within sight of the 110 cardinals and his newly elected Pope did someone ask him who he was and what he was doing. By then he could have blown the entire building to the next world, if he had so chosen.
At the time of the August Conclave, many writers commented on the total lack of security. To quote just two:
There was too, on this occasion, the unceasing if unspoken threat of terrorism. In my view, security around the Vatican has not been impressive over the past week, and the rambling place which opens on to the streets in many places, poses perhaps insuperable problems. All the more reason for getting the Conclave over quickly.
Paul Johnson,
Sunday Telegraph
August 27th, 1978
As far as I can see, the security cops are mostly interested in talking to pretty girls in sidewalk cafés. I hope the Red Brigades don’t have anything in mind for the evening (the day of Paul VI’s funeral). They could arrive and knock out many of the world’s leaders in one fell swoop.
Father Andrew Greeley,
The Making of the Popes
Then less than two months later at the funeral of Albino Luciani, ‘The security precautions are enormous’. (Father Andrew Greeley,
The Making of The Popes).
It was curious that after the death the security which had been nonexistent during Albino Luciani’s lifetime should suddenly appear. ‘There were no security guards in the area of the Papal Apartments when I was there with Albino Luciani,’ Father Diego Lorenzi advised me.
I interviewed Sergeant Hans Roggan of the Swiss Guard. He was the officer in charge on the night Luciani died. He recounted how earlier in the evening he had been out in Rome for a meal with his mother. They saw the light on in the Papal bedroom when they returned at 10.30 p.m. Roggan’s mother retired for the night and he went on duty. He told me:
For some reason that was a terrible night for me. That night I was the officer in charge of the Palace.
I simply could not get to sleep.
Eventually I got up and went to the office and worked on a couple of ledgers. Normally I sleep well.
This is the officer in charge of Palace security on the night of Luciani’s sudden death, tossing and turning in his bed as he tries to
sleep.
To add
that no one saw fit to query and check the fact that the Pope’s bedroom light continued to shine throughout the night seems almost superfluous. Much criticism was made at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy about the appalling security, or lack of it, in Dallas. By comparison with what passed for security around Luciani, the President was extremely well protected.
Further research has established that at the time of Luciani’s Papacy, there was a Swiss Guard at the top of the stairs on the Third Loggia. His function was merely ceremonial, as few people ever entered the Papal Apartments by this route. Access to the Apartments was usually by the lift – for which many had the key. The lift entrance was not guarded. Any man dressed as a priest could enter and leave the Papal Apartments unchallenged.
Further instances of the chaotic security within the Vatican City abound. Recently, since the death of Albino Luciani, a staircase near the Papal Apartments has been re-discovered. It was not hidden, not masked by later building work. Quite simply no one knew of its existence. Or did they? Did someone perhaps know of it in September 1978?
Swiss Guards officially asleep on duty. Swiss Guards who guard an entrance no one uses. A staircase that no one knew about. Even an amateur assassin would not have experienced any great difficulty and whoever killed Albino Luciani was no amateur. To assist any would-be murderer
L’Osservatore della Domenica
published a detailed plan, complete with photograph, of the Papal Apartments. Date of publication, September 3rd, 1978.
If Mehmet Ali Agca had carried out even elementary homework, Pope John Paul II would now be dead; murdered as his predecessor was. The more I probed the more apparent it became that anyone bent upon murdering Albino Luciani had a relatively simple task. To obtain access to the Papal Apartments in September 1978 and to tamper with either the medicines or food or drink of the Pope with any of two hundred lethal drugs would have been a simple task.
The virtual certainty that there would not be an official autopsy merely makes the deed that much easier. There was not even a doctor on 24-hour duty. The Vatican health service did not have at that time the standard equipment of an ordinary modern hospital. There was no emergency medical structure. And in the centre of this shambles was an honest man, who by the various courses of action he had embarked upon, had given at least six men very powerful motives for murder.
Despite the appalling attack on Luciani’s successor, little has
changed with regard to security within the Vatican. During my research I walked in the gardens of the Augustinian residence where Luciani had walked before the August Conclave. It was a Sunday in September 1982. Across St Peter’s Square His Holiness came out on to the balcony to deliver the mid-day Angelus. From where I stood he was in a direct firing line of less than 2,000 yards, the top half of his body entirely unprotected. If Agca or one of his kind had been standing there, the Pope would have been dead and the assassin back in the heart of Rome within minutes. I had walked into the gardens unchallenged.
A few days after this I walked unchallenged through the Vatican’s Saint Anna Gate. Carrying a case large enough to contain bombs, I went unchecked to the Vatican Bank. The following week in the company of two researchers, all three of us carrying cases and bags, we walked unsearched through the very heart of the Vatican on our way to see Cardinal Ciappi. These events took place only seventeen months after Pope John Paul II had been nearly murdered in St Peter’s Square.
Is it possible that in a country with one of the lowest death rates for coronary heart disease in Europe, a perfectly fit man, whose one unusual physical characteristic, that of low blood pressure, which mitigates against a death from heart disease, did in fact die of a myocardial infarction? Is it possible that the non-smoking, moderately eating, abstemious Luciani, who was doing everything that heart specialists would have had him do, was merely unfortunate? Unfortunate that despite taking every conceivable health precaution, he died? Unfortunate that despite constant medical check-ups including numerous ECGs, not a single trace in 65 years indicated any heart weakness? Unfortunate that his death was so sudden, so immediate that he did not even have time to press the alarm bell a few inches from his hand? In the words of Professors Rulli and Masini, who were two of the experts I consulted in Rome: ‘It is very very unlikely that death is so quick that the individual does not take any action. Very very rare.’
Indeed the evidence is all against Luciani’s death being a natural one. The evidence very strongly suggests murder. For myself I have no doubt. I am totally convinced that Albino Luciani was murdered and that at least one of the six suspects I have already identified holds the key.
At 65 years of age, Albino Luciani was considered by the Conclave that elected him to be exactly the right age for the Papacy. Paul VI had
been 66 when elected and had ruled for fifteen years. John XXIII had been 77 when elected as a stop-gap Pope, yet he ruled for five years. The Conclave had felt that Luciani would rule for a minimum of ten years. Conclaves are expensive affairs. The death of Paul VI and the election of his successor cost 5 million dollars. The Church is not disposed towards frequent Conclaves or short Papacies. As a result of Luciani’ s sudden and unexpected death there were two Conclaves in less than two months.
It is not of course my contention that the plot to murder Albino Luciani was conceived on September 28th, 1978. The final act was obviously carried out on that day but the decision had been taken earlier. How much earlier is a moot point.
It could have been within days of Luciani’s election when the new Pope initiated his investigations into Vatican Incorporated. It could have been within the first two weeks of September when the fact that Luciani was investigating Freemasonry within the Vatican became known to some members of the Vatican village. It could have been mid September when the attitudes of the new Pope on birth control and his plans to implement a liberal position on the issue were causing deep concern within the Vatican. It could have been the third week of September when the fact that Marcinkus and others at the Vatican Bank were about to be removed became a certainty. It may have been a few days before his death that the plan was put into motion, days during which Albino Luciani arrived at other far-reaching and crucial decisions. Whenever the plan originated, for the suspects already identified its final act came not a moment too soon. If they had allowed even a few more days to elapse they would have been too late.