Pope John Paul I died in
September 1978 only a month (just
33 days) after his election to the
Papacy. The suddenness of the
death, together with the Vatican's
difficulties with the ceremonial
and legal death procedures (such
as issuing a legitimate death
certificate), have resulted in
several conspiracy theories.
Rationale
Discrepancies in the Vatican's
account of the events surrounding
John Paul I 's death — its
inaccurate statements about who
found the body ,[1] what he had
been reading, when and where
and whether an autopsy could be
carried out, [1][2] produced a
number of conspiracy theories,
many associated with the Vatican
Bank, which owned many shares
in Banco Ambrosiano .
Some conspiracy theorists connect
the death of John Paul (in
September 1978) with the image of
the " bishop dressed in white " said
to have been seen by Lucia Santos
and her cousins Jacinta and
Francisco Marto during the
visitations of Our Lady of Fátima in
1917.[3][4] In a letter to a
colleague, John Paul had said he
was deeply moved by having met
Lucia and vowed to perform the
Consecration of Russia in
accordance with her vision. [5]
There are several populist
conspiracy theories that have not
been formally turned into
manuscripts. Chief among these is
one popular with Franciscans in
Rome that alleges that the paper
found in his hand was a copy of
his sermon to be given the next
day (he died on a Saturday night,
the body was found Sunday
morning). In it he allegedly
discussed the fact that the Old
Testament Yahweh has been
universally personified as a father
figure, yet there is nothing to
prevent an interpretation of
Yahweh as a mother figure, a la
"earth religions". He then
supposedly went on to give several
examples of Old Testament events
that made much more sense
seeing God as Mother rather than
Father.[6] The theory also states
that a copy of St. John of the
Cross' Dark Night of the Soul was
open on his bedstand.
Conspiracy
David Yallop's book
David Yallop's book In God's Name
proposed the theory that the pope
was in "potential danger" because
of 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), which owned many shares
in Banco Ambrosiano . The Vatican
Bank lost about a quarter of a
billion dollars.
This corruption was real and is
known to have involved the bank's
head, Paul Marcinkus, along with
Roberto Calvi of the Banco
Ambrosiano [7] Calvi was a
member of P2 , an illegal Italian
Masonic lodge. [8] Calvi was found
dead in London, after
disappearing just before the
corruption became public. His
death was initially ruled suicide,
and a second inquest – ordered by
his family – then returned an
"open verdict". [9]
Upon publication of his book,
Yallop agreed to donate every
penny he made from sales to a
charity of the Vatican's choice if
they agreed to investigate his
central claim, that when the body
of the pope was discovered, his
contorted hand gripped a piece of
paper that was later destroyed
because it named high-ranking
members of the curia who were
Freemasons and others who had a
role in numerous corruption
scandals and the laundering of
mafia drug money. One of the
names believed to be on the paper
was that of bishop Paul Marcinkus,
who was later promoted by Pope
John Paul II to Pro-President of
Vatican City, making him the third
most powerful person in the
Vatican, after the pope and the
secretary of state. None of Yallop's
claims, which are unproven, have
thus far been acknowledged by
the Vatican, although Yallop
disclosed the Masonic Lodge
numbers of the Curia members
whom he alleged to be
Freemasons in his book (it is
forbidden by Church law for a
Roman Catholic to be a
Freemason). [10]
Abbé Georges de Nantes
Traditionalist theologian Abbé
Georges de Nantes spent much of
his life building a case for murder
against the Vatican, collecting
statements from people who knew
the Pope before and after his
election. His writings go into detail
about the banks and about John
Paul I's supposed discovery of a
number of Freemason priests in
the Vatican, along with a number
of his proposed reforms and
devotion to Fátima. [10] [11]
John Cornwell's book
In his book A Thief in the Night ,
British historian and journalist
John Cornwell examines and
challenges Yallop’s points of
suspicion.
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, inter alia, on an early
story by the Vatican radio and
Italian news service ANSA that
garbled the time and
misrepresented the layout of the
papal apartments. Yallop claims to
have had testimony from Sister
Vincenza Taffarel (the nun who
found the Pope's body) to this
effect but refused to show
Cornwell his
transcripts. [ citation needed ]
Lucien Gregoire's book
Lucien Gregoire's highly
speculative "investigations" into
the sudden death of John Paul I
claim to derive authority from an
assertion that he personally knew
Albino Luciani, through his own
friendship with Luciani's personal
assistant, whilst Luciani was
Bishop of Vittorio Veneto.
Gregoire, however, never names
this "assistant" and never
produces any documentation of
this relationship. This same
personal assistant was,
supposedly, killed in a mysterious
'hit-and-run' accident, outside St
Peter's, a few days after the death
of his previous master. Again, no
documentation is offered to
support this assertion.
Gregoire's investigations claim to
continue the work of Avro
Manhattan, who he claims died in
strange circumstances whilst
visiting his familial home in South
Shields, Tyne and Wear, in the
United Kingdom. This claim is
unsupported by the historical
record. Gregoire asserts that
Manhattan's death is one of the
deaths allegedly associated with
those who were close to, or
supportive of, John Paul I.
Gregoire's list of approximately
thirty deaths includes papal
predecessor Paul VI, the Belgian
Primate Leon Joseph Suenens,
Nikodim, the youthful Orthodox
Metropolitan of Leningrad, and
numerous senior members of the
Swiss Guard.
The authenticity of Gregoire's self-
published work is dismissed by
scholars[ who? ] of the life and
theology of John Paul
I, [citation needed ] and his more
sensational claims remain
unsupported by any corroborating
source (despite numerous
unsubstantiated references
throughout).
In popular culture
Malachi Martin 's book Vatican: A
Novel [12] is a novel based on
recent papal history. Although
officially a work of fiction, Martin
proposes the theory that the pope
was murdered by the Soviet Union
because he would abdicate the
benign policy of his two
predecessors, John XXIII and Paul
VI, towards accommodating
communism, and once again
condemn it as an atheistic
totalitarian ideology. Martin
believed that the church structure
was infiltrated for decades by
illuminati agents who reached
positions of high influence and
rank, such as Jean-Marie Villot , at
that time Cardinal Secretary of
State .
Lead singer of The Fall , Mark E.
Smith wrote a play entitled Hey,
Luciani , about the purported
murder conspiracy, which was
produced and performed in
London. Several songs from the
play were released as Fall singles.
Australian comedian Shaun
Micallef wrote a one-act play
entitled "The Death of Pope John
Paul I". In it the pope is found in
bed, sitting upright, unable to be
woken. Two cardinals attempt to
perform the ritualistic tapping with
the silver hammer but no-one can
locate the proper instrument, so
they use a claw hammer instead.
The film The Pope Must Die takes
its title from a passage in Yallop's
book. The film's plot - a poor
country priest becomes a
reforming Pope, pitched against a
corrupt and Mafia-riddled Vatican
- is a parody of Luciani's career,
ending in comedy rather than
tragedy.
The Last Confession is a play
written by Roger Crane. It is a
thriller that tracks the dramatic
tensions, crises of faith, and
political manoeuvrings inside the
Vatican surrounding the death of
Pope John Paul I. The play toured
the UK in the spring of 2007,
before being transferred to the
Theatre Royal, Haymarket , with a
cast including David Suchet. It was
subsequently broadcast on BBC
Radio 4 on 4 October 2008. In
October 2010 the play was brought
to continental Europe by the
Antwerp Theater Group "De
Speling".
The 1990 motion picture The
Godfather Part III featured a story
element depicting Società Generale
Immobiliare , the largest real estate
company in the world whose
former largest shareholder was
the Holy See , and the Vatican Bank
involved in organized crime during
and after the death of the old
pope and the election of a fictional
Cardinal named Lamberto to the
papacy. Lamberto takes the papal
name "John Paul I" and, like the
real Pope John Paul I, he
mysteriously dies.
A storyline in the comic book
series Warrior Nun Areala features
a flashback back to John Paul I's
pontificate. Shortly after being
elected to the papacy John Paul
discovers a conspiracy of demon
worshiping Freemasons in the
Vatican and works to root them
out. Discovered, the Masons kill
him in order to continue their goal
to destroy the Catholic Church.
While John Paul does die, the
Warrior Nuns manage to avenge
him.
In The Company: A Novel of the
CIA by Robert Littell , Pope John
Paul I is murdered by a KGB hired
killer.
The 22nd episode of Brad
Meltzer's Decoded "Vatican",
featured theories and investigation
on Pope John Paul I death.
Source :wikipedia
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