Authors: David Yallop
I considered throwing him out there and then, what stopped me was his remark about the Vatican assistance he was getting. I reasoned that with that kind of backing it should be possible to finally establish the ultimate truth concerning the murder of Albino Luciani. With hindsight that was very naive of me. A reading of his book
A Thief in the Night
made it clear to me that this was not an author approaching an investigation with an open mind but the work of a man striving to create on behalf of the Vatican a pre-determined version of truth. His conclusions appear to have been arrived at by largely ignoring the body of factual evidence contained within my book.
The book makes a remarkable contribution to the Vatican-created myths concerning the health of Albino Luciani. Remarkable because the author notwithstanding the promises that had been made to him concerning cooperation was denied access to the medical records of the murdered Pope, failed to persuade the Pope’s personal doctor of more than twenty years to talk to him and failed to interview the Pope’s specialist Professor Rama. There were numerous other omissions but this is not the time or the place to dwell upon them. One should be positive and record just a little of what John Cornwell gleaned from those he did manage to talk to: ‘A few days before coming down to the Conclave after Paul VI’s death, Luciani visited a parish priest in this friend of mine’s home town, and he had to rest a while because his feet were swelling up, which is a sign of certain sorts of heart problems . . . Another thing I’ve heard is that there had been problems with his health before he became Bishop. There was a doubt. You’re going to need to document that somehow.’
An anonymous Monsignor referring an anonymous friend who is referring to an anonymous priest.
‘We also know that he had extremely swollen ankles. I could show you photographs of his ankles, very swollen . . .’ Dr Navarro Valls, Vatican Press spokesman. In the event, however, we are never told if Navarro Valls did show Cornwell the photographs and there is no record of the author requesting that he should.
Father Farusi was yet another who contributed to the picture of a mortally ill Albino Luciani. Father Farusi was the head of Radiogiornale at the Vatican Radio at the time of Luciani’s brief papacy. He told Cornwell that once he realized that Luciani was a
‘front-runner’ for the papacy and that Cardinals were ‘asking about the health of the Patriach of Venice’ he made it his business to acquire from ‘contacts in the police’ a ‘thorough dossier on this man Luciani’s health. When the information came back I was shocked, because I learned that he was in very poor health . . . they should never have elected him.’ Farusi did not volunteer a copy of the medical dossier. We are not told why, if Albino Luciani was so clearly at death’s door, he was elected Pope or if the Cardinals who were apparently enquiring about Luciani’s health received copies of the medical dossier.
During October 1988, former Papal Secretary Father Diego Lorenzi while taking part in a television debate had produced a large white rabbit. He had revealed for the first time that on the last evening of his life shortly before 8.00 p.m. the Pope had come to the door of his study complaining of ‘dreadful pain’ in his chest. Lorenzi had then recounted how he had urged the Pope to call a doctor but the Pope ‘absolutely forbade me to do this’. It was, Lorenzi declared, months later before he connected these chest pains with Luciani’s death. This extraordinary tale was recounted to Cornwell with additional details including how both he and the other papal secretary Father John Magee had subsequently gone to the Pope’s bedroom and said to Luciani: ‘Now look, if anything should happen tonight, if you have need of any us, just push the button and we will hear the bell and we’ll rush through to help you’.
Fellow Papal secretary Father John Magee was yet another whose memory post-publication of
In God’s Name
and more than six years later had ‘improved’ greatly. Interviewed on my behalf by researcher Phillip Willan he had observed ‘On the last evening he was perfectly fit. During his Papacy this business of leg swelling did not occur. He took daily exercise in the Vatican gardens or the big hall.’ To John Cornwell, Father Magee said ‘. . . They were terribly swollen . . .’
Father Magee’s version of the sudden attack of alleged violent chest pain suffered by the Pope differed markedly from Lorenzi’s. Magee was adamant that his fellow secretary was not even in the Papal Apartments at the time, and that the incident occurred not in the evening at 8.00 p.m. but in the afternoon about 5.30 p.m. That Luciani called out ‘I have a pain! Send Sister Vincenza to me. She knows what to do.’ Magee wanted to call a doctor but the Pope was adamant that he should not. Magee then advised Sister Vincenza who took ‘some medicine’ to the Pope. Later when Father Lorenzi had eventually appeared Magee told him what had occurred and according to Magee when they asked Luciani how he was he responded ‘Sto bene! Sto
bene! Eccomi’ (‘I am well! I am well! Here I am.’) Pummelling his chest he declared ‘Andiamo (Let’s go). Those tablets of Sister Vincenza are miraculous. Let’s go to supper.’
One of Albino Luciani’s nieces, Lena Petri, herself a doctor discussed her uncle’s medical history with Cornwell. She talked of a conversation that she had with her uncle in 1975 after he sustained a blood clot in his left eye. The conversation had occurred shortly after the condition had been treated successfully by Professor Rama. ‘He [Albino Luciani] said in so many words that if it recurred he could be seriously ill. He also said he would be a slave to medicines anticoagulants and so forth – for the rest of his life’.
It had not recurred. The gloomy scenario painted by Luciani did not become a reality but Lina Petri speculated about the possibility that during his short papacy the Pope through stress may have ‘neglected to take his anti-coagulants, which may have proved fatal.’ There is in fact no evidence that after Professor Rama’s successful treatment in 1975 Luciani was ever again obliged to take anti-coagulants. But Cornwell seized on what was no more than supposition which through a series of further speculations hardened to fact in his mind.
Thus in his conclusions we read: ‘The description of his swollen legs was all over the Vatican . . . During the weeks that I spent in the Vatican talking with scores of officials I gathered John Paul I’s difficulties both in health and in coping, had been common knowledge throughout the four weeks of his reign . . . It was common knowledge that he was seriously ill . . . By the second week of his Papacy his legs were swelling up to elephantine proportions . . . It would not be difficult to construct a plausible hypothesis that accounts for John Paul’s death. Did he as his niece believes, neglect to take life-saving medicines? What is the dividing line between “giving up”, suicide by deliberate neglect, and “resignation”, or “abandonment” in a religious sense where a person believes that it is God’s will that he should die and eagerly embraces that prospect . . . It was common knowledge that John Paul I was overwhelmed by his task . . .’
Someone reading the Cornwell book might well think that here was an author who was taken up and down the Vatican garden path. The Pope’s doctor was less charitable. Doctor Da Ros considers Cornwell’s conclusions inconceivable: ‘Luciani was very careful and always took his medication. In addition, Sister Vincenza was not only a nun but a qualified nurse and she was in control of the medication.’
Based upon my research Albino Luciani on the last day of his life was not a man planning to ensure his premature death. The last photograph
taken of Luciani just a few hours before he died shows a man ebullient and zestful. He was fit and well. He was planning for the future and not only with the various changes he had discussed with Villot that are detailed within this book. He also discussed with his Secretary of State a series of Papal letters he was planning ‘The Unity of the Church.’ ‘The Bishops Collegiality with the Pope.’ A third letter on the role of women in, ‘Civil society and in Ecclesial Life.’ and a fourth on ‘The Poor and Poverty in the World.’ The Curia were to be reformed. The Conclave would be revolutionized with access being granted to the Bishops and to the ‘Presidents of the Episcopal Conferences of all the world.’ This was a man at the height of his powers, brimming over with ideas. He was not as Cornwell has portrayed him, an incompetent lost in endless Vatican corridors as he forlornly sought death.
In September 2003 Doctor Antonio Da Ros the man who had been Albino Luciani’s doctor for the last twenty years of the late Pope’s life finally broke the silence he had maintained since the death of his former patient. He gave two interviews. His interview with Andrea Tornelli was published on the 27 September 2003 in
Il Giornale.
The following extracts come from that source.
Doctor, it has been said that during the month of his pontificate Pope Luciani had been abandoned by the doctors neither treated or visited.
It is not true. I visited him on Sunday 3 September, the day of the Mass for the beginning of the pontificate after the audience granted to the pilgrims of Vittorio Veneto. There are photos that demonstrate that I was there. I saw him. I measured his blood pressure, subjected it to the usual control. On the 13th September I again went to the Vatican and I visited for the third time on Saturday 23rd September and on that occasion I was invited to lunch with the Pope, after meeting with his secretary Father John Magee and with Dr Renato Buzzonetti.
What was the reason for meeting with Buzzonetti?
It was established that I was to be the doctor in charge of John Paul I.
Can you document this?
Look I have the note here that I made during the meeting, about which I spoke to the Pope at lunch. In any case my presence and those three visits
must be recorded in the registries of the Vatican, because there was a car of the Holy See that came to take me to the airport of Fiumicino.
Why did you visit the Pope three times? Were you worried about his health?
Not at all. It was not bad. These control visits were a habit. Since the times in 1959 in Vittorio Veneto I checked him once a week.
Da Ros then revealed that on the evening of September 28, 1978 the last evening of the Pope’s life he had phoned the Pope at approximately 9.00 p.m. It was a ‘routine call, nobody had contacted me.’
With whom exactly did you speak?
I spoke with John Paul I and also with Sister Vincenza Taffarel, the nun who was also a nurse who attended to Luciani.
What did you say to the Pope on the telephone? Were you worried about his health? Was there some omen of what was to happen a few hours later?
No absolutely not. All was calm, normal.
And Sister Vincenza. What did you say to her?
She explained to me that the Pope had spent his day as usual and that all was normal. We arranged the visit that I would have made to the Pope on the following Wednesday.
Some years after the death of the Luciani, his secretary Diego Lorenzi, revealed during a television transmission that in the late afternoon of September 28th, John Paul I had had a strong pain in his chest. The sign of a heart attack or, in any case the symptom of a serious illness. Is it true that on that evening nobody spoke to you about this?
I was astounded, not to say bewildered, when I heard Diego making these affirmations. That evening nobody told me of these symptoms, neither the Pope, much less Sister Vincenza, who, I repeat was a nurse, and she would certainly have informed me if Luciani had been ill. John Paul I had a day of intense work as always, as in Venice. Also
Cardinal Giovanni Colombo, the Archbishop of Milan, who spoke with me that evening, said that the Pope was calm, not worried about anything. I have never understood why it was not stated immediately.
It has been said that Pope Luciani during those 33 days had swollen ankles, that he had serious circulatory problems?
I visited him three times. There was a slight swelling up, which had also to do with the fact that life in the Vatican was much more sedentary than in Venice. I had advised him to move around a little and, from the time that he begun to walk in the hanging garden, the situation had improved. I do not exclude the fact that he had to become accustomed to the papal red slippers, without a heel.
Before the death of Paul VI on 6th of August 1978, Cardinal Luciani had spent one week at the Alberoni Institute, at the Lido of Venice. Had he gone for treatment?
No. He had gone to spend seven days on holiday. To be able to read, to walk and rest.
According to you, therefore, nothing made it possible to foresee the premature death of John Paul I?
I think it can be said that he enjoyed good health.
Early on the morning that the body of Luciani was discovered, his niece Pia upon hearing the news came to pay her respects to her uncle still lying in his bed. The papers he had been clutching had already been removed. Among those Pia spoke to was Sister Vincenza, who told her that ‘Papa Luciani had been feeling really well the evening before’.
The doctor’s observations concerning Luciani’s general level of good health are shared by many who knew him. Some of their number are quoted within this book another who spoke out some four years earlier that the doctor was Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider of Brazil who had enjoyed a close friendship with Albino Luciani over a number of years. ‘I was dumbstruck. I found it hard to accept the sad news. I would never have expected it. No clue, no negative sign had come to me about the health of Pope John Paul I. Suggestions that the Pope had been in poor health are nonsense.’