Did he die because of his illness or was he killed? Or did he prepare for the end of his life with his own hands? The mystery of the death of 1st John-Paul, who died at the age of 65, is on the agenda again years later...
Everyone who read the short bulletin issued by the Vatican on September 29, 1978, was shocked. In the text, it was stated that Pope John Paul I died. The cause of death of the Pope, who was found dead in his bed by a priest who served as his personal secretary, was also announced as a heart attack.
But that's not all.
Within a few days, rumors circulated that the Pope did not die naturally. The pressure to "make a statement" on cardinals in the Romana Curia, the Vatican's executive branch, increased.
Curiosity was also raised when an Italian News agency revealed that the person who found the Pope in his bed was not really the person the Vatican announced: What could be the explanation for the 65-year-old Pope's death only 33 days after taking office?
Pope John Paul I, 43 years after his death, is on the path to sainthood today. The Vatican recently announced that the sudden recovery of a terminally ill girl living in Buenos Aires in 2011 was thanks to the intervention of Jean-Paul, therefore the late Pope would be blessed.
However, when John Paul is mentioned, the very suspicious death of this "miracle" still comes to mind.
Several studies have been conducted on this topic over the years. Each of the researchers took a different approach. Some chose to focus on rumors rather than facts. As a result, the Pope's legacy is commemorated with attempts to uncover the truth as well as secrets and conspiracy theories.
As we said, the rumors are various, but the common point of all explanations is this: John Paul was not very similar to the popes before and after him. He was born into a poor family in the mountainous countryside of Italy. Their goal was nothing more than to become a village priests. The election process in the Pontifical Assembly was short (26 hours) and left a good impression on the people. He made a speech far from the pomp that comes to mind when the papal office is mentioned and used very simple language.
"I could never have imagined such a thing," he said on his first day as Pope.
But just a month later, his papacy came to an end. The death of John Paul, who signed the shortest Papal period since the beginning of the 1600s, also plunged the Catholic world into obscurity.
THE THEORY OF A NOVEL AUTHOR
Why did the Vatican misrepresent the person who found the Pope's body? Why was Jean Paul's body mummified before even an autopsy was done? These questions have been on the agenda for years. And on top of these discussions came a book written by British crime writer David Yallop.
Yallop, in his book "In God's Name" published in 1984, suggested that the Catholic Church was covering up a murder. According to his theory, the Pope was poisoned. Because the Vatican's deep state immediately silenced the Pope, who wanted to expose corruption at the highest levels.
There wasn't much in the book in the name of evidence or source. However, such scandals were not far from the Vatican. Even in those days, the Papacy was on the agenda with a real banking scandal involving a Masonic lodge and an Italian banker. Yallop's theory gained strength with the wind of this scandal.
According to the author, the death of the Pope was an element of this scandal. Because Jean Paul had already started to take steps to fight corruption behind the scenes, which caused the cardinals in the Romana Curia to be alarmed. The names of six people who would benefit from the sudden death of the Pope were also mentioned in Yallop's book. One of them was US Cardinal Paul Marcinkus at the top of the Vatican Bank.
In the book, Yallop describes how a stunned Marcinkus was seen in the Vatican in the early morning hours of the day the Pope's body was found, and he said, "He had both the motive and the opportunity to commit the murder."
The Papacy described these claims as "absurd", but Yallop's statement was as popular in the world as the Vatican's statement. "In God's Name" has sold a total of 6 million copies.
THINGS OF A POPE THAT WANTS TO DIE
If we look at the history of the Catholic Church, it is possible to see that the clarification of such debates is not very common practice. We can even say that some things are preferred to be kept a little secret.
Therefore, the step taken by the Vatican after the noise created by Yallop's book was quite surprising.
Archbishop John Foley of the Vatican Communications Office contacted John Cornwell, also a British journalist-author, in 1987 and offered to be the one to shed light on false information.
Cornwell, himself a religiously trained Catholic, traveled to Rome to meet with key players in the story. Cornwell, who was invited to a private service by Pope John Paul II and thus his research was actually approved by the Pope, gathered the stories of the parties, and it became clear that there were serious flaws in Yallop's theory.
The reason why the Vatican concealed the identity of the person who found the body was actually embarrassment due to non-compliance with the rules. Because the person who found the Pope dead in his bed was a nun working in the residence. So a woman had entered the Pope's bedroom.
Moreover, the Pope had no secret plan or desire to investigate the financial affairs of the Church. The theory that Marcinkus was linked to the murder could also be easily refuted. Because the Cardinal was an early riser, it was very common for him to be in the Vatican at 6:30 in the morning.
Seen in this context, Cornwell had done exactly what the Vatican had envisioned and shed light on dark spots. However, it could not be said that Cornwell was working as a Papal spokesman. Instead, he came up with a new theory, which was filled with gossip, which he obtained as a result of long interviews.
According to Cornwell's narrative, Jean Paul's papacy was like a broken truck going downhill, and many in the Vatican were well aware of the impending disaster. Romana Curia members described the new Pope as immature, childish, and "Reader's Digest-minded". Moreover, John Paul was overwhelmed by the weight of his position.
As Cornwell learned in numerous interviews with the Pope's secretaries, Jean-Paul kept asking, "Why did they choose me?" he thought, believing that it was a huge mistake for him to be on this post.
"He wouldn't be a very successful Pope," Cornwell, who is 81 today and lives in London, told the Washington Post.
Cornwell's book also included an anecdote quoted by John Magee, one of Jean Paul's secretaries. It is said that one day, while walking in one of the terrace gardens, the Pope dropped a file full of various documents in his hand. The pages fell apart and fell on the roofs of various buildings.
The Pope suddenly fell into despair and began to lament, "Oh my God, my God." Magee then suggested that he go to bed with the Pope. Ultimately, with the help of the Vatican fire department, all the pages were collected from the rooftops and the problem was solved. But meanwhile, in the fetal position, the Pope was lying on his bed and was demonstrating to friends and foes that he could not bear even the slightest negativity.
Cornwell had not the slightest doubt that Jean Paul's death was natural. According to him, the Pope had either died of a heart attack or an embolism. There were already circulation problems in the past. His ankles were often swollen. He had complained of chest pains the day before his death.
But the most controversial point of Cornwell's book was the connection he made between Jean Paul's death and his mental illness. The book also included the words of Lina Petri, one of the Pope's nieces. Petri said that the stressed pope may have neglected to take his anticoagulant medication. (Petri told The Washington Post that it's not possible for him to know if his uncle took his medicine.)
Another detail that the book particularly emphasized was that the Pope had refused his staff's suggestion to call a doctor, even though he had chest pain.
In short, in this version of the story, the Pope was not the victim of a conspiracy but was preparing his own tragic end. "The recklessness of the others, with the Pope's refusal to call a doctor, was enough to guarantee the end that he had wholeheartedly wished for," Cornwell said.
IS IT SUITABLE TO BE DONATED?
As we said above, the Vatican recently announced that Pope John Paul I will be canonized as a result of a miracle performed in 2011.
According to the rules of the Catholic Church, a person has to go through a lot of audits in order to be declared a saint. The people who carry out this control are called postulators.
Postulation is a very difficult job because it requires very delicate balances. The postulator does its best to prove that the person who should be canonized is worthy of this rank, and also prepares a comprehensive biography of the person in order to detect in advance the arguments that could be used to the contrary. The result is volumes of text, covering every moment of the saint to be's life and death.
Stefania Falasca is the person the Vatican commissioned to prepare the assessment of Jean-Paul. Falasca, 58, examined never-before-seen documents during the writing of the biography, evaluated medical reports about the Pope, and retrospective health documents.
In his statement to the Washington Post, Falasca stated that his aim was to protect the facts of Jean Paul's life, and described the stories told by his predecessors as "black literature" and "tabloid garbage" with slight disdain and added: "This is the longest-lived fake news of the 20th century."
This view is also endorsed by the Vatican. In fact, the official news agency of the Papacy reported that Falasca's work, which was summarized and turned into a book in Italian in 2017, closed the issue "without any room for discussion".
In Falasca's work, the death of the Pope is described as an unpredictable and unpreventable tragedy. In the doctor's reports, which are among the documents he examined, it is stated that no serious health problems were found in the routine checkups carried out within a month after John Paul became pope.
Signs of the possibility of a heart attack can be seen in the Pope's past: Many people in his family passed away from sudden deaths. He was also treated at the hospital for a blood clot in his eye about three years before he died.
A doctor working in the Papacy stated that the most likely cause of the death of John Paul was a heart attack. Another doctor who had treated the Pope in the past stated that he had no doubt that it was circulatory problems caused by the problem in his eye before.
Falasca, who is also a columnist for Avvenire, an Italian-language newspaper affiliated with the church, presents these divergent views in his work but does not comment on which is more likely.
However, Falasca does not hesitate to target the explanations given above in the book. Criticizing the secretaries, Cornwell's main source, Falasca underlines some of the contradictory statements, suggesting that these sources are unreliable or that they speak as such to protect their own reputation.
Falasca also states that a small number of people doubted whether Jean-Paul was fit for the job when he was the head of the clergy in Venice. However, he also includes the views of cardinals and a nun, who said he was very competent during his one-month papacy. It is said that until his death, the Pope resolutely carried out his duties and supported dialogue and peace.
According to Falasca, if his life had passed, John Paul I could have been a pope that went down in history, "but his death came to predominate everything he did in his lifetime".
WHICH THEORIES SHOULD WE BELIEVE?
Many people who were stationed in the Vatican during the papacy of John Paul I are now deceased. Others are either too old or too timid to talk about such an issue. When this is the case, some critical dimensions of the event become open to interpretation.
Take, for example, Jean Paul's stance on death. Cornwell argues that it very accurately reflects the Pope's demoralized state. Citing long conversations with the Pope's secretaries, Cornwell states that both sources said the Pope was ready to die.
He even cites the words of Diego Lorenzi, one of these secretaries, "He didn't want to stay in this world."
However, some people in the Pope's hometown of Canale d'Agordo interpret this point of view of John Paul differently. According to them, when the Pope was talking about death, he was actually doing something he had been doing for years and was trying to make peace with his mortality.
Because John Paul was brought up in a poor area where men couldn't even see their 60s. Infant deaths were quite common. Among the babies who died was his brother. Moreover, his three older brothers, all of whom bore the name Albino, had died at an early age.
The future pope was also born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Therefore, it seemed difficult for him to survive the first days. But he lived, moreover, until he became Pope, he carried the name of his dead brothers and was called Albino Luciani.
He said that after he became Pope, in one of the events he attended, his mother said to him once, "I was taking you around from doctor to doctor, I was waiting for you all night without sleeping."
As for today... We can say that the curiosity about the death of the Pope is no longer as strong as it used to be. Already at the time, Falasca's book was published, the subject had fallen from the agenda. Cornwell, on the other hand, stated that his book could not change the perception of the public and said, "Let's face it, you tell a much better story when you say that the Pope was killed."
Visitors to the small museum dedicated to John Paul in Canale d'Agordo think that the Pope fell victim to someone's evil intentions. Because the discourse of the pope, who was killed in the last 40-odd years, entered popular culture and even became the subject of the third episode of "The Godfather" movies.
"It's an unshakable myth. People say the Pope is a clean man who took bad people against him," said Loris Serafini, the museum's director.
A very small part of the museum is devoted to the death of the Pope. The writing on the wall sums up what may have happened in a few sentences: Jean Paul's body was found by a nun. The cause of death was more likely to be a clot embolism in his lung rather than a heart attack.
However, in the library section of the museum, the books about all the scenarios we have described above stand side by side on a single shelf.
Serafini, on the other hand, stated that the public's interest will be renewed with the declaration of the Pope as a saint, and said, "This work is not over yet."