In the Preface of his book, In God’s Name, David Yallop warns us that “murder is a frequent accompaniment to the events recorded here. The people who divulged information that could have led to their deaths explained their courage in these words: ‘The truth must be told. If you are prepared to tell it, then so be it.’”

While the author acknowledges a lengthy list of names of those who helped him, among those whom he could not thank publicly were citizens within Vatican City, who initiated Yallop’s investigation into the events surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I.

The author takes pains to reassure us that:

This book is not an attack on the faith practiced by the Church’s devout millions of followers. What they hold sacred is too important to be left in the hands of men who have conspired to drag the message of Christ into the muddy marketplace – a conspiracy that has met with frightening success.

Aside from Yallop’s motives, you have every right to ask me, a Catholic journalist, why I am addressing a subject that could upset many readers. Somewhere in the archives is the story of my coming home from a Catholic high school, angry, close to tears, and feeling bewildered over having come across an especially revealing library book on the Inquisition.

I ran into the house, threw my books on the table, rushed up to my Mother, who was sewing in the living room, and asked breathlessly, “Mom, do you know about the Inquisition?”

She looked troubled and answered quietly, “Yes, dear, I do.”

“How could they do it, Mom, priests and bishops putting Catholics to death in such terrible ways for reading the Bible, or speaking what they felt to be the truth?”

“I don’t know, Ruthie, I don’t know.”

They were the most understanding, compassionate words she could have spoken, and went a long way toward healing my first painful encounter with wide-spread, cruel abuse of authority on the part of the ecclesiastical Church. Mother didn’t deny the facts, nor minimize them; in so doing, she became my friend, and never tried to dissuade me from seeking the truth, wherever it might be found..

Ever since that time, I have understood how important it is to be on the side of little people when it comes to scandal in the Church, not to back away from the truth to protect them from it, for doing so exposes them to greater scandal in the covering-up process, as we all know so well in the light of the clergy sexual scandals of our time.

While we will be consulting Yallop’s work extensively, in the interest of presenting a balanced view of Pope John Paul I’s last days, we will eventually turn to John Cornwell’s book, A Thief in the Night..The Mysterious Death of Pope John Paul I.

For now, let us go back to September 28, 1978, the pope’s last evening in this world. He had sat down to dinner in the third-floor dining room of the Apostolic Palace. Present were his two secretaries, Father Diego Lorenzi, who had worked closely with him in Venice for more than two years, and Father John Magee, newly appointed since the papal election.

The nuns had prepared a simple supper of clear soup, veal, fresh beans, and a little salad, which the three men ate while watching the news on television.

All must have been thinking of the series of events the pope had prepared to set in motion the following day.

On the floor below, the lights were still on at the Vatican Bank, where its head, Bishop Paul Marcinkus must have been pondering over the word that had reached him about the new pope’s investigation of the Vatican Bank and the bishop’s methods of running it, including its takeover of the Banca Cattolica Bank in 1972, whose shares were held by various dioceses, but the majority rested with the Vatican Bank. Banca Cattolica was looked upon by pastors and bishops as their bank, where they could receive low-interest loans to carry on works for the poor, the sick, those with no one to represent them. As pointed out in last week’s article, the Vatican Bank pocketed the profits for the transaction.

Cardinal Jean Villot, the Vatican secretary of state, was also still at his desk that evening, studying the changes the pope had given him an hour before.

Villot had pleaded and argued with Luciani, but the pope was adamant. The changes would stand.

It is Yallop’s opinion that the common thread among the men slated to be changed was their membership in Freemasonry. Within the Vatican, there were over one-hundred Masons, including cardinals, bishops and priests, a practice forbidden by Canon Law. Luciani was particularly concerned with an illegal Masonic lodge, named P2, that had penetrated far beyond Italy in its search for wealth and power.

Another banker in Buenos Aires, Roberto Calvi, could have had worries about the pope and discussed them with his protectors, Licio Gelli and Umberto Ortolani, who controlled Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. The Bank of Italy had been secretly investigating Calvi’s Milan bank since April, prompted by a poster campaign against Calvi, begun in 1977, giving details about his criminal activities. Yallop asserts that the banker was doing everything in his power to thwart the Bank of Italy’s investigation of his financial empire, from which he was in the process of stealing $1 billion.

Across the pond in New York, Sicilian banker, Michele Sindona, had been fighting the Italian government’s effort to have him extradited to Milan to face charges involving fraudulent diversion of $225 million. A federal judge had ruled in May that the extradition should be granted.

While free on a $3 million bail, Sindona demanded that the United States government prove that there was well-founded evidence to justify the extradition. The hearing was scheduled for November.

Yallop contends that if Pope John Paul I had continued to dig into the affairs of the Vatican Bank, he would have discovered that the corruption would include that the laundering of Mafia money through that bank went back beyond Calvi to Michele Sindona.

Another who was worried about finding himself the subject of the pope’s inquiries was Cardinal John Cody, the head of Chicago’s 2 1/2 million Catholics, with nearly 3,000 priests, 450 parishes, with an annual income he refused to reveal to anyone, though Yallop puts it at $250 million. Thousands of priests, nuns, lay workers, and people from numerous organizations had petitioned Rome to remove the man they considered to be a despot.

Lucio Gelli, called “Il Burattinaio” – the puppetmaster, controlled P2 throughout many countries, including Italy, and had organized the triumphant return to power of Juan Peron, who would acknowledge his debt by kneeling at Gelli’s feet.

Marcinkus, Villot, Calvi, Cody, Sindona and Gelli had reason to fear the decisions of Pope John Paul I, and would gain a great deal by his untimely death.

During the late evening of September 28, 1978, and the early morning of September 29, thirty-three days after his election, the pope died.

Yallop points out: Time of death: unknown. Cause of death: unknown.

From there, he began the three-year investigation into both the time of death and the cause. He began with the question: What manner of man was Albino Luciani?

We might ask: What manner of saint was this man who never lost sight of the Christ he had promised to follow when he went off to the seminary at the age of eleven?

(To be continued)

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