Book disputes ‘murder’ of Pope

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 19

Book disputes ‘murder’ of Pope

NZPA-Reuter Vatican City The most sought-after book inside the Vatican is not a new papal encyclical or a controversial theological treatise. It is a work which seeks to quash the rumour that Pope John Paul I was murdered in 1978, but which paints the tiny walled city-state as the domain of bungling bureaucrats and spiteful monsignors. “Everybody here is talking about it, wanting to borrow a copy from someone,” a Vatican spokesman said about the British journalist, John Cornwell’s new book, “A Thief In The Night.” Cornwell systematically and methodically challenges the murder allegations made popular by a fellow Briton, David Yallop, in his 1984 international bestseller, “In God’s Name.”

Yallop claimed that a number of people in the Vatican had a motive for poisoning the newly-elected Albino Luciani because of institutional changes he intended to make.

Known as the “smiling Pope” because of his good nature, Luciani reigned for only 33 days from August 26 until he

died on September 28, 1978. The official cause of death was a heart attack.

Although Yallop’s research methods were criticised by other journalists and his allegations hotly denied by the Vatican, his book was a thorn in the side of the Catholic Church.

American priests visiting Rome told Vatican officials they did not know how to handle questions from their parishioners such as, “Father, why was the smiling Pope poisoned?”

Cornwell, aged 48, a former Catholic seminarian, novelist and former journalist on the “London Observer,” was given unprecedented access to Vatican officials.

Some of them, such as the papal doctor, Renato Buzzonetti, and the Irish Archbishop, John Magee, one of Pope John Paul I’s two private secretaries, spoke to Cornwell only after being told that Pope John Paul II wanted them to.

Cornwell concludes that Pope John Paul I died from a pulmonary embolism resulting from his long-standing bloodcirculation problems. Although it clashes with the

official cause of death, this conclusion is supported in the book by a Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, and Pope John Paul I’s niece, Lina Petri, who both studied medicine.

But if the Vatican sought in Cornwell a white knight to kill the rumours, it did not succeed. Cornwell, in effect, accuses the institution and its bureaucratic, Byzantine ways, of neglecting the Pope’s health and causing confusion by the way the news of his death was given to the world.

He says that the Pope’s medical records were not brought to Rome from Venice, where he had been cardinal, and Vatican doctors had never examined him.

Despite severe chest and leg pains and badly swollen feet suffered by the Pope the day before he died, his secretaries did not tell the doctors, according to the book. They said the Pontiff refused suggestions for a doctor to be called.

The Pope’s body was found by a nun who entered his room at dawn, after he failed to take the coffee she left outside and did not respond to knocking on

the door. She then called Magee, one of his secretaries. The Vatican, not comfortable with the idea that a woman, albeit an elderly nun, had been in the Pope’s bedroom, said in the official version that Magee had found the body. The book also highlights the abrasive, rival relationship between Magee, an Irish Vatican veteran, and the Pope’s other secretary, an Italian newcomer, Monsignor Diego Lorenzi.

Magee and Lorenzi still disagree on whether both of them were in the Vatican the night before the Pope died.

Cornwell also documents how reporting by Italian journalists fuelled the mystery. Poison theorists attributed great importance to what the Pope was reading in bed when he died. Various versions included a speech announcing a crackdown on the Jesuits, a plan for reshuffling Vatican posts and a copy of Thomas a Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ.”

Cornwell shows how the rumour that the Pope was reading Thomas a Kempis began in the Vatican press room, but got so out of control that even

Vatican radio broadcast it as fact, correcting it later.

The author also shows how an Italian news agency erroneously reported, but 'never corrected, a story that Rome morticians were summoned an hour before the time the Vatican said the Pope’s body had been discovered.

Cornwell also gives a unique insight into the daily life of people who live and work in the Vatican.

Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, of the United States, whose typical American bluntness has not endeared him to some Vatican officials, told him : “This is a village, excuse me if I say this, a village of washerwomen.”

Andrew Greely, a United States priest and bestselling author, said Cornwell “portrays the Vatican as it really is: bumbling, venal, paranoid, arrogant, frightened, ignorant, petty, inept.”

Vatican officials have reacted quietly to the book, accusing Cornwell of excessive gossip. But as one spokesman said, whatever his criticisms, it was better to be portrayed as incompetent than as conspiratorial murderers.