Pope John Paul I conspiracy theories: Difference between revisions
Removed 2-year-old tags about cleanup and references. |
|||
| Line 20: | Line 20: | ||
===Abbé George de Nantes=== |
===Abbé George de Nantes=== |
||
Traditionalist theologian [[:fr:Georges de Nantes|Abbé George 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 |
Traditionalist theologian [[:fr:Georges de Nantes|Abbé George 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 Fatima.<ref>[http://www.crc-internet.org/CCR/2009/84-John-Paul-I.php John Paul I at Catholic Counter-Reformation], Abbé de Nantes' website, in English.</ref> |
||
==Benign conspiracy== |
==Benign conspiracy== |
||
Revision as of 01:40, 15 September 2010
Pope John Paul I died alone in September 1978 only a month after his election to the Papacy. The suddenness of the death, and 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, what he had been reading, when and where he had been found and whether an autopsy could be carried out[citation needed] -- produced a number of conspiracy theories, many associated with the Vatican Bank, which owned many shares in Banco Ambrosiano.
Some conspiracy theorists [1][2] connect the death of John Paul 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 Fatima. 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.[3]
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[4] Calvi was a member of P2, an illegal Italian Masonic lodge[5]. 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".[citation needed]
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 Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I 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 to be handed over to the authorities for their 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 have thus far been acknowledged by the Vatican.
Malachi Martin's book
Malachi Martin's book Vatican: A Novel [6] is, although officially a work of fiction, a novel based on recent papal history. He proposes the theory that the pope was murdered by the Soviet Union because he would abdicate the benign policy of his two predecessors, Pope John XXIII and Paul VI, towards accommodating communism, and once again condemn it as an atheistic totalitarian ideology. Martin believed the church structure was infiltrated by communist agents over decades, who reached positions of high influence and rank, like Jean-Marie Villot, at that time Cardinal Secretary of State.
Abbé George de Nantes
Traditionalist theologian Abbé George 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 Fatima.[7]
Benign conspiracy
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 on an early story by the 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 to this effect but refused to show Cornwell his transcripts.
In popular culture
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.
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 worshipping 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.
Notes
- ^ John Paul I at Catholic Counter-Reformation, for instance.
- ^ Chapter 4 of Whole Truth about Fatima, sections 7, 8 and 9, webpage found 2010-04-29.
- ^ Quoted in Camillo Bassotto's book My Heart Is Still in Venice, a biography of John Paul I (Krinon, 1990).
- ^ Marcinkus, at the time head of the Vatican Bank, was indicted in Italy in 1982 as an accessory in the $3.5 billion collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.
- ^ Calvi murder: The mystery of God's banker, The Independent, June 7, 2007
- ^ Martin, Malachi, Vatican: A Novel, Harper & Row, New York, 1986 ISBN 0-06-015478-0
- ^ John Paul I at Catholic Counter-Reformation, Abbé de Nantes' website, in English.
See also
External links
- Mark E Smith on JPI (New Musical Express, 13 December 1986
- NY Times: Was the Pope murdered? (5 November, 1989)
- "Catholic Counter-Reformation" essay on JPI
- A thorough critical discussion of Yallop and Cornwell's books
- "The Murder of Pope John Paul I: A study by the Abbé de Nantes" (article from the English CRC for October 1984)