Who killed Dad?
One of the unbearably hot days of August 1978, the author of this article - at that time a TASS correspondent in Rome - stood in a crowd of other journalists in St. Peter's Square. Finally, white puffs of smoke poured from the chimney of the apostolic palace. This meant that the cardinals, walled up, according to ancient tradition in the Sistine Chapel, chose a new Pope instead of the deceased Paul VI. Soon one of them appeared on the balcony and declared in Latin: “Anunzio Vobis Gaudium Manyum! Habemus papam! ”(“ I declare great joy to you! We have a papa! ”).The Venetian Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected the new head of the Roman Catholic Church. But the “great joy” did not last long — after 33 of the day, the new Pope died unexpectedly. According to the official version - from a heart attack, although he was only 66 years old, he was distinguished by good health and tirelessness. Therefore, almost immediately after Rome, vague rumors spread that a new pontiff did not die at all ...
Unusual Dad
The new Pope was not like his predecessors, he was the first Pope not an aristocrat. Albino Luciani was born in the small mountain village of the Canale d'Agordo, 120 kilometers from Venice. The family was poor, like all of Italy at that time. Father, a worker, by conviction - a socialist, constantly wandering in search of earnings throughout Europe. They lived in an old barn, heated by a wood-burning stove. Ate polenta (cornmeal porridge), barley, pasta and vegetables. Meat was a rarity. From an early age, Albino fully understood the needs and evils of ordinary people.
The future Pope read a lot, greedily swallowed the complete works of Dickens and Jules Verne. Such a fascination with books was unusual for Italy, where at that time half of the adult population did not know how to write. Endowed with an amazing memory, the boy remembered almost everything he had read that his teachers noticed right away. Sooner he discovered a penchant for the spiritual path, and he was sent to the seminary. However, life behind its walls was also harsh. Wake in 5.30 in the morning. There was no heating, so the water for washing was often covered with a crust of ice. They gave only half an hour to wash and make beds.
In 1935, at the age of 23, Albino Luciani was ordained a priest. In 1937, he was appointed vice-chancellor of the seminary in Belluno, where he himself studied in the recent past. Then he graduated from the Roman Gregorian University, defended his thesis, became a doctor of theology and continued to work in the seminary. The future Pope led an unusually modest lifestyle, traveled around the diocese on a bicycle, talked a lot and with ordinary people, and soon became a popular figure among the locals. In those years, Italy was occupied by Nazi troops. Towards the end of the war, the Luciani seminary became a haven for members of the resistance movement. If the German command had learned about this, then sure death would have awaited not only the Resistance fighters, but also Luciani himself.
After the war, the new Pope, John XXIII, appointed a popular priest as the Bishop of Vittorio Veneto.
Luciani gathered local ministers of the church, who, according to tradition, brought him gifts, food, money. But he firmly refused all the gifts. “I came without five lire. And I want to leave without having five lire, ”the new bishop told them.
In 1969, he was appointed patriarch of Venice, and four years later he received a cardinal hat. The conclave, which began after the death of Paul VI, promised to be protracted due to the sharp disagreements between the reformers and conservative factions. However, quite unexpectedly, the Cardinals agreed on the compromise candidacy of Luciani. He was out of factions, and therefore it was on him that the cardinals chose.
The high post did not turn the head to a native of a simple working family. As before, Luciani was distinguished by his friendliness, simplicity and cordiality in his relations with people, for which he received the nickname “Smiling Dad”. In honor of his predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI, Luciani took the name John Paul, becoming the first Pope with a double name.
Simplicity and sincerity
During his brief stay on the papal throne, John Paul I did not manage to release a single encyclical and did not commit any other official act that would allow him to judge his plans for change. But he immediately began to break old traditions, eliminating the outward signs of papal domination. Even his enthronement was unusual. The simplicity and sincerity of this ceremony made us feel that the new Pope is really not going to dominate, but serve. He refused to pompous tiara, did not sit in the Cestiatorium (papal stretcher), and he walked to the altar on foot. Instead of the traditional roar of guns, the enthronement was accompanied by the melodious sounds of the papal choir.
On his papal coat of arms, the new Pope retained as his motto the only word that adorned his episcopal coat of arms: Humilitas (Humility). At the first press conference, he naturally joked with journalists, and during sermons, wanting to illustrate a particular situation, he often called children to him. At first, he refused to use the portable throne, but then he was forced to yield, as the believers complained that they could not see him (Luciani was a little tall). In his first public speech, the new pontiff admitted with startling frankness: “I know that I have neither deep wisdom, always obedient to the heart that distinguished Pope John, nor the enormous preparedness and education of Pope Paul; but now I have taken their place and intend to continue what they started. ” It seemed that the new Pope, radiating hope and the Christian faith, was exactly the one the world was waiting for ...
But not everyone thought so. The new Pope disdained diplomatic intrigues, and, speaking, preferred to improvise rather than read the cheat sheets prepared by him by the Vatican officials.
However, most of the church hierarchs were alarmed, of course, that the “people's” Pope immediately set out to make serious changes in the leadership of the Vatican, replacing a number of dignitaries, including the powerful Vatican Secretary of State Jean Villaud.
He also talked about this on the eve of his death, also informing that he intends to investigate the scandalous scams of the IOR - the largest Vatican bank, which was headed by influential American Cardinal Paul Marcinkus. However, he immediately felt a dull resistance to his plans. According to the testimony of his relatives, if on the first day of his election, the Pope was “optimistic and cheerful,” shortly before his death, he became “very anxious and sad.”
Fatal Night
In the evening of September 28, after dinner, taking with him the sheets with the plans of transformations, the pontiff went to his office, from which he no longer came out. The next morning, exactly at 4.30 (Dad was getting up very early), Vincenz's sister, as usual, brought a tray of morning coffee to his chambers. She knocked and said: "Good morning, holy father!" However, there was no answer. Fifteen minutes later she tried again - silence again. Then the nun decided and entered the bedroom: Albino Luciano was lying in bed, he was wearing glasses, and in his hand he held a few pieces of paper. On his usually cheerful and smiling face there was a terrible grimace of death flour ...
The first official to appear in the chamber of the deceased Pope was Cardinal Villot, the same one whom the deceased planned to replace. Now, after the death of Luciani, it was he who became the cardinal-camelengo, the head of the Vatican before the election of the new Pope. He voiced the official version of the death of the pontiff: myocardial infarction. However, the autopsy was not performed, the doctor did not examine the deceased, and the corpse hastily embalmed.
Moreover, as it turned out, some important evidence disappeared from the papal bedchamber: glasses, home shoes, leaflets with appointments that the Pope held in his hands, lying in bed, as well as a bottle of medicine that he took at night from low pressure. They were mentioned by Vincenz’s sister, but there was no listing of these items in the inventory. In the Vatican corridors they also whispered that the signal light on the call panel at the duty officer of the papal apartments seemed to be burning all night, but for some reason no one answered the call ...
"Bomb" by David Yallop
The “bomb” of the scandal exploded in 1984, when the book “In the Name of God” of English journalist and writer David Yallop was published, who put forward a sensational version - Pope John Paul I was actually killed, poisoned by an unknown poison. Yallop conducted a thorough investigation of the incident, gathered a lot of convincing documentary evidence and documents confirming this version. That is why, in his opinion, the medicine bottle has disappeared, as well as glasses and shoes that have been soiled by the vomiting that started from the poison. Well, the disappearance of documents was beneficial to those whom the Pope planned to replace.
Moreover, the first attempt to kill the Pope, according to Yallop, was made even earlier - during the enthronement ceremony, in which a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod Nicodemus (Rotov), took part.
He was mistakenly served a cup of coffee, which was intended for the Pope. The Metropolitan drank it and fell down dead. His death was later also explained by a “heart attack”.
The Vatican refuted the accusations of Yallop, and then the writer addressed the curia publicly with a number of specific questions, but he never received an answer. And it was already impossible to establish the actual cause of death even if the deceased was exhumed - as a result of embalming, the signs of toxins in the body disappear.
By the way, the murder version was announced later in the film “The Godfather-3”. In it, Luciani is derived under the name of Cardinal Lamberto, who confesses Michael Corleone, who turned to him for help. Becoming Pope John Paul I, he unswervingly investigates the abuse of high ecclesiastical officials, but dies, poisoned by influential conspirators.
Who benefits?
Who was to benefit from the “liquidation” of the new Pope? Of course, first of all, to those church hierarchs whom he planned to replace, and who feared the changes he had planned in the Vatican. The Italian weekly Panorama also made a sensation: it was not at all Ville and Marcinkus who were interested in seeing a new man appear on the papal throne. According to the weekly, almost all those persons in the Roman curia whom the pope was going to replace were ... members of the masonic lodge! Villiers himself was a member of the Masonic Lodge, under the name “Jeanne”, who joined her in Zurich in August 1966 under the code number 041 \ 3. Masons were Paul Marcinkus, Cardinal Hugo Poletti, Vicar of Rome, and Vatican's “Foreign Minister” Hugo Casaroli, etc. The list of these persons was presented to the astonished Pope, who knew well that being a Mason was punished by immediate excommunication from the church.
But the famous M-box scandal P-2 broke out in Italy in 1981, after Luciani’s death. Then it became known that this secret box, which was preparing a right-wing coup in the country, included many ministers, generals, parliamentarians, heads of special services, diplomats, industrialists and other powerful people who ended up behind bars. Documentary evidence was found about the close ties of the lodge with right-wing terrorist organizations, the mafia and neo-fascists, who committed monstrous acts of terror in those years in the Apennines. Because of the scandal, the Italian government was forced to resign.
Lists of the P-2 lodge were found in the villa “Wanda” in Arezzo, which belonged to its head, the “honorary master” Licio Jelly, an entrepreneur with a Nazi past.
It was rumored that he had become infinitely wealthy, transferring the gold from the Yugoslav bank seized by Mussolini from Italy at the end of the war, part of which disappeared without a trace. Jelly also managed to get a part of the secret file of the secret police of Mussolini OVRA, with the help of which he was able to blackmail influential people who stained themselves by working with black-shirts.
For the recruitment, the “honorary master” also used the unmatched imitator of votes, Alighiero Nosquese - “a man with a thousand faces,” as the Italian press called him. He imitated the voices of Nixon, Golda Meir and other famous politicians. The journalists came to the conclusion that, using the phenomenal data of Noskese, Jelly arranged frauds, falsified bank orders, etc. However, later Noskese committed suicide. Jelly was arrested, but under mysterious circumstances, he escaped from the Geneva prison "Shang-Dolon" and then disappeared without a trace.
Another person involved in the P-2 box scandal was her banker Guido Calvi, who was also closely associated with the Vatican financier Paul Marcinkus. His largest private bank Abrosiano in Italy collapsed, Calvi hit the run, but did not run for long. His body was found hanged under the London Bridge "Black Monks" - that was the name, by the way, by a strange coincidence, one of the English Masonic lodges. The same sad fate awaited his accomplice, banker Michele Sindona, also associated with the Vatican and P-2 - he was later poisoned with cyanide in a prison in Milan.
But this long list of victims of the scandal around the P-2 was not exhausted. In 1979, in Rome, with a classic mafia reception - a shot in the mouth (“don't talk!”) Mino Pecorelli, editor of the Osservator Politico magazine, was killed. A few days before his death, Pecorelli wrote an article entitled The Truth About the Honorable Master of Masonic Lodge P-2. In this article, he wrote: "Italian Freemasonry is an organization subordinate to the CIA." He published a list of names in the Vatican, which were part of secret Masonic organizations.
"Goldmine" for spies
The CIA has always been keenly interested in Vatican affairs. Back in 1944, Pope Pius XII awarded American General William Donovan with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sylvestre, the oldest and most honorable of all the papal knightly orders. Donovan received a knightly distinction for services rendered during World War II, when he headed the department of strategic services (OSS), which was later transformed into the CIA.
According to the testimony of the American magazine Mather Jones, published in San Francisco, Donovan’s award marked the beginning of close relations between the Vatican and American intelligence, which are maintained to this day.
Another sphere of influence of the CIA is the Order of Malta, the legendary Vatican order, created during the crusade times, when warrior monks formed the army of the Catholic Church. The backbone of the Order of Malta now forms the know and the powerful. 40 percent of 10 thousands of its knights - come from the oldest and most influential Catholic families in the West. Knights of the Order of Malta were also CIA Director William Casey and former US Secretary of State A. Haig. Wealth is a prerequisite for a future candidate for a knight, and all candidates are promoted to scrutiny. It is curious that this order functions freely today in our country under the cover of a “humanitarian mission”, and some famous Russian politicians did not disdain to become its members.
Closely related to the CIA is another strong and influential organization of the Catholic church, Opus Dei (The Matter of the Lord). This organization has over 70 thousand people in 87 countries of the world. The priests are in it only a small number. The rest are businessmen, military personnel, government officials. This organization is especially strong in Italy and Spain.
“For centuries,” wrote the journal mentioned above, “the Vatican was one of the main objects of international espionage. Since the Vatican is the world’s greatest center of exploration, it is a gold mine for spies. ” This source of information was so rich that, shortly after the war, the CIA created in its counterintelligence department a special department to process information and monitor the events in the Vatican. Of course, these American "curators" and the P-2 lodge accountable to them could not allow the pontiff to act on the papal throne, who was going to disperse their Vatican clientele.
Did the new Dad know about the conspiracy of the Freemasons? If he did not know everything, then, probably, a lot, and therefore he immediately decided to remove members of the dangerous masonic lodge and church hierarchs connected with it from the Vatican.
A naive native of the province, suddenly raised to the pinnacle of power, he wanted to change the Vatican, to clear the smoke from conspirators and schemers, and for this he paid dearly ...
In his book, David Yallop wrote that in September 1978, Marcinkus, Villiers, Calvi, Sindona, and Jelly had good reasons to fear the pontificate of John Paul I. “Also,” he continued, “there is no doubt that all of them will be for a number of reasons only win if Pope John Paul I died suddenly. And the Pope died ... ”“ I’m sure, ”concluded Yallop,“ that one of the six that night, September 28, 1978, took steps to remove the obstacle Albino Luciani had become from the first day of his pontificate. One of them stood in the very center of a secret conspiracy, suggesting the only Italian solution to the problem. ”
However, all these revelations remained on paper. The official version of the sudden death of Pope John Paul I is still the same - an extensive heart attack. The true mystery of the death of the “smiling pontiff” has remained undisclosed.
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