David Yallop presented a case for Pope John Paul I's poisoning. Yallop is an investigative reporter who wrote the book In God's Name which argues that in spite of a brief reign, the late Pope wanted reform. The priority for Luciani was the Vatican City Bank and its inter-connected Church financial institutions--the Church's temporal empire.
After Giovanni Montini's reign (Paul VI) the Vatican Bank had emerged as a multinational, highly financed and diversified institution, like the money changers in the Temple of Jesus' time, not a frequent lay over for the Holy Spirit. This emergence had begun 50 years before when the Vatican, deftly, negotiated with Benito Mussolini's fascist government and negotiated a similar concordant with Hitler's Nazi regime.
Luciani was seeking to dismantle this 50 years of Vatican financial history. Luciani addressed the Vatican diplomats--his first statements as Supreme Pontif and prior to his first Mass as Pope--"We have no temporal goods to offer, no economic interests to discuss."
This single statement stunned the diplomats. The banking and real estate owned by the Vatican Bank had combined assets of $3 billion. The Vatican Bank was an overwhelming force that had nearly demolished the Italian economy in the 1960's. The Italian government had approached the Holy See, seeking some tax revenue to be paid on the Bank's lucrative stock portfolio. The Holy See threatened to sell off all of its holdings onto the Italian stock exchange, a move that would have buried the Italian economy. Result: The Vatican remained tax exempt.
The most unsavory tie was the Vatican Bank's involvement with P2, the Masonic Lodge and probable criminal syndicate with members in the Italian government, the Mafia, and the Vatican itself. P2 was connected to a neo-fascist political cadre which resorted to terrorist activity including a train station bombing in Bologna.
Licio Gelli, P2 founder, was a business associate (hmm, Robert Wagner gave himself this label in his work with Bryan Kocis) of Klaus Barbie (a financial backer of Argentine dictator Juan Peron; CIA informan; and honored guest at Ronald Reagan's 1980 inauguration) which illustrates the veracity of the motto, "the doors to all bank vaults open to the right."
Bishop Paul Marcinkus, an American clergyman, ran the Vatican Bank. Bishop Marcinkus, for some unexplained reason, was walking through Vatican City at dawn on the morning Pope John Paul I was found dead. Marcinkus had never been known for 6 a.m. walks. He was known for having entered into numerous agreements and arangements on the Bank's behalf with P2 members Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi.
Sindona ended up in prison. Sindona had been an international speculator and Mafia thug who caused frauds that rocked banks in American and Italy with failures. Good Bishop Marcinkus would claim an ongoing business relationship (hmm something else Wagner claimed with Bryan Kocis) with Sindona. Alternatively, Marcinkus denied any meetings with Sindona.
Bishop Marcinkus said of Roberto Calvi, the other P2 speculator, "Calvi merits our trust. This I have no reason to doubt." Yallop wrote,
[Roberto Calvi's] comments are particularly illuminating, coming as they did just eight months after Calvi had been fined $13.7 million and sentenced to four months in prison, and only seven months after both the Vatican and Bishop Marcinkus discovered (the Vatican version of events) the Calvi had stolen ovr $1 billion and left the Vatican to pay the bill.
That Calvi was a corruption nightmare is an understatement. He was a pilfering Italian banker who took millions, the epitome of the white collar criminal. Immoral yes. His exemplar of behavior: Mario Puzo's novel, The Godfather.
Calvi's death and the scandals leading up to it formed the basis for The Godfather, Part III, a sequel to the film version of the Mafia saga. Calvi met Doom at the end of a noose tied to the underside of London's Blackfriar's Bridge. The coroner ruled the hanging a suicide, but more likely met Doom through his P2 associates (Wagner's favorite word). When the body was discovered, his pockets were loaded with bricks.
Marcinkus ordered the Vatican Bank to front for Roberto Calvi's complex and illegal stock deals. The Vatican Bank nominally owned many of the companies that were actually controlled by Calvi. The Vatican and Calvi raked in millions of dollars. Further, Calvi functioned as P2's financial manager. When Gelli phoned Calvi, he used the code name "Luciani."
The ethical papacy of Alberto Luciani placed this network in the maelstrom. Luciani was looking to divest the Vatican of its vast wealth--the Church, the bride of Christ, like Jesus, should be poor--and of Bishop Paul Marcinkus.
When Luciani died on 28 September 1978, of natural causes, it was a tremendous relief for Gelli, Calvi, Sindona, and Marcinkus, the Mafia and P2. The first three men had plotted before: Mafia rivals and police investigators. Marcinkus also had a motive for eliminating Pope John Paul I.
At the time of his death, Pope John Paul I, the world's most influential spiritual leader, went through his daily under virtually nonexistant security. Not only was Luciani both unguarded and unattended on the night of his death, some sources say that when his distress struck, he pushed a bedside alarm button. This alarm flash was ignored the Swiss Guardsman in charge of the Night Watch had retired for the evening. No one asked why the light in the papal apartments, visible from without, burned throughout the night, despite Pope John Paul's routine 9:30 p.m. bedtime.
Oddly, no post mortem was conducted on Pope John Paul I's remains. This raised eyebrows. The Vatican Secretary of State tried to placate the press, falsely stating that Church law prohibited papal autopsies (no such edict exists). Instead, the pope's death was ruled a heart attack--acute myocardial infraction--but no death certificate was issued for that, or any other, cause of death.
Yallop writes that without a post mortem, a fatal dose of digitalis would present the symptoms of a heart attack. Yallop selected digitalis because Gelli ordered all P2 lodge brothers to commit suicide with a dose of digitalis, provided providentially, by the lodge, if being forced to reveal P2 Lodge secrets.
Yallop was told that when Luciani's body was found, his hands held a set of notes detailing many of the changes he proposed in Vatican operations. The Vatican Secretary of State stated that Pope John Paul I held a copy of The Imitation of Christ. Reporters in attendance at that press conference broke out in disbelieving laughter.
When Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, was elected Luciani's successor he received a briefing on the reorganization plans of John Paul I. John Paul II did not implement any of them.
Reference:
Yallop, David. In God's Name. NY: Bantam, 1984.
