Pope John Paul I

Conspiracy theories

The discrepancies in the Vatican's account of the events surrounding John Paul I's death—its "inaccurate" statements about who found the body, what he had been reading, when he had been found and whether a post-mortem could be carried out—produced a number of conspiracy theories, many associated with the Vatican Bank. Even fiction focused on the bizarre death of the pope: the movie The Godfather Part III featured a major plotline depicting the Vatican Bank involved in organized crime, with various intrigues resulting in the assassination of a pope openly named in the movie as "John Paul I".

Related Topics:
Conspiracy theories - Vatican Bank - The Godfather Part III

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In addition, Vatican health-care had been notoriously poor for some of his predecessors. Pope Pius XII was "treated" by Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, an unqualified "doctor" whose "remedies" left the pope with constant hiccups and rotting teeth, and who attempted unsuccessfully to sell photographs of the Pope on his deathbed to a magazine. Pope Paul VI's poor health care is generally agreed to have sped the approach of his death. There is no evidence to suggest that the standard of Vatican health care had improved by Pope John Paul I's 33-day reign. Nor, given his apparent lack of heart problems (as attested to by his own doctor, who flatly contradicted the rumours that came from the Vatican in the aftermath of the pope's death) was there any apparent immediate requirement for a review of medical services. In contrast, John Paul I's successor, Pope John Paul II, always had access to excellent medical services, a fact which saved his life after the assassination attempt made upon him in 1981.

Related Topics:
Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi - Pope John Paul II - 1981

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It is possible that Pope John Paul died either naturally or as a result of an accidental overdose of low blood pressure medication. Even the apparently suspicious quick embalming could have a logical explanation. The bodies of two of his immediate predecessors, Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI, had undergone rapid decay; in Pius's case, due to a disastrous embalming at the hands of his "doctor" Galeazzi-Lisi that sped up the process rather than slowing it down. (The stench of Pope Pius's rapidly decaying corpse led some of the Swiss Guards, who provided a ceremonial guard of honour during his lying in state, to vomit and faint; the body turned purple and the pope's nose broke off.) Given the fact that Pope John Paul died in September, a period of high temperatures in Rome, it was perhaps understandable that Vatican officials might have wanted to ensure a similar disaster did not occur again.

Related Topics:
Pope Pius XII - Pope Paul VI - Swiss Guards

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The claim that papal rules prevented post-mortems could have an innocent explanation: having embalmed the pope's body to avoid rapid decay, a mythical "rule" could have been dreamt up to justify the action. It has, however, at one stage been claimed that close friends of the late Pope, to their embarrassment, were ordered away from his corpse while some form of inspection, perhaps even a post-mortem, occurred. If that is true, then the fact that no results were subsequently released might suggest that some evidence had been found that John Paul's death was not due simply to natural causes, but due either to murder or an accidental overdose that the Vatican might not wish to make public.

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David Yallop's book

David Yallop's controversial book In God's Name proposed the theory that the pope was in "potential danger" because of alleged corruption in the Istituto per le Opere Religiose (IOR, Institute of Religious Works, the Vatican's most powerful financial institution, commonly known as the Vatican Bank). This corruption supposedly involved the bank's head, Paul Marcinkus, along with Roberto Calvi of the Banco Ambrosiano, as well as freemasonry and the mafia. Yallop also offers as suspects Archbishop John Patrick Cody of Chicago, whom he believes Luciani was about to force into retirement, and Cardinal Villot, because of his theological differences with the new pope.

Related Topics:
David Yallop - Istituto per le Opere Religiose - Paul Marcinkus - Roberto Calvi - Banco Ambrosiano - Freemasonry - Mafia - John Patrick Cody

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Yallop's book exposed many of the "inaccurate" statements issued by the Vatican in the days after John Paul's death and received international attention, including demands from some senior churchmen for an inquiry into the death itself. Its theories, however, have not been widely accepted and were severely undermined in the eyes of some by John Cornwell's subsequent book (see below), which proposes a 'benign' conspiracy to account for the discrepancies in the official version of the Pope's death. After decades of ongoing controversy, it has recently been reported that the investigation about the death of John Paul I would be reopened.

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John Cornwell's conclusions

British historian and journalist John Cornwell, in his book A Thief in The Night, examines Yallop?s points of suspicion and challenges each one.

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To allow for a cleanup of the evidence, Yallop?s murder theory requires that the pope?s body be found at 4:30 or 4:45 a.m., one hour earlier than official reports estimated. He bases this on an early story by the Italian news service ANSA that garbled the time and misrepresented the layout of the papal apartments. Yallop also claims to have had testimony from Sister Vincenza to this effect but refused to show Cornwell his transcripts.

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Both papal secretaries and a confidante of the late Sister Vincenza insist that the body was discovered about 5:30 a.m. The nun noticed that the coffee she had left outside the pope?s bedroom door a few minutes earlier, as per his morning routine, had not been touched. She went through two sets of doors and parted a curtain to find John Paul dead on his bed with a light on and reading material in his hands. Magee was summoned first, then Lorenzi. They found rigor mortis already beginning to set in and tore the pope?s cassock while preparing his private laying-out. This supports the official estimate for time of death as 11 p.m. the previous evening. Yallop?s theory requires the pope to be freshly dead at 4:30 a.m. since digitalis administered the night before would have taken hours to work.

Related Topics:
Rigor mortis - Digitalis

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Yallop suggests a ?secret? autopsy while John Paul was lying in state, but what he refers to was a simple retouching of the corpse. Yallop claims no death certificate was issued; Cornwell reproduces it.

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Yallop also claims that the undertakers were summoned at 5 a.m. before the official finding of the body, but this is based on an incorrect news story taken from garbled secondhand information. The Vatican carpool log shows the embalmers were sent for at 5:15 p.m. The procedure began about 7 p.m.

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Yallop questions the disappearance of incriminating personal effects, supposedly removed by Cardinal Villot. He thinks John Paul?s slippers and glasses might have been stained with vomit caused by the digitalis poisoning. But Cornwell finds that the pope?s sister took them. His last will was a brief document bequeathing his goods to a Venetian convent, not a spiritual testament (as claimed by Yallop).

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Yallop?s one damning datum was a Swiss Guard?s observation of Marcinkus on foot lurking near the papal residence at an unusually early hour on the morning of the pope?s death. But the guardsman, Hans Roggen, told Cornwell that his testimony was taken deceptively and misrepresented. Marcinkus was a demonstrably early riser and had driven in at his usual time. And contrary to Yallop?s accusation, Roggen had not been asleep at his post.

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Having demolished Yallop?s evidence, Cornwell offers his own explanation. After conferring with a cardiac specialist and a forensic medicine expert, he rules out heart attack, congestive heart failure, and aneurysm in favor of pulmonary embolism as the cause of John Paul?s death. If the pope?s body is exhumed someday, an autopsy could clarify the cause of death, but this would never be permitted.

Related Topics:
Heart attack - Congestive heart failure - Aneurysm - Pulmonary embolism

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Cornwell's research suggested that Luciani had indeed been in poor health, as confirmed by his niece, herself a medical doctor, and many senior Vatican figures. She suggested that Luciani suffered from swollen ankles and feet (a sign of poor circulation and excessive coagulability of the blood) such that he could not wear the shoes purchased for him at the time of his election. Curiously, a Vatican physician had not seen him nor had his prescriptions filled.

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Cornwell concluded that John Paul I died of a pulmonary embolism (which was consistent with Luciani's past medical history—including a retinal embolism in 1976). Cornwell suggested that John Paul died at about 9.30 p.m., perhaps 10.00 p.m., at his desk and was found on the floor by the priest secretaries. These moved the body into the bed and placed it in what is truly an unusual position for a person who has died suddenly (sitting up, eyeglasses in place and papers in hand), with no indication whatsoever that he was experiencing a fatal attack. Cornwell's rationale is that the two secretaries were trying to cover-up the fact that the Pope had suffered two episodes of acute chest pain that are consistent with a diagnosis of an imminent pulmonary embolism, as well as a severe coughing fit.

Related Topics:
Pulmonary embolism - Retinal embolism

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They suggested in both cases that the doctors be summoned, but the Pope brushed them off. Cornwell claims that guilt drove them to want to make his death look sudden so that no blame would fall on them. (In addition it would be more respectful to Luciani's memory and the papacy's honour for it to be suggested that Luciani had died a dignified death sitting reading on his bed, rather than alone, crumpled in a fetal position on the ground.)

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Both secretaries (one, John Magee, now the Irish Catholic bishop of Cloyne) deny it—but Cornwell's theory explains many of the strange circumstances without resorting to major conspiracies. This simplicity gives it a significant advantage over other explanations. It also explains strange comments by both men; Magee talked on the night of the Pope's death to the nuns in the Papal Household about the possibility of the Pope's death that night. The other secretary spoke of the pope's back and feet still being warm when he lifted him. Given the fact that, even if he died in bed, his corpse could not possibly have been warm by the time he was found (around 5.30 a.m., by which time rigor mortis had set in, resulting in the breaking of some bones in the late pope's body—his knee according to some accounts, his back to others—as it was forced into a suitable position for a lying-in-state). While the Vatican unofficially praised the book, others have criticised it, questioning its hypotheses and conclusions. The demands for the exhumation of the Pope's remains and the carrying out of a belated publicly acknowledged post-mortem have continued.

Related Topics:
John Magee - Cloyne - Lying-in-state

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