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The Year of Three PopesI

Paul VI had been Pope for fifteen years. Only eleven cardinals who were at the 1963 conclave were still alive. Genoa’s Giuseppe Siri was still a darling of conservatives. A few months before the Pope’s death, Siri had turned seventy-two but that did not prevent traditionalists from promoting him. After the liberal slide for which they blamed Paul VI, the church needed a turn to the right, even if Siri’s age meant it would be a short one. The progressives were enthusiastic about another veteran, seventy-three-year-old Vienna’s Franz König. He had polished his reformer reputation at the Second Vatican Council. In recent years he had established a dialogue between the church and Eastern European communist regimes.1 And although Secretary of State Jean-Marie Villot was just short of his seventy-third birthday, nobody counted him out.

Vaticanologists handicapping the race knew that a slate of younger cardinals was as papabile as any of the veterans. There was plenty of time for speculating. That is because Villot set a slow schedule, picking August 25 for the conclave, nineteen days after the Pope’s passing. It was the last possible date allowed under rules Paul VI set for the selection of his successor.2

The Italians grumbled that Villot had stretched out the process to allow the foreign cardinals enough time to build a coalition to elect the first non-Italian since Hadrian VI had died in 1523.3 The foreign cardinals on the other hand had the opposite worry, that Villot’s leisurely pace was crafted to allow the Italian prelates extra time to consolidate their support for a single, unbeatable candidate.4

Pope Paul had expanded the College of Cardinals to an unprecedented 130. Fifteen were barred from voting since they were older than eighty (although they could still be elected Pope themselves).5 Four others were too ill to attend. Of the remaining 111 elector-cardinals, a bare majority (fifty-seven) were European.6

Villot methodically set about protecting Paul’s legacy. When he learned that Paul’s executor, Monsignor Macchi, was about to destroy the late Pontiff’s private papers, he intervened. Villot dispatched many of the documents to the Secret Archives. As for the Pope’s file about Cardinal Cody, Villot told Macchi, that must go to the next Pontiff.7

Villot wanted to ensure that the upcoming conclave was free from prying eyes. A few months earlier a sweep by Camilio Cibin—Inspector General of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the Vatican security and police force—had uncovered eleven American- and Russian-made bugs.8 A 1973 bestselling book by two Italian journalists, Sex in the Confessional, based on bugged confessionals, fanned Villot’s apprehension. So Villot directed Cibin to ensure that there were no listening devices in the conclave. Cibin returned in a day with alarming news: the church-run Vatican Radio planned to bug the conclave so it could get the scoop on the Pope’s election. There might be other such plans afoot, Cibin warned.9,II

Since there had not been a Papal election in fifteen years, there was a more intense press scrutiny. As the conclave’s opening date drew near, the speculation about the supposed frontrunners ramped up. That the published reports usually selected different candidates was good evidence that it was a guessing game.

Although some thought that Giovanni Benelli was too young at fifty-seven, the brusque Tuscan, who had been a Curial powerhouse before Paul dispatched him to Florence, seemed to be on most shortlists.11 Many supported him since they thought he was the most electable progressive. A German newspaper ran a large front-page photo of Benelli, under the headline “The Next Pope?”

If a favorite were determined just by the number of press mentions, it was probably sixty-eight-year-old Sergio Pignedoli, the influential Chief of Secretariat for Non-Christians.12 The Paul VI protégé had enough Curial experience, combined with a widespread reputation as a moderate not afraid to make tough decisions, to attract a solid centrist following. The Curial rumor was that Pignedoli was so confident of winning that he had gone on a crash diet to look his best in the ceremonial white cassock he would don when elected.13

The New York Times relied on “Vatican sources” to name four cardinals who the paper claimed had pulled away from other contenders: Florence’s Benelli; the conservative Pericle Felici; and progressives Sebastiano Baggio and Turin’s Anastasio Ballestrero.14 The night before the conclave, an Italian newspaper published the results of a first ever computer forecast: Cardinal Baggio would be the next Pontiff.15 In London, Ladbrokes, the betting syndicate, irritated the Vatican by allowing gamblers to bet on the outcome for the first time.16 The British odds? Sergio Pignedoli—missed entirely by The New York Times and the Italian computer program—was the favorite at 5–2; Baggio and Ugo Poletti, the Vicar of Rome, 7–2; Florence’s Benelli, 4–1; Dutch Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, 8–1; Argentine Eduardo Pironio, 12–1; Austrian Cardinal König, 16–1; Basil Hume of England, 25–1; and the long shots were Brazil’s Aloísio Lorscheider, Pakistani Cardinal Joseph Cordeiro, and the progressive Cardinal of Brussels, Leo Josef Suenens, 33–1.17

If Marcinkus had a favorite, he never shared it with anyone. One of the few issues on which many progressives and conservatives found common ground was the belief that the unchecked Vatican Bank had grown too powerful and that the next Pope needed to make it more accountable. Malachi Martin, the former Jesuit and Vatican insider, had published a widely cited book only a few months earlier (The Final Conclave), which discussed Sindona at length. It revived many of the unpleasant questions still lingering over that scandal and the IOR.

All the cardinal-electors were aware that nine months earlier a U.S. federal judge had ordered Sindona extradited to Italy. Although Sindona’s top-flight legal team had appealed that decision, it was only a matter of time before the Sicilian financier stood in the docket of an Italian courtroom. His Vatican dealings would again be grist for salacious media coverage. Marcinkus realized a new Pope might well consider his continued tenure at the IOR an unnecessary distraction from the business of running the rest of the Roman church. Even Cardinal Cody, clinging to power in Chicago, had backed off his unwavering support for Marcinkus by suggesting the next Pope should clean up the IOR’s financial morass.18

As the conclave got under way, Siri polled the most votes on the first ballot.19 The Genovese cardinal had been in the same spot in 1958 and 1963. And once again he was unable to build any momentum. Siri faded during four ballots over two days, as did the original progressive frontrunners discussed most often before the voting started.20 To everyone’s surprise, the Papacy went to the sixty-five-year-old Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Albino Luciani. He had been on few shortlists (British bookmakers had not even listed him).21 Vaticanologists had not considered him since he had dropped in the church’s power hierarchy in 1972 after Paul VI, Benelli, and Marcinkus rebuffed his last-minute appeals to reverse the sale of Venice’s revered Banca Cattolica to Calvi.

Luciani’s winning coalition appreciated his reputation as someone who trimmed the fat of the Venetian curia.22 In the last years of his Papacy, Paul VI had bemoaned his own failure to streamline the Curia or to curtail its power. His 1967 efforts at simplifying the Vatican’s finances had the unintended consequence of creating more bureaucracy and leading to two parallel financial fiefdoms, APSA and the IOR. Every time Paul pushed for change, entrenched Curialists pushed back harder. Maybe an outsider could do better. Another plus for Luciani was that his warm, personal style harked back to the friendlier, charismatic John XXIII, the type of leader many cardinals believed could energize the faithful following fifteen years of Paul’s cool remoteness.23

After his election, Luciani’s first words were, “God will forgive you for what you have done to me.”24 If he was surprised by his selection, it was not evident by how quickly he announced his Papal name when Villot asked.

“I will be called Gianpaolo One.” (John Paul I, in a tribute to the influence of John XXIII, who had made him a bishop, and to Paul VI, who had given him the red hat; it was the first original name chosen since 913 when a short-lived Pope had chosen Lando.)25

Luciani had made it clear even before the conclave that he thought the church should emphasize spiritual obligations over politicking.26 Bishops, priests, and even laymen worldwide were demanding a more decentralized church, one in which the Curia no longer held the Pope hostage to its byzantine ways. And that fit with Luciani’s view that the Pope should be less a monarch and more a pastor.

His background offered a sharp contrast to his predecessor. As opposed to Paul, who had spent decades in the Curia, Luciani’s career was mostly free of Rome. The eldest of four children from his father’s second marriage, he was born on October 17, 1912, in the remote northern Italian village of Canale d’Agordo.27 The family was poor even by the standards of a region devastated by World War I. His father, a bricklayer, spent years as a migrant worker in Switzerland and Germany before getting a regular job as a glassblower on the Island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon.28 Luciani was only eleven when his devout mother entered him into a minor seminary at Feltre.29 Ordained a priest on July 7, 1935, the twenty-two-year-old Luciani spent two years as a chaplain and teacher at Agordo’s Technical Mining Institute.30 In 1937 he received his doctorate in theology from Rome’s Gregorian University.31 And that year he became the vice rector at the Seminary of Belluno, where for the next decade he taught everything from canon law to philosophy.32 In 1958, John XXIII consecrated him bishop of Vittorio Veneto, a small city south of Belluno. It was another eleven years, December 15, 1969, before Paul VI appointed him the Patriarch of Venice, in part because he was a likable administrator not hobbled by too great an ego and ambition.33 After three and a half uneventful years as Venice’s Patriarch, Pope Paul gave him his red hat in 1973.34

The man who once told a friend, “Had I not become a priest, I would have liked to have been a journalist,” was a traditionalist when it came to church dogma.35 He agreed with his predecessor on every major issue except for the ban on all artificial birth control. Luciani had been on the Pontifical commission that had recommended an exception be made for the pill, but had been overruled by Paul VI in his much-debated encyclical Humanae Vitae.36 The mere suggestion that the new Pope might liberalize that core doctrine alarmed traditionalists.37

Luciani left no doubt from the outset which clerics had his ear. Cardinal Benelli had made the difference in the conclave by throwing his support to Luciani.38 Now it was clear that the hardworking Benelli had a direct line to John Paul. It was odd to some that the Pope who spoke about reforming the Curia might rely on the Florentine cardinal who had been a martinet Deputy Secretary of State and general administrator, sometimes even called the “Vatican’s Kissinger.” But once he left the Curia, Benelli had begun talking about reforming it. Some feared that for Benelli reform was a code word for revenge. But while a debate over his motivation raged, it was acknowledged that if anyone knew how to trim the Vatican’s redundant bureaucracy, and had the will to fight the Curialists, it was Benelli.39

For Marcinkus, it was hard to imagine a worse combination of news than Luciani’s election and Benelli’s resurging influence. Luciani was the cardinal whom Marcinkus had dismissed in 1972 when the Venetian Patriarch contested the IOR’s sale of Banca Cattolica to Calvi and the Ambrosiano. “Eminence, don’t you have anything better to do?” Marcinkus had asked him at the time, ending the conversation and sending Luciani back to Venice in a fury.40 Their chilly relationship had not improved during the ensuing six years. Calvi had reneged on his promise to maintain all of Banca Cattolica’s preferences for Venice’s Catholics and the diocese. And when the Sindona scandal tarred the Vatican it further convinced Luciani that Marcinkus’s judgment was poor.

Benelli, meanwhile, had met in 1973 with FBI agents who visited the Vatican in their investigation into counterfeit securities and the IOR. Benelli counseled Paul VI that Marcinkus was involved in too many questionable ventures and that he required more oversight. He had even offered to monitor the IOR and Marcinkus. But the Pope had sided with Marcinkus and dispatched Benelli out of the Vatican to Florence.

On September 5, only two days after John Paul became Pope at a simple outdoor ceremony without much pomp, the new Pontiff read Il Mondo, a weekly news magazine of Italy’s preeminent Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s preeminent financial newspaper. There was a damning front-page story about the Vatican Bank that highlighted the uncertainty and danger over Sindona’s eventual extradition to and trial in Italy. That morning, after an early breakfast, John Paul assembled a thin manila folder with his notes about what Benelli and another career Curialist, Cardinal Pericle Felici, had shared with him about the church’s finances (the Vatican will not disclose to the author if those notes are preserved, but if so, they would likely be in the Secret Archives and not available for review until at least 2063).41

The information passed along by the two cardinals was not good. Peter’s Pence had dropped precipitously during the entire fifteen years of Paul VI’s Papacy.42 Bequests to the church from well-to-do worshippers had slumped by 30 percent in just five years. After adjusting for inflation, the church was collecting just over half of what it took in a decade earlier.43

As for Marcinkus, his secrecy and arrogance was a poor combination for the chief of the Vatican Bank. Benelli and Felici contended the IOR was not fulfilling its charter’s primary directive to “provide for the custody and administration of capital destined for religious works.”44 The Vatican Bank had more than eleven thousand accounts, but only a thousand belonged to Catholic organizations and religious orders, and another five hundred to parishes worldwide. The rest belonged to individual prelates, Black Nobles and some of their wealthy friends, a few diplomats, and even possibly some foreign companies who did business with the church. Marcinkus was the problem, they told John Paul, not the solution. After spending ninety minutes reviewing the notes, the Pope informed Benelli that Marcinkus’s position as the chief of the IOR was under review.

Later that day, which was packed with audiences by visiting dignitaries and church officials, the new Pope met with Leningrad’s archbishop, Metropolitan Nikodim, the second-ranking prelate of the Russian Orthodox Church. At six feet and three hundred pounds, with an enormous long beard, Nikodim attracted attention, even inside the Vatican. Nikodim and John Paul met in the Pope’s private study. The Pontiff later shared with his private secretaries what happened next. Nikodim sipped coffee from a cup the Pope had just poured. Then the bishop dropped his cup and saucer. He clenched at his throat as he gasped for air, and fell over backward, smashing a small table as he slammed into the floor.45 Luciani called for help and dropped to his knees to administer the last rites. By the time Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, the deputy chief of the Vatican medical service, arrived a few minutes later, the forty-eight-year-old Nikodim was dead.46

No autopsy was performed. Given that Nikodim had suffered several previous heart attacks, few were surprised in a few days when a massive heart attack was listed as the official cause of death.47 But even before that announcement, a conspiracy theory swept through the Vatican: a poisonous brew that had been intended for the new Pope had killed Nikodim.48 Some Russian Orthodox prelates thought instead that Nikodim, a strong advocate of Christian unity, was the real target and the murderers were Catholic traditionalists who opposed the increased interfaith dialogue that Paul VI had begun. Some anticommunists thought it was the work of the KGB, a not subtle signal from Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, who had resisted any effort to legalize the Catholic Church and had waged a relentless war of attrition against it.49

Nikodim’s death, although personally unsettling for John Paul, did not distract him from focusing on the work at hand during his transition. He made solid progress that first month. And what stood out was how ordinary Catholics embraced him. After just a couple of weeks there was considerable talk about the large crowds and exuberance Luciani attracted. “St. Peter’s Square was jammed to the brim for the noon blessing the past two Sundays, something that has occurred only very seldom previously,” said eighty-five-year-old Carlo Confalonieri, the Dean of the College of Cardinals.

John Paul’s natural warmth and willingness to talk to anyone in the Vatican, no matter how lowly their rank, was refreshing in an institution in which his predecessor’s chronic illnesses and depression had added a grim mixture to his innate detachment. When John Paul left the Vatican on September 23 to say Mass at the nearby Lateran Basilica, mobs swarmed his entourage in a frenzy not seen since John XXIII was Pope twenty years earlier.50 Four days later, fifteen thousand worshippers crammed into the Sala Nervi to hear his sermon.

Not all Curialists were as enthusiastic about the new Pope as the average Catholic. His common touch generated the same snide commentary that had greeted the likable John XXIII. Some sarcastically dubbed him the smiling Pope because of his seemingly perpetual grin. Others were dismissive of what they judged his “Reader’s Digest mentality,” a tendency to simplify complex issues.51

Luciani had no time for Curia gossip. He was instead immersed in learning as much as possible about several pressing matters that demanded his early attention. As part of that, he met with Marcinkus for an hour. It was awkward. They traded niceties and John Paul asked few pointed questions. Since the new Pope had not been a career Curialist, Marcinkus knew he had latitude to press some denials for which the Pontiff would have to take his word. And it was also common knowledge that John Paul did not like confrontations. Marcinkus felt it unlikely he would find a hostile reception.

Sindona was on everyone’s mind because of his pending extradition. Marcinkus tried to distance himself from the Sicilian financier. He claimed to have met Sindona maybe a dozen times, once at a baptism, and another time for only a minute. What was most important, said Marcinkus, was that he did not do business with him. “The ones that had a dealing with him were APSA. They sold him the shares for Immobiliare. . . . I had nothing to do with it.”52

John Paul did not have to work in the Curia to know that Paul VI’s 1967 creation of APSA, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, was at Sindona’s urging. Moreover, while APSA might have been the department responsible for divesting the church’s interest in SGI Immobiliare and other companies, the Vatican Bank executed the decision.

Marcinkus tried deflecting John Paul away from Sindona by talking about how much money was available to the Pope from different Vatican foundations. But according to Marcinkus, John Paul “couldn’t care less. He didn’t want to know. And he talked about the Secretariat of State reports that they bring him, and what a burden it was.”53 Monsignor Magee, one of John Paul’s trusted personal secretaries, thought the number and complexity of the IOR issues were too much to grasp for a Pontiff whose primary financial concern during his first month was whether he might lose his state pension since he was now head of a sovereign state (in fact, the pension ends for any Italian elected Pope).54

It was an unofficial custom that word about what transpired in a Pope’s private meeting spread around the halls of the Vatican as soon as the door to the Papal study reopened. Sometimes a Pope instructed his aides to say something sub rosa to prepare the Curia for an upcoming decision. The person who had met with the Pontiff might leak his own version to try to get ahead of any pending Vatican action. And at other times, Curialists who had no idea of what had transpired spread rumors as if they had been present, all to further their own interests. The source for the persistent gossip that started after Marcinkus and John Paul’s meeting ended is not known. But what is not in dispute is that a glum Marcinkus returned to the IOR offices and announced to no one in particular, “I won’t be around much longer.”55 (Ten years later, Marcinkus denied saying he thought John Paul was about to let him go, claiming that instead back at the IOR he said only, “Gee, he [the Pope] looks tired.” When he later heard that John Paul had intended to let him go, he said, “I said that’s the funniest way to fire a guy. He couldn’t have been nicer.”)56

Marcinkus and the IOR were not the only problems the new Pope faced. Cardinal Baggio had presented him with the Cody file and the news the Chicago prelate had rebuffed his predecessor’s effort to ease him out of office. A plan that Paul VI had long considered to internationalize the Curia was also waiting for a ruling.57 Approving it would cause a minor revolt among the dominant Italians inside the church’s bureaucracy. And there was the question of what to do about the prominent Swiss theologian, Hans Küng, whose teachings and writings served as the intellectual sustenance for a growing movement challenging many core church doctrines. Paul VI had dithered for years and had died without censuring Küng. John Paul would have to decide if Küng could carry on without incurring the wrath of the Vatican (on December 18, 1979, the church revoked Küng’s missio canonica, his license to teach as a Catholic theologian).

John Paul had expected to be briefed about Cody, Küng, and the pending Curia reform. One matter, however, took him by surprise: the severity of a spat between the Jesuits and Paul VI. Jesuit theologians had ignored Paul’s many requests to refrain from intense political activism. The sight of the black-uniformed prelates being dragged away by police at the front lines of massive protests over the war in Vietnam or efforts to ban the bomb were too frequent as far as the Vatican was concerned. Even worse was their enthusiastic dissemination of liberation theology, the combination of Catholicism and Marxism that fueled communist movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. The Jesuits’ Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, was an avowed political leftist and had resisted all requests for moderation from Rome. If John Paul did not bring the Jesuits into line, Arrupe might well judge the new Pope as indecisive as his predecessor.58

It is little wonder that with so many critical matters pending, John Paul sometimes seemed frazzled. He joked with one of his aides, Monsignor Giuseppe Bosa, that he wished there was a machine that could help him do all the reading that piled up daily.59 “Une charge très lourde”—it is a heavy burden—the Pope conceded to Cardinal Villot.60 Marcinkus later recounted, “This poor man . . . comes out from Venice; it’s a small, aging diocese, 90,000 people in the city, old priests. Then all of a sudden he’s thrown into a place and he doesn’t even know where the offices are. He doesn’t know what the Secretary of State does. They called him the ‘smiling Pope.’ But let me tell you something . . . that was a very nervous smile. So, he takes over. He sits down; the Secretary of State brings into him a pile of papers, says, ‘Go through these!’ He doesn’t even know where to start.”61

Much of the progress John Paul made during this tough transition was a result of his sixteen-hour workdays. The new Pope was a man with a reputation for little sleep. He was also someone who liked to adhere to a schedule.62 Every morning, Sister Vincenza Taffarel, the head of his household who had been with him for twenty years, brought him coffee no later than 5:00.63 In Venice, she brought it into his bedroom and put it on a side table. But in the Vatican, since many thought it improper for a nun to enter the Pope’s bedroom unannounced, she had left a small tray in front of his bedroom door. John Paul put the tray back into the hallway when he was finished and Sister Vincenza retrieved it.64 He was in the chapel by 6:00, where Monsignor Magee joined him for prayer. By 7:00, Monsignor Diego Lorenzi, his other private secretary, arrived and the three celebrated Mass, after which they had a light breakfast.65

On Thursday morning, September 28, Sister Vincenza left the tray a few minutes before 5:00.66 It was untouched when she went to collect it thirty minutes later. She never knew the Pope to oversleep. She put her ear against the door but heard nothing. Vincenza knocked softly. Silence. She knocked louder. Still nothing.67 She knelt and peered through the keyhole, but could not see him. If he was awake, why was he not answering? She decided to enter the room. John Paul was sitting upright in bed. An open file was clutched in his right hand and some papers were strewn across the bed and floor.III His reading glasses were resting on the tip of his nose and his eyes were open.69

“Santissimo Padre? Albino?”70

When he did not respond she ran out of the room to Magee’s bedroom one floor above and roused him from a deep sleep. “Santissimo Padre. Something’s happened!”71

Magee sprinted to John Paul’s private chamber. He put his hand on the Pontiff’s cheek. It was cold. Rigor mortis had begun to set in. Magee telephoned Villot, whose residence was two floors below. He worried about calling the seventy-two-year-old Secretary of State because he knew Villot had a heart condition. Nevertheless, he was blunt.72

“The Holy Father is dead.”

“No, no, no, no . . . he couldn’t be dead. I was with him last night!”

“Listen, he’s stone-cold dead.”73

The normally unflappable Villot sounded more agitated than the monsignor had ever heard him.74 Magee then telephoned Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, who lived only minutes away.75 Lorenzi, meanwhile, who was well acquainted with John Paul’s longtime Venetian doctor, Giuseppe da Ros, called with the news. “He had seen the Pope the previous Sunday afternoon,” Lorenzi later recalled, “and he found him in very good health.”76 (One of Dr. da Ros’s few subsequent comments about that physical was that he had concluded John Paul was “very well.”)77,IV

By the time Villot rushed into the room, Monsignor Lorenzi was leading a Rosary at the foot of the bed together with Sister Vincenza and several nuns.79 When Dr. Buzzonetti arrived he inspected the body. He had never treated the Pope and knew nothing about his medical history: “The first time I saw him in a doctor-patient relationship, he was dead.”80 After a few minutes, Buzzonetti stepped away from the bed and announced that the Pontiff had died of an “acute myocardial infarction” (an arterial blockage that quickly causes the heart muscle to die).81V As for the time of death, he estimated it was between 10:30 and 11:00 the previous night. His conclusion was based on the Pope’s just-from-the-crypt ashen complexion, a sign that the skin had been starved of blood, consistent with a myocardial infarction. He did not know that John Paul suffered from chronic low blood pressure, making it less probable—but not impossible—that he was a victim of a massive coronary. Nor did he ever review any of the medications the Pope took or talk to Dr. da Ros, John Paul’s personal physician.83

Villot’s hands were trembling as he walked over to the body.84 The French cardinal used the same silver mallet by which he confirmed the death of Paul VI a month earlier. After tapping John Paul’s forehead three times, saying his name aloud, and getting no answer, he pronounced the 263rd Pope of the Roman church dead. Once again, Villot was the Camerlengo.85

Villot summoned Sister Vincenza and the other aides. After learning what had happened, he was immediately concerned about the public perception of an unaccompanied nun discovering the Pontiff’s corpse. The mere fact that a woman had the authority to enter on her own volition the Pope’s private bedroom might spark gossip, or as Villot dubbed it, “unfortunate misunderstandings.”86 So the Cardinal Secretary of State made a critical decision, one that would set the groundwork for conspiracy theories to flourish in the wake of the sixty-five-year-old John Paul’s untimely death.

“I can’t put that the sister found him dead,” an exasperated Villot told Magee.87 All of them were to keep what had really happened a secret. Villot ordered Sister Vincenza to move to a convent outside Vatican City as soon as it was feasible. She was to avoid any public comment for the rest of her service to the church.88

Magee would instead say that he had discovered the body upon entering the chamber to check on why the Pope was late for morning prayers. No mention would be made of any file of papers.89 Instead, when Father Francesco Farusi, Vatican Radio’s chief reporter, learned from a “Vatican source” that on the Pope’s nightstand there was a copy of De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), a fifteenth-century devotional handbook, he put out the story that the Pope had been reading that at the time of his death.90 The tip was false. “[That book] was in the chapel, not by his bedside,” Farusi later recounted. “I suppose it [the tip] was to avoid anyone saying he was reading a pornographic magazine . . . or, you never know what they’ll say, a cowboy story.” (Only four days later, Vatican Radio retracted that story as “inaccurate,” but by then it had been repeated so many times that it was a widely accepted fact.)91

Sometime after 7 a.m., two glum-looking men, dressed in black raincoats, arrived. They were brothers, Arnaldo and Ernesto Signoracci, respected morticians from a family firm founded in 1870 (“We’ve fixed up three dead Popes,” Arnaldo later told a journalist. “When they’re dead, they’re all the same to us.”)92,VI Villot had telephoned Professor Cesare Gerin, a renowned University of Rome professor and director of Italy’s Institute of Legal Medicine. Gerin in turn called the Signoraccis.94 But Villot had not summoned them to remove the body. Instead, they took out a rope from a small canvas bag. They tied some around the corpse’s ankles and knees. Then they straightened his legs and secured the rope to each end of the bed’s frame. The Signoraccis looped it around John Paul’s chest, and both pulled his arms and torso until the corpse was flat (a false rumor later made its way around the Vatican that the morticians had broken the Pope’s back when straightening the body).95 They closed his eyes and pulled the bedsheet just under his chin.96

The Signoraccis left for a Vatican guesthouse where they spent the next few days.97 (When they returned a few hours later to get the body ready for public viewing, they began embalming the corpse. That meant opening the femoral arteries and injecting an anti-putrefaction liquid. Ernesto had trouble getting the injection in since there had been some clotting around the Pope’s neck.)98

By 7:30 that morning, Villot had collected the Pope’s personal papers and disposed of his prescription pills (it is not known if the Pontiff had filled any medications from the Vatican pharmacy during his month in office, since the pages that cover that time are missing from the dispensary’s records).99 Villot had also prepared the official press statement. Father Romeo Panciroli, the chief of the press office, began telephoning the major Italian and foreign wire services. The first wire story of the Associated Press carried the sanctioned version:

Today Sept. 29 around 0530 the Rev. John Magee, the pope’s private secretary, entered the bedroom of His Holiness John Paul I; since he had failed to see him in the chapel as usual, he looked for him in the room and he found him dead in the bed with the light on as with a person who had been reading.

The doctor, immediately summoned, ascertained his death, presumably occurred around 2300 hours yesterday Thursday because of sudden death from acute myocardial infarction. The venerated body will be placed on display around noon in a hall of the Apostolic Palace.100

The cover-up that Villot had engineered, mostly to hide the fact that a woman—albeit a nun—might be alone with the Pontiff in his bedroom in the early morning, was poorly thought out and certain to unravel. The Secretary of State, raised and steeped in the church’s cult of secrecy, had made a bad situation far worse.101 But it all came apart sooner than might have been expected. Shortly after the official statement was released, an unidentified insider with knowledge of what happened got in touch with Civiltà Cristiana (Christian Civilization), a bellicose right-wing Catholic group that boasted some fifty thousand members in dozens of countries. At the start of the conclave that elected John Paul a month earlier, Civiltà Cristiana had plastered Rome with brightly colored posters sarcastically insisting: “Elect a Catholic Pope.” Now, when the group’s Secretary General, Franco Antico, answered the telephone at its Rome headquarters, the anonymous person on the other end told a remarkable story that exposed the Vatican’s version as a lie.

Antico, no stranger to the press, was on the phone by 8 a.m. with ANSA, Italy’s wire service. Villot and John Paul’s aides were lying, Antico claimed. He demanded an autopsy for the just deceased Pope. ANSA sent Antico’s demand worldwide.102 When reporters clamored for a comment from Panciroli, he checked with Villot. The Secretary of State ordered him to issue a “no further comment.” Meanwhile, by mid-morning, Antico had gotten more information from his source. He now told reporters they should interview Sister Vincenza and Monsignor Magee. When Villot heard that, he compounded his run of bad decisions by ordering Magee and Lorenzi to promptly leave for a private seminary outside Rome. Villot told them he would call when it was safe to return.103 (Sister Vincenza had already been driven away a couple of hours earlier.)

Monsignor Magee moved into the Maria Bambina Institute adjacent to St. Peter’s Square, but he was increasingly distraught and wanted “to stay with my sister Kathleen, who lives outside Liverpool.”104 Villot’s office was slow to help him, so Magee went to Marcinkus. The IOR chief got him airline tickets in twenty minutes, and ordered a car and driver to take him to the airport. Two days after John Paul’s death, while reporters were still badgering the Vatican switchboard asking for Magee, the monsignor was a thousand miles away in England.105

But Antico’s source knew not just many details about how the dead Pontiff was discovered, but he also had the scoop on Villot’s cover-up. Antico next told reporters they should ask where Vincenza and Magee had moved. On Villot’s orders, Panciroli told reporters that Sister Vincenza was “inaccessible” and Monsignor Magee had “left the country.”106

The problem was made worse because the journalists covering the Vatican had little faith in the accuracy of anything Father Panciroli told them. Since assuming control of the press office a couple of years earlier, his dismissive ways and frequent misstatements and obfuscations had earned him the nickname “Padre Non Mi Risulta” (Father I Don’t Have Anything on That).107

Villot called an emergency meeting for the following morning of all cardinals in Rome. By that time, Villot had cleared the nineteen rooms of the Papal residence of all of John Paul’s goods, and the Pontiff’s apartment was sealed pending the conclave.

At 11 a.m. on Saturday, the thirty-four cardinals who had already arrived in Rome gathered in the enormous, gilded Sala Bologna, built in 1575 as a Papal dining room befitting a grand Pope-Monarch. None of them, other than Villot, knew the real story. Most speculated that Antico and Civiltà Cristiana were being duped by someone who wanted to plant a fake story to tarnish the church. A few, including Vienna’s Franz König, thought the false reports were part of a Soviet disinformation plot.108

Villot first addressed the burial date. The cardinals agreed on a funeral in five days, on the Feast of Italy’s patron saint, Francis. Then Cardinal Confalonieri brought up all the sinister whispers about John Paul’s death. Although he understood it violated church protocol, Confalonieri suggested an autopsy might best settle all suspicions. Some cardinals gasped.109 Cardinal König said he thought at the very least all the cardinals should be in Rome before voting to break such long-standing precedent. Moreover, König suggested that the autopsy would be difficult to keep secret. Conducting a historic postmortem exam, he averred, might further fuel the gossip that something untoward ended John Paul’s life.

The problem with waiting until all the cardinals had arrived was that some from distant countries would likely not be in Rome until after the funeral. An autopsy would have to be done before that. Cardinal Felici suggested that a Rome pathologist and two doctors examine the Pope’s body. Within forty-eight hours they would report back on whether or not they recommended an autopsy. That compromise was approved by a 29–5 vote.110

Two days later, Monday, October 2, eighty-five cardinals gathered in the Sala Bologna. The public clamor about John Paul’s death had picked up momentum. German, British, and Spanish papers suggested the cardinals should order an autopsy since the Vatican constitution did not explicitly forbid it.111 Respected Catholic writer Carlo Bo wrote a front-page editorial for Corriere della Sera, arguing that given the church’s long history of murders and intrigue surrounding medieval popes, they could best eliminate any doubts about this death by embracing modern science.112

By the time of their new gathering, the cardinals knew that Villot and Buzzonetti had directed the Signoracci brothers to embalm the deceased Pope. “The reason they embalmed him on the first evening was because of Paul VI,” Monsignor Lorenzi later recalled, “who had begun to swell up and smell unpleasantly.”113 “It’s a problem because they go on view for four days, the heat and all that” admitted Ernesto Signoracci, one of the morticians who prepped the body.114

Despite having been there early on the morning the body was discovered, the Signoraccis knew the corpse was unattended for at least several hours after the death. It might deteriorate faster than they hoped. A contemporaneous Associated Press report about the first day the body was on public display noted: “The pope’s face looked gray and waxen, and the basilica was shut down periodically Monday so morticians could retouch it.”115

The cardinals were not familiar with the science of postmortems. They did not pay attention to the recommendation of some forensic pathologists that they preserve samples of John Paul’s blood and tissue before the embalming so it might be possible to test in the future for foreign substances, poisons, or drugs. They did not know that the chemicals used by the morticians reacted with bodily fluids, making it difficult if not impossible to spot poisons since they would be masked or washed out during the embalming.VII

While the mainstream press urged an autopsy, Franco Antico and his Civiltà Cristiana gained an ally inside the church. Blas Piñar, president of a prominent Spanish lay organization, Fuerza Nueva (New Force), noted the Pope’s death had “raised so much suspicion.” Piñar cited a speech Paul VI gave before his death in which he cryptically said, “From some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” Piñar insisted, “An autopsy must be carried out.”117

At their Monday meeting, Villot presented the recommendations and findings of the three doctors who had examined the body at the cardinals’ request. Two concluded the cause of death was a massive heart attack. They based their conclusion on their interviews with the Vatican’s deputy chief of medicine, Dr. Buzzonetti, and on a summary that Villot had ordered created about John Paul’s health history. As far as they were concerned, no autopsy was necessary. The pathologist disagreed. While he also thought a heart attack the most likely cause of death, he could not be certain without an autopsy.118

When Villot asked if there was any objection to accepting the majority medical opinion, most cardinals turned to Felici, who a couple of days earlier was the chief proponent of an autopsy. Felici scowled, his arms folded in front of him. But he did not say a word (later, he claimed he felt it was useless to protest since two of the doctors had decided no).119

Villot called for a vote. The cardinals agreed by unanimous acclamation that no autopsy should be conducted. The consensus was that the rumors and gossip about the sudden death would blow over with the election of a new Pope in just twelve days. The cardinals were otherwise preoccupied with their unprecedented second conclave in just six weeks.120,VIII

Villot lit a cigarette first thing in the morning. And it was the last thing he did before turning in for the night. He smoked three packs a day. But during this time of great stress he was up to four. The Italian press had questioned whether all the cardinals who were papabile should be required to undergo a full physical before the first ballot. Not only was it ludicrous, thought Villot, but the church was already straining under the weight of costly back-to-back conclaves. Sending all 111 cardinals for expedited comprehensive exams was an expense he had no intention of incurring.122 In any case, there was no time. The cardinals had a tight schedule for burying the Pope and starting the conclave. It all had to be accomplished in half the leisurely pace Villot had set after the death of Paul VI.

The press began its guessing game of who would be the next Pontiff. Father Andrew Greeley got wide coverage when he announced that a previously unknown Chicago group called the National Opinion Research Center used a “complex decision-making model” to pick the likely winner: Corrado Ursi, the moderate seventy-year-old cardinal of Naples. Church insiders were as dismissive of Greeley’s model as they were of Ladbrokes bookmaking odds.

This time the politicking for the Papacy seemed more brazen, even among the most reserved cardinals. There was a widespread sentiment that the modern church was at a crucial juncture. The death of Paul VI, followed by the sudden start-stop nature of John Paul’s brief Papacy, only added impetus to the sense that the next selection was important.

Conservatives, as they had just a month earlier, rallied behind Genoa’s Siri. It was the fourth conclave at which the seventy-two-year-old cardinal was embraced by the Curia’s traditional wing as the rightful heir to Pius XII. Some of them interpreted John Paul’s untimely death as a providential sign to redouble their efforts for the autocratic Siri.

But Siri had plenty of competition. Many thought that if John Paul were alive, he might well select someone who reflected his pastoral emphasis and charismatic temperament, possibly Pericle Felici. What better way to honor the late Pontiff’s memory than by putting into the Papacy the man considered his closest copy? Of course, John Paul had relied on the advice of Florence’s Benelli. Although Benelli’s curt ways irritated many in the Curia, even his detractors admitted that he managed to get work done in an institution where delay and equivocation seemed unyielding. When Benelli arrived at the conclave carrying a portable typewriter, some colleagues joked that he was preparing to type a long acceptance speech.123

There was also talk about whether—after 455 years—it was time for a non-Italian Pope. That was unlikely. Although some foreign cardinals had substantial prestige inside the church, and ran populous foreign dioceses that had more Catholics than any Italian city, they carried no weight inside the Curia. If anything, their outsider status meant that most church officials considered them powers to be appeased from a distance, but never to be embraced to sit on the throne of St. Peter.

In the last conclave, the Italians had cut enough deals to keep the support of the chief foreign cardinals. There were only a handful strong enough to persuade others to follow their endorsement. A diverse group, they were from England, Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Samoa, and Austria.124 The problem for Siri and the traditionalists was that Pope Paul VI had appointed almost all of them as cardinals, and he had picked them because they were among the most progressive bishops in their countries. Some press reports even touted Cardinal Bernardin Gantin as a long shot. The Benin native had worked in the Curia since Paul VI put him there after the Second Vatican Council. His reputation as a moderate pragmatist did not upset the traditionalists, but few seemed ready to make history by electing the first black Pope.

The non-Italians had a different view of the church than those who worked inside the closeted Curia. Kinshasa’s cardinal, Joseph Malula, told Gantin, “All that imperial paraphernalia, all that isolation of the Pope, all that medieval remoteness and inheritance that makes Europeans think that the church is only Western—all that tightness makes them fail to understand that young countries like mine want something different.”125

The unquestioned dean of the non-Italian cardinals was Vienna’s seventy-three-year-old Franz König. He feared nothing more than heading into the eighty-third conclave with the possibility that Siri, whom he considered an unyielding reactionary, might at long last become Pope and reverse two decades of reforms. Siri tried repositioning himself as a centrist but few electors believed he had moderated his hard-line positions.

Some press reports and Vaticanologists speculated before the conclave about whether even König could become Pope. But he confided in a few of his closest colleagues that he had no interest in the Papacy. However, König allowed the speculation to build in the hope that it might give him more influence at the conclave.

The first ballot on October 14 put Siri at the top with twenty-three votes, an unprecedented fourth time in twenty years he had gathered the largest bloc of support at the conclave’s outset. But it was a poor showing for a man whose pre-conclave expectations were at least fifty first-ballot votes.126 Only one vote behind was Florence’s Benelli. Three other Italian cardinals were next, Felici, Ursi of Naples, and Palermo’s Salvatore Pappalardo (famous for being the first Sicilian cardinal ever to condemn the Mafia). Those five Italians had pulled ninety-five votes, twenty more than required to be elected Pontiff. König worried that the conclave might have already turned into an Italian-only fight. If the Italians struck a deal and consolidated their support behind one candidate, the conclave would be over. The Viennese cardinal thought however that it was just as likely the intense dislike each had for one another might make it difficult for them to reach a consensus.

Kraków’s Karol Józef Wojtyla had gotten the votes of five cardinals. Besides being a pastor of one of Poland’s biggest cities, Wojtyla was one of the church’s most prolific theological authors. König liked him and reflected the view of many others that Wojtyla’s humility and low-key approach was a welcome respite from the frenetic narcissism of some of the more flamboyant Italians. American cardinals Cody and Cooke also liked Wojtyla. Both the Americans oversaw large Polish American congregations. (Cody had sent more than a million dollars to Wojtyla to support the Polish church.) But Poland’s senior cardinal, Warsaw’s Stefan Wyszyński, told König before the voting that he thought his fellow Pole was “too young [58], he’s unknown, he could never be Pope.”127

Nevertheless, König and the Americans started lobbying for Wojtyla, suggesting to some colleagues that at the very least they should vote for him to slow the Italians. “They were planning a palace coup, but no one believed they could pull it off,” according to Father Andrew Greeley.128

Siri faded by the second ballot. His supporters had moved to Benelli, who now had forty votes, and Felici followed with thirty.129 The top five were the same Italian cardinals, but this time they had 107 votes. König’s and Cody’s efforts on behalf of Wojtyla had almost doubled his support to nine. To the Italian frontrunners, he was too far behind to matter.

After that second ballot, König brought in a major ally for Wojtyla: Madrid’s Vicente Enrique y Tarancón threw his support to the quiet Polish prelate. That opened the door to the Latin and South American cardinals, who had so far shown little desire to look beyond Italy.

The third ballot narrowed the field. Benelli pulled away from the other Italians, now corraling forty-five votes. Wojtyla was still stuck at nine. During a break between votes, Benelli met with some of the other first-ballot contenders. On the fourth ballot, he surged to sixty-five votes, only ten short of victory. Benelli had momentum. One more ballot might put him over the top.130 Many of the cardinals were tired, having made the trek to Rome for their second pressure-filled conclave in less than two months. A quick resolution would demonstrate to the faithful that they were in sync about the future of the church. But on the fourth ballot Wojtyla had jumped from nine votes to twenty-four. That indicated Benelli’s supporters might not be firm. If that was the case, König intended to politick during the next break to build support for the cardinal from Kraków.131

On the third day, Monday, October 16, the Benelli camp seemed confident during breakfast. They boisterously dominated the center dining table. Some Italians had decided that as much as they disliked Benelli, he was preferable to a non-Italian.

In the next vote, Benelli scored seventy votes, just five short of becoming Pope. Villot ordered an hour between ballots. Can you live with Benelli and his imperious ways, König asked his colleagues? The next ballot changed the race. Benelli lost eleven cardinals. Wojtyla was now at fifty-two. Although Benelli’s table was downhearted, Wojtyla also seemed glum, simply staring at his food. More than once he had told his Polish colleague Wyszyński, as well as König, that he did not want to be Pope.

“You simply must face the truth,” König told him. “This is what the Holy Spirit wishes.”

“It’s a mistake,” Wojtyla whispered.132

The first ballot of the afternoon confirmed that the momentum belonged to Wojtyla. He pulled seventy-three votes, just two short of winning. Benelli had dropped almost in half to thirty-eight. The eighth ballot, taken at 5 p.m., put Wojtyla over the top with ninety-seven votes.133 Wojtyla looked so grim that Cardinal Hume felt “desperately sad for the man.”134

With his white hair and weathered face he seemed the contemporary of Benelli and Felici, men a decade older. At fifty-eight he was the youngest Pope since the fifty-four-year-old Pius IX in 1846. He was the first non-Italian since the Dutch Adrian VI in 1522. And Wojtyla also had the fewest connections to the Curia of any Pope in centuries.

When it came to doctrines of faith, Wojtyla had a reputation as a moderate with an open mind. He had been a firm and popular leader of Kraków’s two million Catholics.135 And although he had distinguished himself for developing a productive church-communist dialogue in Poland, he also maintained a hard line when it came to the godless political philosophy that ruled his homeland. In his writings, he condemned persecution against Catholics by those who see it as “the opiate of the people,” a reference to the slogan made popular by Karl Marx.136

Standing in front of the cardinals who had just elected him, Wojtyla suddenly seemed energized. Because of his respect for his two predecessors, he had settled on the Papal name John Paul II.137

As word spread into the packed crowd at St. Peter’s, there were cries of “E il Polcacco” (It’s the Pole). That the College of Cardinals had done the truly unexpected was settling in fast.


I. This phrase was first used by the Catholic press in 1978, and subsequently by the mainstream media. It was also the title of a book by the late Vaticanologist Peter Hebblethwaite.

II. Vatican Radio succeeded in planting a rudimentary transmitter disguised as a shirt button on one of the lay attendants in the Sistine Chapel. It was not capable of picking up voices but instead sent a low-pitched ping to a receiver hidden inside the Vatican Radio office. The attendant was instructed to press it three times when a Pope was elected.10

III. Monsignor Lorenzi, who arrived after only a few minutes, recalled much later, “The sheets of paper were quite upright. They had not slipped out of his hands and fallen on the floor. I myself took the sheets out of his hand. I did!” Unknown to Lorenzi, Sister Vincenza had picked up the scattered papers and put them back in the folder before he had arrived.68

IV. The only flight to Rome from Venice that morning was completely booked, so da Ros jumped in his car for what turned out to be a nine-hour drive to Rome. The corpse was off limits by the time da Ros arrived. In an interview with an Associated Press reporter a few days later, da Ros admitted that when he examined his longtime patient the week before his death, “the stress of his new post was great. . . . He was not prepared, accustomed to that responsibility. I told him that he could not continue at that pace and he replied he could not do anything about it.”78

V. The question of whether John Paul had a heart condition was later hotly debated. Initial information from the Vatican was that he “was not known to have had any chronic heart trouble.” Subsequent unconfirmed press reports were that Luciani had suffered four heart attacks, but there is no confirmation of that based on interviews with his family and information provided later by his doctors. Monsignor Petri Lina (Pia) Luciani, John Paul’s physician niece, told the Associated Press in 1978 that he had no history of heart disease: “He is delicate, but, I advise you, he is not a traveling hospital.” A decade later she said that her uncle had been hospitalized in 1975 for a thrombosis of the retinal artery at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. But that has never been confirmed. Also a decade after the Pope’s death, Monsignor Lorenzi told an Italian reporter that he remembered that the evening before John Paul died, he had “a dreadful pain” in his chest, but he “absolutely forbade” Lorenzi from calling a doctor. “And I obeyed, because one should obey the Pope.” Lorenzi never told anyone of his refreshed memory, he claimed, because “I didn’t connect this [the heart pain] with a round-the-corner heart attack, because I’d never studied these things.” Monsignor Magee a decade later told author John Cornwell that the Pope “was constantly talking of death.” The night John Paul died Magee supposedly said to Sister Vincenza, “It would be terrible to lose a Pope now after losing Paul VI. How many days is it now? Thirty-three?”82

VI. An ANSA wire service story incorrectly reported that on the morning of the death an unidentified person had telephoned the Signoraccis at 5 a.m.—before the Pope’s body was discovered—and dispatched a Vatican car to bring them to the Apostolic Palace. That was incorrect. Mario di Francesco, the journalist who wrote the story, got the wrong time from Renato Signoracci, yet another brother in the family business, but one who did not go to the Vatican. Conspiracy theorists nevertheless continue to cite this as proof of foul play in John Paul’s death.93

VII. Italian law barred embalming within the first twenty-four hours of death. The Signoraccis were not concerned about violating Italian law. “We did the same with Pope John,” Ernesto later told author John Cornwell. “We began the same day that he died. There’s no problem, because the Vatican is a foreign country. . . . They’re not bound by the Italian magistrates . . . especially with sudden-death.”116

VIII. In 1984, the rumors of foul play in the death of John Paul I were at the center of a salacious nonfiction book, In God’s Name, by British author David Yallop. He mixed suspicions about Marcinkus and Cody into a convoluted murder plot masterminded by none other than Sindona, Calvi, Cardinal Villot, and P2’s Gelli. John Paul was most likely poisoned, contended Yallop, by an overdose of digitalis, a heart medication. Villot’s cover-up after the Pope’s death, combined with the failure to do an autopsy—actions that Father Andrew Greeley called “just plain stupid”—was grist for Yallop. In God’s Name was criticized by many, who deemed it a speculative theory unsupported by credible evidence. The Vatican, which normally ignored such books, issued multiple condemnations, calling it “infamous rubbish,” “absurd fantasies,” and “shocking and deplorable.” The more the Vatican damned it, the more the book sold, an estimated six million copies. Elton John and his partner David Furnish added ultimately to the church’s angst by buying its film rights.

In 1989, author John Cornwell published A Thief in the Night, in which he demolished Yallop’s assumptions. Cornwell offered his own tantalizing theory that rested instead on negligence. In his account, one of John Paul’s secretaries, Monsignor Magee, discovered the Pope was dead at 11 p.m. the previous night. Magee convinced Monsignor Lorenzi to help him put the Pope into his bed and fix him so Sister Vincenza would discover him the next morning.

By 1988, a decade after the Pope’s death, a new theory had gained momentum: the CIA had murdered John Paul because he was about to reveal the identity of the American-backed assassins of Aldo Moro. In this plot, Marcinkus worked for the CIA.121