Part 1: In God's Name...The Road to Rome

In God’s Name 

David Yallop

Introduction

This book was first published in June 1984 and appeared simultaneously in many countries. To date it has been translated into thirty languages and the various editions have sold over six million copies. I have received many thousands of letters from readers; just seven letters were critical, the remainder were kind enough to praise the book and, more importantly, record the writers’ belief that Albino Luciani was in their view murdered and that the case has been powerfully proved. 

Vatican response was swift. Within days of publication and before any of these spokesmen had read the book the reaction that I had predicted in the first edition was there for all to hear.‘Taking fantastic speculation to new levels of absurdity.’ An Article of the Apostolic Constitution specifically ruled out post mortems on Popes.’ As this book demonstrates, that particular Vatican lie had served them well in 1978. 

The lies about the life and death of ‘The Smiling Pope’ began on the day his body was discovered. They have continued down the years to the present day. In June 1985 when the British paperback edition was first published I decided to make the Vatican’s task childishly simple: 

‘If the Vatican can prove me wrong on just two simple questions of fact – if they can prove that my account of who found the dead body of Albino Luciani is incorrect and can prove that my account of the papers he was holding in his hands is incorrect, then I will donate every penny of my royalties from the sales of this book to cancer research.’ The Vatican account of who found the body was their first lie. The papers that Albino Luciani was clutching were the smoking gun. 

In the light of the Vatican’s initial statements that this book was ‘Infamous rubbish’ and ‘Absurd fantasies’ the Vatican should have been able to demonstrate how incorrect my evidence and conclusions were within hours of reading my offer. That challenge was the subject of worldwide media comment. 

Nearly twenty-two years later I am still waiting for the Vatican to respond. In the light of subsequent revelations the continuing failure within the Vatican City State to take up that challenge was a wise decision. 

Nothing has come to light from any quarter since 1984 to cause me to alter the conclusions I had arrived during the research and writing of this book. Indeed the additional evidence that has come to hand which is examined in a postscript to this edition further confirms those original conclusions. 

David A. Yallop 

January 27th 2007 

Preface 

This book, the product of nearly three years’ intensive research, would not exist without the active help and co-operation of many people and many organizations. Very many of these only agreed to help on the strict understanding that they remained publicly unidentified. As with previous books I have written under similar conditions I respect their wishes. On this occasion there is an even greater need to protect their identity. As will become clear to the reader, murder is a frequent accompaniment to the events recorded here. A considerable number of those murders remain officially unsolved. No one should doubt that the individuals responsible for those deaths have the capacity to murder again. To reveal the names of men and women who provided me with crucial help and who are now at risk would be an act of criminal irresponsibility. To them I owe a particular debt. Their reasons for divulging a wide range of information were many and varied but again and again I heard the remark, ‘The truth must be told. If you are prepared to tell it, then so be it.’ I am deeply grateful to all of them and to the following, who with the greatest respect I classify as the tip of the iceberg: 

Professor Amedeo Alexandre, Professor Leonardo Ancona, William Aronwald, Linda Attwell, Josephine Ayres, Alan Bailey, Dr Shamus Banim, Dr Derek Barrowcliff, Pia Basso, Father Aldo Belli, Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, Marco Borsa, Vittore Branca, David Buckley, Father Roberto Busa, Dr Renato Buzzonetti, Roberto Calvi, Emilio Cavaterra, Cardinal Mario Ciappi, Brother Clemente, Joseph Coffey, Annaloa Copps, Rupert Cornwall, Monsignor Ausilio Da Rif, Dr Giuseppe Da Ros, Maurizio De Luca, Danielle Doglio, Monsignor Mafeo Ducoli, Father François Evain, Cardinal Pericle Felici, Father Mario Ferrarese, Professor Luigi Fontana, Mario di Francesco, Dr Carlo Frizziero, Professor Piero Fucci, Father Giovanni Gennari, Monsignor Mario Ghizzo, Father Carlo Gonzalez, Father Andrew Greeley, Diane Hall, Doctor John Henry, Father Thomas Hunt, William Jackson, John J. Kenney, Peter Lemos, Dr David Levison, Father Diego Lorenzi, Edoardo Luciani, William Lynch, Ann McDiarmid, Father John Magee, Sandro Magister, Alexander Manson, Professor Vincenzo Masini, Father Francis Murphy, Monsignor Giulio Nicolini, Anna Nogara, Father Gerry O’Collins, Father Romeo Panciroli, Father Gianni Pastro, Lena Petri, Nina Petri, Professor Pier Luigi Prati, Professor Giovanni Rama, Roberto Rosone, Professor Fausto Rovelli, Professor Vincenzo Rulli, Ann Ellen Rutherford, Monsignor Tiziano Scalzotto, Monsignor Mario Senigaglia, Arnaldo Signoracci, Ernesto Signoracci, Father Bartolomeo Sorges, Lorana Sullivan, Father Francesco Taffarel, Sister Vincenza, Professor Thomas Whitehead, Phillip Willan. I am also grateful to the following organizations: the Augustinian Residence, Rome, Banco San Marco, the Bank of England, the Bank of International Settlements, Basle, the Bank of Italy, Catholic Central Library, Catholic Truth Society, City of London Police, the Department of Trade, Statistics and Market Intelligence Library, the English College, Rome, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Gregorian University, Rome, New Cross Hospital Poisons Unit, Opus Dei, the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, the Tribunal of the Ward of Luxembourg, US Department of State, US District Court Southern District of New York, Vatican Press Office, and Vatican Radio. 

Among those I cannot thank publicly are the people resident within Vatican City who contacted me and initiated my investigation of the events surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani. The fact that men and women living within the heart of the Roman Catholic Church cannot speak openly and be identified is an eloquent comment on the state of affairs within the Vatican. 

Doubtless this book will be attacked by some and dismissed by others. It will be seen by some as an assault on the Roman Catholic faith in particular and on Christianity in general. It is neither of these. To a degree it is an indictment of specifically named men who were born Roman Catholics but who have never become Christians. 

As such this book is not an attack on ‘The Faith’ of the Church’s devout millions who follow it. What they hold sacred is too important to be left in the hands of men who have conspired to drag the message of Christ into the muddy market place – a conspiracy that has met with frightening success. 

As already indicated I am met with an insurmountable difficulty when faced with the task of naming specific sources within the text. Who exactly told me what or provided the documentary information must remain secret. I can assure the reader that all the information, all the details, all the facts, have been checked and double checked to the extent multiple sources were available. I take the responsibility for putting the evidence together and for the conclusions reached. 

I am sure that the fact that I recount conversations between men dead before my investigation began will be cause for comment. How for example could I know what passed between Pope John Paul I and Cardinal Jean Villot on the day they discussed the issue of birth control? Within the Vatican there is no such thing as a private audience that remains completely private. Quite simply both men subsequently talked to others of what had transpired. These secondary sources, sometimes with deeply differing personal opinions on the issue discussed by the Pope and his Secretary of State, provided the words attributed. Therefore while the dialogue within this book is reconstructed, it is not fabricated.

Prologue 

The spiritual leader of nearly one-fifth of the world’s population wields immense power: but any uninformed observer of Albino Luciani at the beginning of his reign as Pope John Paul I would have found it difficult to believe that this man truly embodied such power. The diffidence and humility emanating from this small, quiet, 65-year-old Italian had led many to conclude that this Papacy would not be particularly noteworthy. The well-informed, however, knew differently: Albino Luciani had embarked on a revolution. 

On September 28th, 1978 he had been Pope for thirty-three days. In little more than a month he had initiated various courses of action which, if completed, would have a direct and dynamic effect upon us all. The majority in this world would applaud his decisions, a minority would be appalled. The man who had quickly been labelled ‘The Smiling Pope’ intended to remove the smiles from a number of faces on the following day. 

That evening Luciani sat down to dinner in the third-floor dining-room of the Apostolic Palace within Vatican City. With him were his two secretaries, Father Diego Lorenzi, who had worked closely with him in Venice for over two years when, as a Cardinal, Luciani had been Patriarch there, and Father John Magee, newly acquired since the Papal election. As the nuns who worked in the Papal Apartments hovered anxiously, Albino Luciani ate a frugal meal of clear soup, veal, fresh beans and a little salad. He sipped occasionally from a glass of water and considered the events of the day and the decisions he had made. He had not wanted the job. He had not sought or canvassed for the Papacy. Now as Head of State the awesome responsibilities were his. 

While Sisters Vincenza, Assunta, Clorinda and Gabriella quietly served the three men as they watched on television the events which preoccupied Italy that evening, other men in other places were being caused deep anxiety by the activities of Albino Luciani. 

One floor below the Papal Apartments the lights were still on in the Vatican Bank. Its head, Bishop Paul Marcinkus, had other more pressing problems on his mind than his evening meal. Chicago-born Marcinkus had learned about survival on the back-streets of Cicero, Illinois. During his meteoric rise to the position of ‘God’s Banker’ he had survived many moments of crisis. Now he was confronted with the most serious he had ever faced. In the past thirty-three days his colleagues in the Bank had noticed a remarkable change in the man who controlled the Vatican’s millions. The 6ft 3in, 16-stone extrovert had become moody and introspective. He was visibly losing weight and his face had acquired a grey pallor. Vatican City in many respects is a village and secrets are hard to keep in a village. Word had reached Marcinkus that the new Pope had quietly begun his own personal investigation of the Vatican Bank and specifically into the methods Marcinkus was using to run that Bank. Countless times since the arrival of the new Pope, Marcinkus had regretted that business in 1972 concerning the Banca Cattolica del Veneto. 

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Jean Villot was another who was still at his desk on that September evening. He studied the list of appointments, resignations to be asked for, and transfers which the Pope had handed to him one hour previously. He had advised, argued, remonstrated but to no avail. Luciani had been adamant. 

It was by any standards a dramatic reshuffle. It would set the Church in new directions; directions which Villot, and the others on the list who were about to be replaced, considered highly dangerous. When these changes were announced there would be millions of words written and uttered by the world’s media, analyzing, dissecting, prophesying, explaining. The real explanation, however, would not be discussed, would not be given a public airing – there was one common denominator, one fact that linked each of the men about to be replaced. Villot was aware of it. More important, so was the Pope. It had been one of the factors that had caused him to act: to strip these men of real power and put them into relatively harmless positions. It was Freemasonry. 

The evidence the Pope had acquired indicated that within the Vatican City State there were over 100 Masons, ranging from Cardinals to priests. This despite the fact that Canon Law stated that to be a Freemason ensured automatic excommunication. Luciani was further preoccupied with an illegal masonic lodge which had penetrated far beyond Italy in its search for wealth and power. It called itself P2. The fact that it had penetrated the Vatican walls and formed masonic links with priests, bishops and even Cardinals made P2 anathema to Albino Luciani. 

Villot had already become deeply concerned about the new Papacy before this latest bombshell. He was one of the very few who was aware of the dialogue taking place between the Pope and the State Department in Washington. He knew that on October 23rd the Vatican would be receiving a Congressional delegation, and that on October 24th the delegation would be having a private audience with the Pope. The subject: birth control. 

Villot had looked carefully at the Vatican dossier on Albino Luciani. He had also read the secret memorandum that Luciani, then Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, had sent to Paul VI before the Papal announcement of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, an encyclical which prohibited Catholics using any artificial form of birth control. His own discussions with Luciani had left him in no doubt where the new Pope stood on this issue. Equally, in Villot’s mind, there was no doubt what Paul’s successor was now planning to do. There was to be a dramatic change of position. Some would agree with Villot’s view that it was a betrayal of Paul VI. Many would acclaim it as the Church’s greatest contribution to the twentieth century. 

In Buenos Aires, another banker, Roberto Calvi, had Pope John Paul I on his mind as September 1978 drew to a close. In the preceding weeks he had discussed the problems posed by the new Pope with his protectors, Licio Gelli and Umberto Ortolani, two men who could list among their many assets their complete control of Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. Calvi had been beset with problems even before the Papal election that placed Albino Luciani upon St Peter’s chair. The Bank of Italy had been secretly investigating Calvi’s Milan bank since April. It was an investigation prompted by a mysterious poster campaign against Calvi which had erupted in late 1977: posters which gave details of some of Calvi’s criminal activities and hinted at a world-wide range of criminal acts. 

Calvi was aware of exactly what progress the Bank of Italy was making with its investigation. His close friendship with Licio Gelli ensured a day-by-day account of it. He was equally aware of the Papal investigation into the Vatican Bank. Like Marcinkus he knew it was only a matter of time before the two independent investigations realized that to probe one of these financial empires was to probe both. He was doing everything within his considerable power to thwart the Bank of Italy and protect his financial empire, from which he was in the process of stealing over one billion dollars. 

Careful analysis of Roberto Calvi’s position in September 1978 makes it abundantly clear that if Pope Paul was succeeded by an honest man then Calvi faced total ruin, the collapse of his bank and certain imprisonment. There is no doubt whatever that Albino Luciani was just such a man. 

In New York, Sicilian banker Michele Sindona had also been anxiously monitoring Pope John Paul’s activities. For over three years Sindona had been fighting the Italian Government’s attempts to have him extradited. They wanted him brought to Milan to face charges involving fraudulent diversion of 225 million dollars. Earlier that year, in May, it appeared that Sindona had finally lost the long battle. A Federal Judge had ruled that the extradition request should be granted. 

Sindona remained on a 3 million dollar bail while his lawyers prepared to play one last card. They demanded that the United States Government prove that there was well-founded evidence to justify extradition. Sindona asserted that the charges brought against him by the Italian Government were the work of Communist and other left-wing politicians. His lawyers also asserted that the Milan prosecutor had concealed evidence that would clear Sindona and that if their client was returned to Italy he would almost certainly be assassinated. The hearing was scheduled for November. 

That summer, in New York, others were equally active on behalf of Michele Sindona. One Mafia member, Luigi Ronsisvalle, a professional killer; was threatening the life of witness Nicola Biase, who had earlier given evidence against Sindona in the extradition proceedings. The Mafia also had a contract out on the life of assistant United States attorney John Kenney, who was Chief Prosecutor in the extradition proceedings. The fee being offered for the murder of the Government attorney was 100,000 dollars. 

If Pope John Paul I continued to dig into the affairs of the Vatican Bank then no amount of Mafia contracts would help Sindona in his fight against being returned to Italy. The web of corruption at the Vatican Bank, which included the laundering of Mafia money through that Bank, went back beyond Calvi: back to Michele Sindona. 

In Chicago another Prince of the Catholic Church worried and fretted about events in the Vatican City: Cardinal John Cody, head of the richest archdiocese in the world. Cody ruled over two-and-a half million Catholics and nearly 3,000 priests, over 450 parishes and an annual income that he refused to reveal in its entirety to anyone. It was in fact in excess of 250 million dollars. Fiscal secrecy was only one of the problems that whirled around Cody. By 1978 he had ruled Chicago for thirteen years. In those years the demands for his replacement had reached extraordinary proportions. Priests, nuns, lay workers, people from many secular professions had petitioned Rome in their thousands for the removal of a man they regarded as a despot. 

Pope Paul had agonized for years about removing Cody. He had on at least one occasion actually steeled himself and made the decision, only to revoke the order at the last moment. The complex, tortured personality of Paul was only part of the reason for the vacillation. Paul knew that other secret allegations had been made against Cody, with a substantial amount of evidence which indicated the urgent need to replace the Cardinal of Chicago. 

During late September, Cody received a phone call from Rome. The Vatican City village had leaked another piece of information – information well paid for over the years by Cardinal Cody. The caller told the Cardinal that where Pope Paul had agonized his successor John Paul had acted. The Pope had decided that Cardinal John Cody was to be replaced. 

Over at least three of these men lurked the shadow of another, Licio Gelli. Men called him ‘Il Burattinaio’ – the Puppet Master. The puppets were many and were placed in numerous countries. He controlled P2 and through it he controlled Italy. In Buenos Aires, the city where he discussed the problem of the new Pope with Calvi, the Puppet Master had organized the triumphant return to power of General Peron – a fact that Peron subsequently acknowledged by kneeling at Gelli’s feet. If Marcinkus, Sindona or Calvi were threatened by the various courses of action planned by Albino Luciani, it was in Licio Gelli’s direct interests that the threat should be removed. 

It was abundantly clear that on September 28th, 1978, these six men, Marcinkus, Villot, Calvi, Sindona, Cody and Gelli had much to fear if the Papacy of John Paul I continued. It is equally clear that all of them stood to gain in a variety of ways if Pope John Paul I should suddenly die. 

He did. 

Sometime during the late evening of September 28th, 1978 and the early morning of September 29th, 1978, thirty-three days after his election, Albino Luciani died. 

Time of death: unknown. Cause of death: unknown. 

I am convinced that the full facts and the complete circumstances which are merely outlined in the preceding pages hold the key to the truth of the death of Albino Luciani. I am equally convinced that one of these six men had, by the early evening of September 28th, 1978, already initiated a course of action to resolve the problems that Albino Luciani’s Papacy was posing. One of these men was at the very heart of a conspiracy that applied a uniquely Italian solution. 

Albino Luciani had been elected Pope on August 26th, 1978. Shortly after that Conclave, the English Cardinal Basil Hume said: ‘The decision was unexpected. But once it had happened, it seemed totally and entirely right. The feeling he was just what we want was so general that he was unmistakably God’s candidate.’ 

Thirty-three days later ‘God’s candidate’ died. 

What follows is the product of three years’ continuous and intensive investigation into that death. I have evolved a number of rules for an investigation of this nature. Rule One: begin at the beginning. Ascertain the nature and personality of the dead subject. What manner of man was Albino Luciani?

The Road to Rome 

The Luciani family lived in the small mountain village of Canale d’Agordo, * nearly 1,000 metres above sea level and approximately 120 kilometres north of Venice. 

At the time of Albino’s birth on October 17th, 1912, his parents Giovanni and Bortola were already caring for two daughters from the father’s first marriage. As a young widower with two girls and lacking a regular job Giovanni would not have been every young woman’s dream come true. Bortola had been contemplating the life of a convent nun. Now she was mother to three children. The birth had been long and arduous and Bortola, displaying an over-anxiety that would become a feature of the boy’s early life, feared that the child was about to die. He was promptly baptized, with the name Albino, in memory of a close friend of his father who had been killed in a blast furnace accident while working alongside Giovanni in Germany. The boy came into a world that within two years would be at war, after the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife had been assassinated. 

The first fourteen years of this century are considered by many Europeans to have been a golden age. Countless writers have described the stability, the general feeling of well-being, the widespread increase in mass culture, the satisfying spiritual life, the broadening of horizons and the reduction of social inequalities. They extol the freedom of thought and the quality of life as if it were an Edwardian Garden of Eden. Doubtless all this existed, but so did appalling poverty, mass unemployment, social inequality, hunger, illness and early death. Much of the world was divided by these two realities. Italy was no exception. 

Naples was besieged by thousands of people who wanted to emigrate to the USA, or England, or anywhere. Already the United States had written some small print under the heroic declaration, ‘Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ The ‘wretched refuse’ now discovered that disease, insufficient funds, contract labour, criminality, and physical deformity were a few of the grounds for rejection from admission to the United States. 

In Rome, within sight of St Peter’s, thousands lived on a permanent basis in huts of straw and brushwood. In the summer many moved to the caves in the surrounding hills. Some did dawn to dusk work in vineyards at fourpence a day. On farms others worked the same hours and received no money at all. Payment was usually in rotten maize, one of the reasons that so many agricultural labourers suffered from a skin disease called pellagra. Standing waist deep in the rice fields of Pavia ensured that many contracted malaria from the frequent mosquito bites. Illiteracy was over 50 per cent. While Pope after Pope yearned for the return of the Papal States, these conditions were the reality of life for many who lived in this united Italy. 

The village of Canale was dominated by children, women and old men. The majority of men of working age were forced to seek work further afield. Giovanni Luciani would travel to Switzerland, Austria, Germany and France, leaving in the spring and returning in the autumn. 

The Luciani home, partly converted from an old barn, had one source of heating, an old wood- burning stove which heated the room where Albino was born. There was no garden – such items are considered luxuries by the mountain people. The scenery more than compensated: pine forests and, soaring directly above the village, the stark snow-capped mountains; the river Bioi cascaded down close to the village square. 

Albino Luciani’s parents were an odd mix. The deeply religious Bortola spent as much time in the church as she did in her small home, worrying over her increasingly large family. She was the kind of mother who at the slightest cough would over-anxiously rush any of her children to the nearby medical officers stationed on the border. Devout, with aspirations to martyrdom, she was prone to tell the children frequently of the many sacrifices she was obliged to make on their behalf. The father, Giovanni, wandered a Europe at war seeking work that ranged from bricklaying and engineering to being an electrician and mechanic. As a committed Socialist he was regarded by devout Catholics as a priest-eating, crucifix-burning devil. The combination produced inevitable frictions. The memory of his mother’s reaction when she saw her husband’s name on posters which were plastered all over the village announcing that he was standing in a local election as a Socialist stayed with the young Albino for the rest of his life. 

Albino was followed by another son, Edoardo, then a girl, Antonia. Bortola added to their small income by writing letters for the illiterate and working as a scullery maid. 

The family diet consisted of polenta (corn meal), barley, macaroni and any vegetables that came to hand. On special occasions there might be a dessert of carfoni, pastry full of ground poppy seeds. Meat was a rarity. In Canale if a man was wealthy enough to afford the luxury of killing a pig it would be salted and last his family for a year. 

Albino’s vocation for the priesthood came early and was actively encouraged by his mother and the local parish priest, Father Filippo Carli. Yet if any single person deserves credit for ensuring that Albino Luciani took his first steps towards priesthood it is the irreligious Socialist, Giovanni. If Albino was to attend the minor seminary at nearby Feltre it was going to cost the Luciani family a considerable sum. Mother and son discussed this shortly before the boy’s eleventh birthday. Eventually Bortola told her son to sit down and write to his father, then working in France. Albino was later to say it was one of the most important letters of his life. 

His father received the letter and thought the problem over for a while before replying. Then he gave his permission and accepted the added burden with the words, ‘Well, we must make this sacrifice’. 

So, in 1923, the eleven-year-old Luciani went off to the seminary – to the internal war that was raging within the Roman Catholic Church. This was a Church where books such as Antonio Rosmini; The Five Wounds of the Church were banned. Rosmini, an Italian theologian and priest, had written in 1848 that the Church faced a crisis of five evils: social remoteness of the clergy from the people; the low standard of education of the priests; disunity and acrimony among the bishops; the dependence of lay appointments on secular authorities; and Church ownership of property and enslavement to wealth. Rosmini had hoped for liberalizing reform. What he got, largely as a result of Jesuit intrigue, was the condemnation of his book and the withdrawal of the cardinal’s hat which Pius IX had offered him. 

Only fifty-eight years before Luciani’s birth the Vatican had proclaimed the Syllabus of Errors and an accompanying encyclical, Quanta Cura. In these the Papacy denounced unrestricted liberty of speech and the freedom of press comment. The concept of equal status for all religions was totally rejected. The Pope responsible for these measures was Pius IX. He also made it clear that he disliked intensely the concept of democratic government and that his preference was for absolute monarchies. He further denounced ‘the proponents of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion’ as well as ‘all of those who assert that the Church may not use force’. 

In 1870, this same pope, having summoned a Vatican Council, indicated to the assembled bishops that the main item on the agenda was Papal infallibility. His infallibility. After much intensive lobbying and some very unChristian-like pressure the Pope suffered a major moral defeat when, out of over 1,000 members entitled to take part in the Council, only 451 bishops voted for the concept. By an agreed strategy all but two of the dissenters left Rome before the final vote was taken. At the last meeting of the Council on July 18th, 1870, it was decided by 535 votes to 2 that the Pope was infallible when defining a doctrine concerning faith or morals. 

Until they were liberated by Italian troops in 1870 the Jews in Rome had been locked in a ghetto by the Pope who became infallible. He was equally intolerant of Protestants and recommended the introduction of prison sentences for non-Catholics who were preaching in Tuscany. At the time of writing considerable efforts are being made to have Pius IX canonized and made a saint. 

After Pius IX came Leo XIII, considered by many historians to have been an enlightened and humane man. He was followed by Pius X, thought by many of the same historians to have been a total disaster. He reigned until 1914 and the damage he did was still very evident when Albino Luciani entered the Feltre seminary. 

The Index of books which no Roman Catholic was allowed to read grew ever longer. Publishers, editors, and authors were excommunicated. When critical books were published anonymously, the authors, whoever they were, were excommunicated. The Pope coined a word to encapsulate all that he was attempting to destroy: ‘modernism’. Any who questioned the current teachings of the Church were anathema. With the Pope’s blessing and financial help an Italian prelate, Umberto Benigni, created a spy system. The purpose was to hunt and destroy all modernists. Thus in the twentieth century the Inquisition was re-born. 

With the diminution of his worldly powers through the loss of the Papal States the self-proclaimed ‘prisoner in the Vatican’ was not in a position to order any burnings at the stake, but a nudge here, a wink there, anonymous and unsupported allegations about a colleague or possible rival were enough to destroy many careers within the Church. The mother was eating her own children. The majority of those whom Pius and the men around him destroyed were loyal and faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Seminaries were closed. Those that were allowed to remain open to teach the next generation of priests were carefully monitored. In one encyclical the Pope declared that everyone who preached or taught in an official capacity had to take a special oath abjuring all errors of modernism. He further declared a general prohibition against the reading of newspapers by all seminarians and theological students, specifically adding that his rule also applied to the very best journals. 

Every year Father Benigni, the man in charge of the spy ring that eventually reached through every single diocese in Italy and right across Europe, received a subsidy of 1,000 lire ($5,000 is an approximate modern equivalent) directly from the Pope. This secret organization of spies was not disbanded until 1921. Father Benigni then became an informant and spy for Mussolini. 

Pius X died on August 20th, 1914. He was canonized in 1954. 

So at Feltre, Luciani found it was a crime to read a newspaper or periodical. He was in an austere world where the teachers were as vulnerable as the pupils. A word or comment that did not meet with the entire approval of a colleague might result in a teaching priest losing the right to teach, because of Father Benigni’s spy ring. Although officially disbanded in 1921, two years before Luciani entered Feltre, its influence was still prevalent throughout his entire period of training for the priesthood. Critical questioning of what was being taught would have been anathema. The system was designed to give answers, not to encourage questions. The teachers who had been marked and scarred by the purge in turn would mark and scar the next generation. 

Albino Luciani’s generation of priests had to cope with the full force of the Syllabus of Errors and anti-modernism mentality. Luciani himself might easily have become, under such dominant influences, yet another priest with a closed mind. A variety of factors saved him from that fate. Not the least was a simple but great gift, a thirst for knowledge. 

Despite his mother’s exaggeration about his early health there was one considerable bonus in her over-protectiveness. By refusing to let the boy enjoy the rough and tumble of his friends and by replacing the ball with a book she opened the entire world to her son. He began to read voraciously at an early age the complete works of Dickens and Jules Verne. Mark Twain, for example, he read at the age of seven, unusual in a country where still nearly half the adults could not read at all at that time. 

At Feltre he absorbed every book they had. More significantly he remembered virtually everything he read. He was endowed with an astonishing memory. Consequently, though provocative questions might be frowned upon, Luciani would from time to time have the temerity to ask them. His teachers considered him diligent but ‘too lively’. 

In the summers the young seminarian would return home and, dressed in his long black cassock, work in the fields. When not helping with the harvest he could be found ‘re-organizing’ Father Filippo’s library. The school terms would be enlivened from time to time by a visit from his father. The first act performed by Giovanni upon returning home in the autumn was always a visit to the seminary. He would then spend the winter campaigning on behalf of the Socialists. 

From Feltre, Luciani graduated to the major seminary at Belluno. One of his contemporaries recalled for me the regime at Belluno: 

We were woken up at 5.30 a.m. No heating, indeed the water would often be solid ice. I used to lose my vocation every morning for five minutes. We had thirty minutes to get washed and make our beds. 

I met Luciani there in September 1929. He was then sixteen. He was always amiable, quiet, serene – unless you stated something that was inaccurate – then he was like a spring. I learned that in front of him one had to speak carefully. Any muddled thinking and you were in danger with him. 

Among the books Luciani read were a number of works by Antonio Rosmini. Conspicuous by its absence from the seminary library was The Five Wounds of the Church. In 1930 it still remained on the Index of Forbidden Books. Aware by now of the furore that the book had caused, Luciani quietly acquired his own copy. It was to have a deep and lasting influence upon his life. 

To Luciani’s teachers the Syllabus of Errors proclaimed in 1864 by Pius IX was to be considered in the 1930s as the ultimate truth. The toleration of a non-Catholic opinion in any country where Catholics were in a majority was inconceivable. Mussolini’s version of Fascism was not the only one being taught in Italy in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. Error had no rights. The exception apparently was if it was the teacher who was in error, then its rights were absolute. 

Luciani’s vision, far from being expanded by his teachers, began, in certain respects, to shrink. Fortunately he was subjected to influences other than his teachers. Another former class-mate at Belluno recalled: 

He read Goldoni’s dramas. He read French novelists of the nineteenth century. He bought a collection of the writings of the seventeenth century French Jesuit, Pierre Couwase and read them from cover to cover. 

So strongly did the writings of Couwase influence him that Luciani began to think seriously of becoming a Jesuit. He watched as first one, then a second, of his close friends went to the Rector, Bishop Giosué Cattarossi, and asked for permission to join the Jesuit order. In both instances the permission was granted. Luciani went and asked for permission. The Bishop considered the request then responded, ‘No, three is one too many. You had better stay here.’ 

At the age of twenty-three he was ordained priest, on July 7th, 1935 in San Pietro, Belluno. The following day he celebrated his first mass in his home town. His delight at being appointed curate in Forno di Canale was total. The fact that this is the humblest clerical position within the Church was of no consequence to him. In the congregation of friends, relations, local priests and immediate family was a very proud Giovanni Luciani, who now had a permanent job relatively close to home as a glass-blower on the island of Murano near Venice. 

In 1937 Luciani was appointed Vice-Rector at his old seminary in Belluno. If the content of his teaching at this time differed little from that of his own tutors, his manner certainly did. He lifted what was often dull and tedious theology to something fresh and memorable. After four years he felt the need to expand. He wanted to gain a doctorate in theology. This would mean moving to Rome and studying at the Gregorian University. His superiors in Belluno wanted him to continue teaching there while he studied for his doctorate. Luciani was agreeable but the Gregorian University insisted on at least one year’s obligatory attendance in Rome. 

After the intervention of Angelo Santin, the director at Belluno, and Father Felice Capello, a renowned expert on Canon Law who taught at the Gregorian and ‘happened’ to be related to Luciani, Pope Pius XII personally granted a dispensation in a letter signed by Cardinal Maglione and dated March 27th, 1941. (The fact that the Second World War was in full flood at the time is not apparent from the Vatican correspondence.) Luciani chose for his thesis, ‘The origin of the human soul according to Antonio Rosmini’. 

His experiences during the war were an extraordinary mixture of the sacred and the profane. They included improving his German as he listened to the confessions of soldiers from the Third Reich. They included meticulous study of Rosmini’s works, or that part of them that was not banned. Later when Luciani became Pope it would be said that his thesis was ‘brilliant’. That at least was the view of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, which they had not expressed in the pre-conclave biographies. It is not a view shared by teachers at the Gregorian. One described it to me as ‘a competent piece of work’. Another said, ‘In my opinion it is worthless. It shows extreme conservatism and also lacks scholarly method.’ 

Many would say that Luciani’s interest in and involvement with the works of Rosmini were clear indications of his liberal thinking. The Albino Luciani of the 1940s was far from being a liberal. His thesis attempts to refute Rosmini on each point. He attacks the nineteenth-century theologian for using second-hand and incorrect quotations, for his superficiality, for ‘ingenious cleverness’. It is a scathing demolition job and a clear indication of a reactionary mind. 

In between establishing that Rosmini had misquoted St Thomas Aquinas, Albino Luciani trod a delicate path when teaching his students at Belluno. He told them not to intervene when they saw German troops rounding up local resistance groups. Privately he was in sympathy with the resistance but he was aware that among the trainee priests in the classroom were many who were pro-Fascist. He was equally aware that the resistance movement was provoking reprisals by the Germans against the civilian population. Houses were destroyed; men were taken out and hanged on trees. In the latter part of the war, however, Luciani’s seminary became a haven for members of the resistance. Discovery by the German troops would have resulted in certain death, not only for the resistance fighters but also for Luciani and his colleagues. 

On November 23rd, 1946 Luciani defended his thesis. It was finally published on April 4th, 1950. He obtained a magnum cum laude and became a Doctor of Theology. 

In 1947, the Bishop of Belluno, Girolamo Bortignon, made Luciani Pro-Vicar-General of the diocese and asked him to organize the approaching Synod and inter-diocesan meeting of Feltre and Belluno. The increase in responsibility coincided with a broadening outlook. While still unable to come to terms with Rosmini’s ‘Origins of the Soul’ Luciani had begun to appreciate and agree with Rosmini’s view of what ailed the Church. The fact that the same problems still obtained a hundred years later made the factors of social remoteness, an uneducated priesthood, disunion among bishops, the unhealthy interlocking of power between Church and State and most of all the Church’s preoccupation with material wealth, even more pertinent. 

In 1949, Luciani was made responsible for catechetics in preparation for the Eucharistic Congress that was taking place that year in Belluno. This, plus his own experiences of teaching, prompted his first venture in authorship, a small book embodying his views entitled Catechsi in Briciole (Crumbs from the Catechism). 

Catechism classes: possibly these are the earliest memory of most adult Catholics. Many theologians would dismiss them but it is precisely this stage of growth that the Jesuits refer to when they talk of ‘catching a child for life’. Albino Luciani was one of the best teachers of this subject the Church has had in this century. He had the simplicity of thought that comes only to the highly intelligent, and added to this was a genuine, deep humility. 

By 1958, Don Albino, as he was known by all, had a settled life. His mother and father were both dead. He paid frequent visits to his brother, Edoardo, now married and living in the family home, and to his sister, Antonia, also married and living in Trento. As Vicar-General of Belluno he had more than enough work to occupy him. For leisure there were his books. He had little interest in food, eating whatever was put in front of him. His main forms of exercise were cycling around his diocese or climbing the nearby mountains. 

This small, quiet man succeeded, apparently without trying, in having an extraordinary and lasting effect on people. Again and again as I talked to those who knew him I could see a remarkable change happen within the person recalling Albino Luciani. Their faces would soften, quite literally relax. They would smile. They smiled a great deal as they recalled the man. They grew gentler before my eyes. He clearly touched something very deep within them. Catholics would call it the soul. Happily oblivious, Albino Luciani was already leaving a unique legacy as he cycled around Belluno. 

In the Vatican there was a new Pope, John XXIII, a man born at nearby Bergamo, which was also the birth-place of the man from whom Albino acquired his Christian name. John was busy shuffling episcopal appointments. Urbani to Venice to replace himself, Carraro to Verona. In Vittorio Veneto there was a vacancy for a bishop. The Pope asked Bishop Bortignon for a name. The response made him smile. ‘I know him. I know him. He will do me fine.’ 

Luciani, with that disarming humility that so many would later totally fail to comprehend, declared after his appointment as Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, ‘Well, I have taken a couple of train journeys with him, but he did most of the talking. I said so little he could not have got to know me.’ 

The 46-year-old Luciani was ordained Bishop by Pope John in St Peter’s Basilica two days after Christmas, 1958. 

The Pope was fully aware of the pastoral activities of the young man from the north and he praised him warmly. Picking up a copy of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis Pope John read aloud Chapter 23. In it the four elements that bring peace and personal liberty are quoted: 

My son, try to do another’s will rather than your own. Always choose to have less rather than more. Always choose the lowest place and to be less than everyone else. Always long and pray that the Will of God may be fully realized in your life. You will find that the man who does all this walks in the land of peace and quietness. 

Before his ordination, Luciani had written of the coming event in a letter to Monsignor Capovilla, the Pope’s private secretary. One phrase he used strikingly demonstrates how closely he was already attempting to lead a life that embraced the ideals of Thomas à Kempis, ‘Sometimes the Lord writes his works in dust’. 

The first time the congregation gathered to hear their new bishop in Vittorio Veneto, he elaborated on this theme: 

With me the Lord uses yet again his old system. He takes the small ones from the mud of the streets. He takes the people of the fields. He takes others away from their nets in the sea or the lake, and he makes them Apostles. It’s his old system. 

As soon as I became consecrated a priest I started to receive from my superiors tasks of responsibility and I have understood what it is for a man to be in authority. It is like a ball that is pumped up. If you watch the children who play on the grass outside this Cathedral when their ball is punctured they don’t even bother to look at it. It can stay with tranquillity in a corner. But when it is pumped up the children jump out from all sides and every one believes that they have the right to kick it. This is what happens to men when they move up. Do not therefore be envious. 

Later he talked to the 400 priests who were now answerable to him. A number of them had offered him gifts, food, money. He declined these. When they were all gathered he attempted to explain the reason: ‘I come without five lire. I want to leave without five lire.’ 

He continued: 

My dear priests. My dear faithful. I would be a very unfortunate bishop if I didn’t love you. I assure you that I do, and that I want to be at your service and put at your disposal all of my poor energies, the little that I have and the little that I am. 

He had the choice of living in a luxurious apartment in the city or a more spartan life in the Castle of San Martino. He chose the Castle. 

For many bishops their life is a relatively remote one. There is an automatic gulf between them and their flock, accepted by both. The bishop is an elusive figure, seen only on special occasions. Albino Luciani took a different view of his role in Vittorio Veneto. He dressed as a simple priest and took the gospel to his people. With his priests he practised a form of democracy that was at that time extremely rare within the Church. His Presbyterian Council for example was elected entirely without nominations from the bishop. 

When that same Council recommended the closure of a particular minor seminary despite the fact that he did not agree with the decision, he went to all his parishes and quietly talked over the issue with the parish priests. As soon as it became clear to him that the majority favoured the closure he authorized it. The pupils were sent on the instructions of this former seminarian to state schools. He later stated publicly that the majority view had been right and his own wrong. 

No priest ever had to make an appointment to see his bishop. If one came, he was seen. Some considered his democracy a weakness. Others saw him differently and compared him to the man who had made him bishop. 

It was like having your own personal Pope. It was as if Papa Roncalli [John XXIII] was here in this diocese working alongside us. His table usually had two or three priests at it. He simply could not stop giving of himself. One moment he would be visiting the sick or the handicapped. They never knew at the hospitals when he was coming. He would just turn up on a bike or in his old car leaving his secretary to read outside while he wandered the wards. The next moment he would turn up in one of the mountain villages to discuss a particular problem with the local priest. 

In the second week of January 1959, less than three weeks after he had ordained Bishop Luciani, Pope John was discussing world affairs with his pro-Secretary of State, Cardinal Domenico Tardini. They discussed the implications of what a young man named Fidel Castro was doing to the Batista regime in Cuba; of the fact that France had a new President, General Charles de Gaulle; of the Russian demonstration of advanced technology in sending a new rocket into orbit around the moon. They discussed the revolt in Algeria, the appalling poverty in many Latin American countries, the changing face of Africa with a new nation seemingly emerging each week. It seemed to John that the Roman Catholic Church was not coming to terms with the problems of the mid-twentieth century. It was a crucial point in history with a significant part of the world turning to things material and away from things spiritual. Unlike many in the Vatican the Pope considered that reform, like charity, should begin at home. Suddenly John had an idea. He was later to say it was an inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Wherever it came from it was an excellent one: ‘A Council’. 

Thus did the idea for the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council emerge. The first in 1870 had resulted in giving the Church an infallible Pope. The effects of the second, many years after its conclusion, are still reverberating around the world. 

On October 11th, 1962, 2,381 bishops gathered in Rome for the opening ceremony of this Second Vatican Council. Among them was Albino Luciani. As the Council meetings progressed Luciani made friendships that would endure for the rest of his life. Suenens of Belgium. Wojtyla and Wyszynski of Poland. Marty of France. Thiandoum of Dakar. Luciani also experienced during the Council his own road to Damascus. It was the Council’s declaration On Religious Freedom. 

Others were less impressed with this new way of looking at an old problem. Men like Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who controlled the Holy Office, were determined to wreck not only the concept of tolerance that was implicit in On Religious Freedom, they were fighting a bitter rearguard action against anything that smacked of what Pius X at the beginning of the century had termed ‘modernism’. This was the generation which had taught Luciani in the Belluno seminary that religious ‘freedom’ was confined to Roman Catholics. ‘Error has no rights.’ Luciani in turn had taught his own pupils this same appalling doctrine. Now at the Second Vatican Council he listened with growing wonder as bishop after bishop challenged the concept. 

When Luciani considered the arguments for and against he was over fifty years of age. His response was typical of this prudent man of the mountains. He discussed the problem with others, he withdrew into thought, he concluded that the ‘error’ had been in the concept he had been taught. 

It was also typical of the man that he subsequently published an article explaining how and why he had changed his mind. He began with a recommendation to his readers: 

If you come across error, rather than uprooting it or knocking it down, see if you can trim it patiently, allowing the light to shine upon the nucleus of goodness and truth that usually is not missing even in erroneous opinions. 

Other aspects of the various debates caused him less difficulty. When the principle of the poor church – a church lacking political, economic and ideological power – was extolled, the Council was merely seeking something in which Luciani already believed. 

Before the Council opened Luciani had issued a pastoral letter, ‘Notes on the Council’, to prepare his congregations. Now with the Council still in session the changes he had already introduced into the Vittorio Diocese were accelerated. He urged his seminary teachers to read the new theological reviews and discard manuals that still looked back lovingly to the nineteenth century. He sent his teachers on courses to the principal theological universities of Europe. Not only the teachers but the pupils could now be found at his dinner table. He wrote weekly to all his priests, sharing his ideas and plans with them. 

In August 1962, a few months before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Luciani was confronted with an example of error of quite another kind. Two priests in the diocese had become involved with a smooth-talking sales representative who also speculated in property. The priest were tempted to join in. When one of them came to Luciani he confessed that the amount of money missing, much of it belonging to small savers, was in excess of two billion lire. 

Albino Luciani had very set ideas about wealth and money, particularly Church wealth. Some of his ideas stemmed from Rosmini; many directly from his own personal experience. He believed in a Roman Catholic Church of the poor, for the poor. The enforced absences of his father, the hunger and the cold, the wooden clogs with the extra nails banged into the soles so that they would not wear out, cutting grass on the mountain sides to augment the family dinners, the long spells in seminary without seeing a mother who could not afford to visit him, this environment produced in Luciani a deep compassion for the poor, a total indifference to the acquisition of personal wealth and a belief that the Church, his Church, should not only be materially poor but should be seen to be so. 

Conscious of the damage the scandal would do he went directly to the editor of the Venice newspaper Il Gazzettino. He asked the editor not to treat the story in a lurid manner with sensational headlines. 

Back in his diocese he called together his 400 priests. Normal practice would have been to have claimed ecclesiastic immunity. To do so would ensure that the Church would not pay a penny. Speaking quietly Luciani told his priests: 

It is true that two of us have done wrong. I believe the diocese must pay. I also believe that the law must run its due course. We must not hide behind any immunity. In this scandal there is a lesson for us all. It is that we must be a poor Church. I intend to sell ecclesiastical treasure. I further intend to sell one of our buildings. The money will be used to repay every single lira that these priests owe. I ask for your agreement. 

Albino Luciani obtained their agreement. His morality prevailed. Some who were present at that meeting admired the man and his morality. Some almost ruefully observed that they considered Luciani was too moral in such matters. The property speculator who had involved the two priests was obviously one who considered the Bishop ‘too moral’. Before his trial he committed suicide. One of the priests served a one-year prison sentence and the other was acquitted. 

Others among the priesthood were less than enchanted with the manner in which Luciani wholeheartedly embraced the spirit of the Vatican Council. Like Luciani their thinking had been shaped in the early, more repressive, years. Unlike him they were not prepared to have that thinking reshaped. This aspect was constantly to occupy Luciani’s work during the remainder of his time at Vittorio Veneto. With the same hunger with which he had read book after book in his youth he now, in the words of Monsiguor Ghizzo who worked with him, ‘totally absorbed Vatican Council II. He had the Council in his blood. He knew the documents by heart. Further, he implemented the documents.’ 

He twinned Vittorio Veneto with Kiremba, a small township in Burundi, formerly part of German East Africa. In the mid-1960s when he visited Kiremba he was brought face to face with the Third World. Nearly 70 per cent of the country’s three-and-a-quarter million people were Roman Catholics. The faith was flourishing, but so were poverty, disease, a high infant mortality rate and civil war. Churches were full, bellies were empty. It was realities like this that had inspired Pope John to summon the Second Vatican Council, as an attempt to drag the Church into the twentieth century. While the old Curial Palace Guard in Rome were being blinded by the Second Council, Luciani and others like him were being illuminated by it. 

John literally gave his life to ensure that the Council he had conceived should not be stillborn. Advised that he was seriously ill, he declined the operation his specialists were insisting upon. They told him that such an operation would prolong his life. He retorted that to leave the Vatican Council at the mercy of the reactionary element within the Vatican during the early delicate stages would be to ensure a theological disaster. He preferred to remain in the Vatican helping the child he had created to grow. In doing so he calmly and with extraordinary courage signed his own death warrant. When he died on June 3rd, 1963, the Roman Catholic Church, through the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, was finally attempting to come to terms with the world as it was rather than how it would like it to be. 

With John dead, replaced by Pope Paul VI, the Church inched its way nearer to one specific reality, to one particular decision, the most important the Roman Catholic Church has taken this century. In the 1960s the question was being asked with increasing urgency; what was the Church’s position on artificial birth control? 

In 1962 Pope John had set up a Pontifical Commission on the family. Birth control was one of the major issues it was directed to study. Pope Paul enlarged the Commission until its membership reached sixty-eight. He then created a considerable number of ‘consultants’ to advise and monitor the Commission. While hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics around the world waited and wondered, speculation that a change in the Church’s position was imminent grew ever larger. Many began using the Pill or other forms of artificial contraception. While the ‘experts’ in Rome debated the significance of Genesis 38:7–10 and a man called Onan, everyday life had to go on. 

It is ironic that the confusion which prevailed in the Catholic world on this issue was exactly mirrored by the Pope’s thinking on the problem. He did not know what to do. 

During the first week of October 1965, Pope Paul granted a unique interview to Italian journalist Alberto Cavallari. They discussed many problems facing the Church. Cavallari later observed that he did not raise the issue of artificial birth control because he was aware of the potential embarrassment. His fears were unfounded. Paul raised the subject himself. It should be remembered that this was an era when the Papacy still clung to Royal illusions; personal pronouns were not Paul’s style. 

Take birth control for example. The world asks what we think and we find ourselves trying to give an answer. But what answer. We can’t keep silent. And yet to speak is a real problem. The Church hasn’t had to deal with such things for centuries. And it is a somewhat foreign and even humanly embarrassing subject for men of the Church. So, the commissions meet, the reports pile up, the studies are published. Oh, they study a lot, you know. But then we still have to make the final decisions. And in deciding, we are all alone. Deciding is not as easy as studying. We have to say something. But what? God will simply have to enlighten us. 

While the Pope waited for God’s enlightenment on sexual intercourse his Commission toiled on. While the 68 laboured, their efforts were closely watched by the smaller commission of approximately twenty cardinals and bishops. For any liberalizing recommendation from the group of 68 to reach the Pope it had to pass through this smaller group, which was headed by a man who was the epitome of the reactionary element within the Church, Cardinal Ottaviani. Many considered him the leader of that element. 

A crucial moment in the Commission’s history came on April 23rd, 1966. By that date the Commission had conducted an exhaustive and exhausting examination of the birth control issue. Those who had maintained their opposition to a change in the Church’s position were by now reduced to four priests who stated that they were irretrievably committed to maintaining a position forbidding any form of artificial birth control. Pushed by the other members of the Commission, the four admitted that they could not prove the correctness of their position on the grounds of natural law. Neither could they cite the scriptures or divine revelation to justify their view. They argued that various Papal utterances over the years had all condemned artificial contraception. Their reasoning would appear to be ‘once in error, always in error’. 

In October 1951, Pius XII (1939–58) had softened the somewhat austere position on birth control he had inherited from his predecessors. During an audience with Italian midwives he gave his approval to the use of the ‘rhythm’ method by all Catholics with serious reasons for wishing to avoid procreation. In view of the notorious unreliability of what became known as ‘Vatican Roulette’ it is not surprising that Pius XII also called for further research into the rhythm method. Nevertheless, Pius had moved the Church away from its previous position that had viewed procreation as the sole purpose of sexual intercourse. 

After Pius XII came not only a new Pope but also the invention of the progesterone pill. Infallibility had been claimed for certain Papal opinions but no one yet claimed Papal clairvoyance. A new situation required a new look at the problem, but the four dissenting priests on the Commission insisted that the new situation was covered by old answers. 

Finally the Commission wrote its report. In essence it advised the Pope that consensus had been reached by an overwhelming majority (64 votes to 4) of theologians, legal experts, historians, sociologists, doctors, obstetricians and married couples, that a change in the Catholic Church’s stand on birth control was both possible and advisable. 

Their report was submitted in mid-1966 to the commission of cardinals and bishops who were overseeing the Pontifical Commission. These churchmen reacted with some perplexity. Obliged to record their own views on the report, 6 of the prelates abstained, 8 voted in favour of recommending the report to the Pope and 6 voted against it. 

Within certain sections of the Roman Curia, that central administrative body of civil servants who control and dominate the Catholic Church, there were widespread reactions. Some applauded the recommendation for change, others saw it as part of the mischievous wickedness that Vatican Council II had generated. In this latter category was Cardinal Ottaviani, Secretary of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. The motto on his coat-of-arms read Semper Idem, ‘Always the Same’. 

By 1966, Alfredo Ottaviani was, next to the Pope, the most powerful person in the entire Roman Catholic Church. An ex-pupil of the Roman Seminary, he was a man who passed his whole career in the Secretariat of State and the Curia without ever being posted out of Rome. 

He had fought a bitter and often successful battle against the liberalizing effects of Vatican Council II. His forehead permanently furrowed, his skull curved back dramatically as if constantly avoiding a direct question, a neck-line hidden by bulging jowls, there was about him an air of sphinx-like immobility. He was a man not merely born old but born out of his time. He exemplified that section of the Curia which has the courage of its prejudices. 

He saw himself as defender of a faith that did not accommodate the here and now. To Ottaviani the hereafter was reached by embracing values that were old in medieval times. He was not about to budge on the issue of birth control; more important, he was determined that Pope Paul VI was not going to budge. 

Ottaviani contacted the four dissenting priests from the Pontifical Commission. Their views had already been fully incorporated within the Commission’s report. He persuaded them to enlarge their dissenting conclusions in a special report. Thus the Jesuit Marcelino Zalba, the Redemptorist Jan Visser, the Franciscan Ermenegildo Lio and the American Jesuit John Ford, created a second document. 

No matter that in doing so they acted in an unethical manner; the object of the exercise was to give Ottaviani a weapon to brandish at the Pope. The four men bear an awesome responsibility for what was to follow. The amount of death, misery and suffering that directly resulted from the final Papal decision can to a large degree be laid directly at their feet. An indication of the thought-processes applied by these four can be gauged from one of their number, the American Jesuit, John Ford. He considered he was in direct contact with the Holy Spirit with regard to this issue and that this Divine guidance had led him to the ultimate truth. If the majority view prevailed, Ford declared that he would have to leave the Roman Catholic Church. This minority report represents the epitome of arrogance. It was submitted to Pope Paul along with the official Commission report. What followed was a classic illustration of the ability of a minority of the Roman Curia to control situations, to manipulate events. By the time the two reports were submitted to Paul most of the 68 members of the Commission were scattered to the corners of the earth. 

Convinced that this difficult problem had finally been resolved with a liberalizing conclusion the majority of the Commission members waited in their various countries for the Papal announcement approving artificial birth control. Some of them began to prepare a paper that could serve as an introduction or preface to the impending Papal ruling, in which there was full justification for the change in the Church’s position. 

Throughout 1967 and continuing into early 1968 Ottaviani capitalized on the absence from Rome of the majority of the Commission. Those who were still in the City were exercising great restraint in not bringing further pressure upon Paul. By doing so they played straight into Ottaviani’s hands. He marshalled members of the old guard who shared his views. Cardinals Cicognani, Browne, Parente and Samore, daily just happened to meet the Pope. Daily they told him that to approve artificial birth control would be to betray the Church’s heritage. They reminded him of the Church’s Canon Law and the three criteria that were applied to all Catholics seeking to marry. Without these three essentials the marriage is invalidated in the eyes of the Church: erection, ejaculation and conception. To legalize oral contraception, they argued, would be to destroy that particular church Law. Many, including his predecessor John XXIII, have compared Pope Paul VI with the doubt-racked Hamlet. Every Hamlet has need of an Elsinore Castle in which to brood. Eventually, the Pope decided that he and he alone would make the final decision. He summoned Monsignor Agostino Casaroli and advised him that the problem of birth control would be removed from the competence of the Holy Office. Then he retired to Castel Gandolfo to work upon the encyclical. 

On the Pope’s desk at Castel Gandolfo, amid the various reports, recommendations and studies on the issue of artificial birth control, was one from Albino Luciani. 

While his Commissions, consultants and Curial cardinals were dissecting the problem the Pope had also asked for the opinion of various regions in Italy. One of these was the Veneto diocese. The Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Urbani, had called a meeting of all the bishops within the region. After a day’s debate it was decided that Luciani should draw up the report. 

The decision to give Luciani the task was largely based on his knowledge of the problem. It was a subject he had been studying for a number of years. He had talked and written about it, he had consulted doctors, sociologists, theologians, and not least that group who had personal practical experience of the problem, married couples. 

Among the married couples was his own brother, Edoardo, struggling to earn enough to keep an ever-growing family that eventually numbered ten children. Luciani saw at first hand the problems posed by a continuing ban on artificial birth control. He had grown up surrounded by poverty. Now in the late 1960s there appeared to him to be as much poverty and deprivation as in the lost days of his youth. When those one cares for are in despair because of their inability to provide for an increasing number of children, one is inclined to view the problem of birth control in a different light from Jesuits who are in direct contact with the Holy Spirit.[So they say DC] 

The men in the Vatican could quote Genesis until the Day of Judgment but it would not put bread on the table. To Albino Luciani Vatican Council II had intended to relate the Gospels and the Church to the twentieth century, and to deny men and women the right of artificial birth control was to plunge the Church back to the Dark Ages. Much of this he said quietly and privately as he prepared his report. Publicly he was acutely aware of his obedience to the Pope. In this Luciani remained an excellent example of his time. When the Pope decreed then the faithful agreed. Yet even in his public utterances there are clear clues to his thinking on the issue of birth control. 

By April 1968, after much further consultation, Luciani’s report had been written and submitted. It had met with the approval of the bishops of the Veneto region and Cardinal Urbani had duly signed the report and sent it directly to Pope Paul. Subsequently, Urbani saw the document on the Pope’s desk at Castel Gandolfo. Paul advised Urbani that he valued the report greatly. So highly did he praise it that when Urbani returned to Venice he went via Vittorio Veneto to convey directly to Luciani the Papal pleasure the report had given. 

The central thrust of the report was to recommend to the Pope that the Roman Catholic Church should approve the use of the anovulant pill developed by Professor Pincus. That it should become the Catholic birth control pill. 

On April 13th, Luciani talked to the people of Vittorio Veneto about the problems the issue was causing. With the delicacy that had by now become a characteristic Luciani hallmark, he called the subject ‘conjugal ethics’. Having observed that priests in speaking and in hearing confessions ‘must abide by the directives given on several occasions by the Pope until the latter makes a pronouncement’, Luciani went on to make three observations: 

1 It is easier today, given the confusion caused by the press, to find married persons who do not believe that they are sinning. If this should happen it may be opportune, under the usual conditions, not to disturb them. 
2 Towards the penitent onanist, who shows himself to be both penitent and discouraged, it is opportune to use encouraging kindness, within the limits of pastoral prudence. 
3 Let us pray that the Lord may help the Pope to resolve this question. There has never perhaps been such a difficult question for the Church: both for the intrinsic difficulties and for the numerous implications affecting other problems, and for the acute way in which it is felt by the vast mass of the people. 

Humanae Vitae was published on July 25th, 1968. Pope Paul had Monsignor Lambruschini of the Lateran University explain its significance to the Press, in itself a rather superfluous exercise. More significantly, it was stressed that this was not an infallible document. It became for millions of Catholics an historic moment like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Years later they knew exactly what they were doing and where they were when the news reached them. 

On a disaster scale for the Roman Catholic Church it measures higher than the treatment of Galileo in the seventeenth century or the declaration of Papal Infallibility in the nineteenth. This document which was intended to strengthen Papal authority had precisely the opposite effect. 

This celibate man, then 71 years of age, having expanded the Commission that was advising him on the problem of birth control, ignored its advice. He declared that the only methods of birth control which the Church considered acceptable were abstinence and the rhythm method ‘. . . in any use whatever of marriage there must be no impairment of its natural capacity to procreate human life.’ 

Millions ignored the Pope and continued to practise their faith and use the Pill or whatever other method they found most suitable. Millions lost patience and faith. Others shopped around for a different priest to whom to confess their sins. Still others tried to follow the encyclical and discovered they had avoided one Catholic concept of sin only to experience another, divorce. The encyclical totally divided the Church. 

‘I cannot believe that salvation is based on contraception by temperature and damnation is based on rubber,’ declared Dr Andre Hellegers, an obstetrician and member of the ignored Pontifical Commission. One surprising line of the Vatican’s defence came from Cardinal Felici: ‘The possible mistake of the superior [the Pope] does not authorize the disobedience of subjects.’ 

Albino Luciani read the encyclical with growing dismay. He knew the uproar that would now engulf the Church. He went to his church in Vittorio Veneto and prayed. There was no question in his mind but that he must obey the Papal ruling but, deep as his allegiance to the Pope was, he could not, would not, merely sing praise to Humanae Vitae. He knew a little of what the document must have cost the Pope; he knew a great deal of what it was going to cost the faithful who would have to attempt to apply it to their everyday lives. 

Within hours of reading the encyclical Luciani had written his response to the diocese of Vittorio Veneto. In ten years’ time when he became Pope, the Vatican would assert that Luciani’s response was ‘Rome has spoken. The case is closed.’ It was yet another Vatican lie. Nothing approaching that sentiment appears in his words. He began by reminding the diocese of his comments in April, then continued: 

I confess that, although not revealing it in what I wrote, I privately hoped that the very grave difficulties that exist could be overcome and the response of the Teacher, who speaks with special charisma and in the name of the Lord, might coincide, at least in part, with the hopes of many married couples after the setting up of a relevant Pontifical Commission to examine the question. 

He acknowledged the amount of care and consideration the Pope had given to the problem and said that the Pope knew ‘he is about to cause bitterness in many’, but he continued, ‘The old doctrine, presented in a new framework of encouraging and positive ideas about marriage and conjugal love, better guarantees the true good of man and family.’ Luciani faced some of the problems that would inevitably flow from Humanae Vitae: 

The thoughts of the Pope, and mine, go especially to the sometimes grave difficulties of married couples. May they not lose heart, for goodness sake. May they remember that for everyone the door is narrow and narrow the road that leads to life (cf Matt 7:14). That the hope of the future life must illuminate the path of Christian couples. That God does not fail to help those who pray to Him with perseverance. May they make the effort to live with wisdom, justice and piety in the present time, knowing that the fashion of this world passes away (cf 1 Cor 7:31) . . . ‘And if sin should still have a hold on them, may they not be discouraged, but have recourse with humble perseverance to God’s mercy through the sacrament of Penance’. 

This last quotation, direct from Humanae Vitae, had been one of the few crumbs of comfort for men like Luciani who had hoped for a change. Trusting that he had his flock with him in a ‘sincere adhesion to the teaching of the Pope’, Luciani gave them his blessing. 

Other priests in other countries took a more openly hostile line. Many left the priesthood. Luciani steered a more subtle course. 

In January 1969 he returned yet again to this subject that the Vatican would have him make a one line dogmatic pronouncement upon. He was aware that some of his priests were denying absolution to married couples using the contraceptive pill and that other priests were readily absolving what Pope Paul had deemed a sin. Dealing with this problem Luciani quoted the response from the Italian Bishops’ Conference to Humanae Vitae. It was a response he had helped to draft. In it priests were recommended to show ‘evangelical kindness’ towards all married people, but especially, as Luciani pointed out, towards those ‘whose failings derive . . . from the sometimes very serious difficulties in which they find themselves. In that case the behaviour of the spouses, although not in conformity with Christian norms, is certainly not to be judged with the same gravity as when it derives from motives corrupted by selfishness and hedonism.’ Luciani also admonished his troubled people not to feel ‘an anguished, disturbing guilt complex’. 

Throughout this entire period the Vatican continued to benefit from the profits derived from one of the many companies it owned, the Istituto Farmacologico Sereno. One of Sereno’s best selling products was an oral contraceptive called Luteolas. 

The loyalty Albino Luciani had demonstrated in Vittorio Veneto was not lost on the Holy Father in Rome. Better than most the Pope knew that such loyalty had been achieved at a heavy price. The document on his desk that bore Cardinal Urbani’s signature, but was in essence Luciani’s position on birth control, was mute testimony to the personal cost. 

Deeply impressed, Pope Paul VI observed to his Under-Secretary of State, Giovanni Benelli, ‘In Vittorio Veneto there is a little bishop who seems well suited to me.’ The astute Benelli went out of his way to establish a friendship with Luciani. It was to prove a friendship with far-reaching consequences. 

Cardinal Urbani, Patriarch of Venice, died on September 17th, 1969. The Pope remembered his little bishop. To Paul’s surprise Luciani politely declined what many saw as a glittering promotion. Entirely without ambition he was happy and content with his work in Vittorio Veneto. 

Pope Paul cast his net farther. Cardinal Antonio Samore, as reactionary as his mentor Ottaviani, became a strong contender. Murmurings of discontent from members of the Venetian laity, declaring they would be happier if Samore remained in Rome, reached the Pope’s ears. 

Pope Paul then gave yet another demonstration of the Papal dance he had invented since ascending to the throne of Peter: one step forward, one step back – Luciani, Samore, Luciani. 

Luciani began to feel the pressure from Rome. Eventually he succumbed. It was a decision he regretted within hours. Unaware that its new Patriarch had fought against accepting the position, Venice celebrated the fact that ‘local man’ Albino Luciani was appointed on December 15th, 1969. 

Before leaving Vittorio Veneto, Luciani was presented with a donation of one million lire. He quietly declined the gift and after suggesting that the people should donate it to their own personal charities reminded them what he had told his priests when he had arrived in the diocese eleven years earlier: ‘I came without five lire. I want to leave without five lire.’ Albino Luciani took with him to Venice a small pile of linen, a few sticks of furniture and his books. 

On February 8th, 1970, the new Patriarch, now Archbishop Luciani, entered Venice. Tradition decreed that the entry of a new Patriarch be a splendid excuse for a gaily bedecked procession of gondolas, brass bands, parades and countless speeches. Luciani had always had an intense dislike of such pomp and ceremony. He cancelled the ritual welcome and confined himself to a speech during which he referred not only to the historic aspects of the city but acknowledged that his diocese also contained industrial areas such as Mestre and Marghera. ‘This was the other Venice,’ Luciani observed, ‘with few monuments but so many factories, houses, spiritual problems, souls. And it is to this many-faceted city that Providence now sends me. Signor Mayor, the first Venetian coins, minted as long ago as A.D. 850, had the motto “Christ, save Venice”. I make this my own with all my heart and turn it into a prayer, “Christ, bless Venice”.’ 

The pagan city was in dire need of Christ’s blessing. It was bulging with monuments and churches that proclaimed the former glories of an imperial republic, yet Albino Luciani rapidly learned that the majority of the churches within the 127 parishes were continually nearly empty. If one discounted the tourists, the very young and the very old, then church attendance was appallingly low. Venice is a city that has sold its soul to tourism. 

The day after his arrival, accompanied by his new secretary, Father Mario Senigaglia, he was at work. Declining invitations to attend various soirées, cocktail parties and receptions, he visited instead the local seminary, the women’s prison of Giudecca, the male prison of Santa Maria Maggiore, then celebrated Mass in the Church of San Simeone. 

It was customary for the Patriarch of Venice to have his own boat. Luciani had neither the personal wealth nor the inclination for what seemed to him an unnecessary extravagance. When he wanted to move through the canals he and Father Mario would catch a water bus. If it was an urgent appointment Luciani would telephone the local fire brigade, the carabinieri or the finance police and beg the loan of one of their boats. Eventually the three organizations worked out a roster to oblige the unusual priest. 

During a national petrol crisis the Patriarch took to a bicycle when visiting the mainland. Venetian high society shook its head and muttered disapprovingly. Many of them enjoyed the pomp and ceremony they associated with the Patriarchship. To them a Patriarch was an important person to be treated in an important manner. When Albino Luciani and Father Mario appeared unannounced at a hospital to visit the sick they would immediately be surrounded by the administrators, doctors, monks and nuns. Father Senigaglia recalled for me such an occasion. 

‘I don’t want to take up your precious time. I can go round on my own.’ 

‘Not a bit of it, Your Eminence, it’s an honour for us.’ 

Thus a large procession would begin to make its way through the wards with an increasingly discomfited Luciani. Eventually he would say, ‘Well, perhaps it’s better if I come back another time, it’s already late.’ 

He would effect several false exits in an attempt to shake off the entourage; without success. 

‘Don’t worry, Your Eminence. It’s our duty.’ 

Outside he would turn to Father Senigaglia, ‘But are they always like this? It’s a shame. I am used to something different. Either we shall have to make them understand or I shall lose a good habit.’ 

Slowly some of the messages got across, but it was never the same as at Vittorio Veneto. His fresh approach was not confined to his technique for visiting the sick. A considerable number of monsignors and priests whose behaviour did not accord with Luciani’s view that ‘the real treasures of the Church are the poor, the weak who should not be helped with occasional charity but in such a way that they can really benefit’, found themselves parish priests in a far province. 

One such priest, a property owner, received from Luciani a personal lesson in social justice that left him bemused. The priest, having increased the rent on one of his houses, discovered that the tenant, an unemployed schoolteacher, could not afford the increase. He promptly served an eviction notice. Luciani, hearing of the incident through his secretary, remonstrated in vain with the priest, who shrugged his shoulders at this whimsical Patriarch who quoted Christ to him. ‘My kingdom is not of this earth.’ He proceeded with the eviction of the schoolteacher and his family. Luciani immediately wrote out a cheque for 3 million lire, enabling the family to live in a pensione until they found a permanent residence. Today the teacher has a photocopy of the cheque framed and hanging in his living room. 

On another occasion Senigaglia inadvertently interrupted a visit Luciani was making to a sick priest. He discovered Luciani emptying his wallet on the priest’s bed. Later the secretary gently remonstrated with the Patriarch. ‘You can’t do this.’ Albino Luciani’s response sums up much of the man: ‘But it was all I had on me at the time.’ 
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Senigaglia explained that the Curia had a special fund so that the Patriarch could help his priests, in silence. This, Senigaglia explained, was how the previous Patriarch had performed these various acts of charity. Luciani listened, then told his secretary to make the same arrangement with the Curia. 

He discovered that as Patriarch he had unwittingly acquired a house at San Pietro di Fileto. He attempted to give it to the unfortunate schoolteacher but the Vatican objected. After a battle with the Curia they finally conceded that Luciani could allow the retired Bishop Muchin to live there. 

Within a short while of becoming Patriarch his offices were continuously over-flowing with the poor. ‘The door of the Patriarch is always open, ask Don Mario and whatever I can do for you I will always willingly do it.’ The strongly smelling crowd murmured their thanks. 

Don Mario spoke to his superior, gritting his teeth, ‘Your Excellency, you are ruining me, they will never leave me in peace.’ 

Luciani smiled and replied, ‘Someone will help us.’ 

The offices of the Patriarch were frequently filled with ex-prisoners, alcoholics, poor people, abandoned people, tramps, women who could no longer work as prostitutes. One such unfortunate still wears the pyjamas Luciani gave him and writes ‘thank you’ letters to a man no longer here to read them. 

During his first year in the city he showed his concern for those who lived in what he had described on his first day as ‘the other Venice’. When strikes and violent demonstrations erupted in Mestre and Marghera he urged workers and management to seek a middle position. In 1971, when 270 workers were made redundant at La Sava factory, he reminded the bosses of the paramount need to remember personal human dignity. Certain sections of the traditional Catholic establishment in Venice could be heard expressing the wish for a Patriarch who would content himself with sermons to uncomprehending tourists. Pope Paul VI, however, was clearly delighted with Luciani. In 1971 he nominated him to attend the World Synod of Bishops. Items on the agenda were priestly ministry and justice in the world. One suggestion of Luciani’s at the Synod showed the shape of things to come: 

I suggest, as an example of concrete help to the poor countries, that the more fortunate churches should tax themselves and pay one per cent of their income to the Vatican aid organizations. This one per cent should be called the ‘brothers’ share’ and should not be given as charity, but as something that is owed, to compensate for the injustices being committed by our consumer world against the developing world, and to make up in some way for social sin, of which we should all be aware. 

One of the injustices that Luciani continuously worked to eliminate in Venice concerned a widely prevalent attitude towards the subnormal and the handicapped. Not only the mayor and city officials showed indifference, but Luciani found the same prejudice among some of his parish priests. When he went to give First Communion to a large group of handicapped people at St Pius X in Marghera he had to cope with a delegation of protesting priests who argued that he should not do such a thing. ‘These creatures do not understand.’ He instructed the group that he was personally ordering them to attend the First Communion. 

After the Mass he picked up a young girl suffering from spina bifida. The congregation was completely silent. 

‘Do you know whom you have received today?’ he asked the little girl. 

‘Yes. Jesus.’ 

‘And are you pleased?’ 

‘Very.’ 

Luciani turned slowly and looked at the group of protesting priests. ‘You see, they are better than we adults.’ 

Because of the reluctance of the City Council to contribute to Special Work Centres, Luciani was obliged initially to rely on diocesan funds and the bank known as ‘the priests’ bank’, Banca Cattolica del Veneto. Soon after he had been made a Cardinal he became aware that it was no longer the priests’ bank. Joining the regular crowd in his outer office who required help, he now found bishops, monsignors and priests. In the past the bank had always loaned money to the clergy at low interest rates. It was a bank founded for the diocese which had previously contributed to the vital work for that section of society which Luciani described in the following words: ‘They have no political weight. They cannot be counted on for votes. For those reasons we must show our sense of honour as men and Christians towards these handicapped people.’ 

By mid-1972 the low interest loans had stopped. The Venetian clergy were advised that in future they would have to pay the full rate of interest no matter how laudable the work. The priests complained to their bishops. The bishops made a number of discreet enquiries. 

Since 1946 the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the IOR, usually referred to as the Vatican Bank, had held a majority share in Banca Cattolica del Veneto. The various dioceses in the Veneto region also had small shareholdings in the bank amounting to less than 5 per cent of the bank’s share. 

In the normal commercial world this would make the minority shareholder vulnerable, but this was not the normal commercial world. A clear understanding existed between Venice and the Vatican that the IOR’s vast shareholding (by 1972 it was 51 per cent) was an insurance against any potential takeover by a third party. Despite the very low interest rates charged to the Veneto clergy the bank was one of the wealthiest in the country. Where the priest banks the parishioner will follow. (A significant amount of the bank’s wealth was derived from real estate holdings in Northern Italy.) This happy arrangement had now been abruptly terminated. The bank that the bishops believed they owned, at least morally, had been sold over their heads without reference to the Patriarch or any person in the Veneto region. The man who had done the selling was Vatican Bank President, Paul Marcinkus. The man who had done the buying was Roberto Calvi, of Banco Ambrosiano, Milan. 

The bishops of the region descended en masse on the Patriarch’s office in St Mark’s Square. He listened quietly as they outlined what had happened. They told him how in the past when they had wished to raise capital they had turned to the Vatican Bank who had loaned money, holding their shares in Banca Cattolica as security. Now these shares, along with a large stake independently acquired by the Vatican Bank, had been sold at a huge profit to Calvi. 

The enraged bishops pointed out to Luciani that had they been given the opportunity they could have raised the necessary money to repay the Vatican Bank and thereby re-acquire their shares. What was more pertinent in their eyes was the appalling breach of trust perpetrated by Marcinkus, acting on behalf of the Vatican that claimed to be the moral leader in the world; he had at the very least displayed a total lack of morals. The fact that he had kept the entire profit on the transaction for the Vatican Bank may also have caused some of their anger. 

The bishops urged Luciani to go directly to Rome. They wanted Papal intervention. If that intervention took the form of firing Paul Marcinkus it was clear that in the Veneto region at least, not many tears would be shed. Luciani calmly weighed the problem. Ever a prudent man, he considered he needed more facts before laying such a problem before Pope Paul. 

Luciani began to probe quietly. He learned a great deal about Roberto Calvi and also about a man named Michele Sindona. What he learned appalled him. It also alerted him to the dangers of complaining directly to the Pope. Based on the information he had obtained it was clear that Calvi and Sindona were highly favoured sons of the Church and were held in great esteem by Paul VI. The man Albino Luciani turned to was one who had become a close friend over the previous five years, Under-Secretary of State Monsignor Giovanni Benelli. 

Though Benelli was number two in the Secretariat of State under Cardinal Villot, to all intents and purposes he ran the department. And as Pope Paul’s troubleshooter Benelli not only knew where all the bodies were buried – he was responsible for the placement of quite a number of them. 

Benelli listened while the Patriarch of Venice told his story. When he had finished the Monsignor gave his Eminence another cup of coffee as Luciani uttered a qualification. ‘I have not of course seen any documentary evidence.’ 

‘I have,’ responded Benelli. ‘Calvi is now the majority shareholder in the Banca Cattolica del Veneto. Marcinkus sold him 37 per cent on March 30th.’ 

Benelli was a man who enjoyed reeling out facts and figures. He told the wide-eyed Luciani that Calvi had paid 27 billion lire (approximately $45 million) to Marcinkus; how the sale was the result of a scheme hatched jointly by Calvi, Sindona and Marcinkus, of a company called Pacchetti which had been purchased by Calvi from Sindona after its price had been grossly and criminally inflated on the Milan stock exchange, of how Marcinkus had assisted Calvi in masking the nature of this and other operations from the eyes of Bank of Italy officials by putting the Vatican bank facilities at the disposal of Calvi and Sindona. 

Luciani was bewildered. ‘What does all this mean?’ he asked. 

‘Tax evasion, illegal movement of shares. I also believe that Marcinkus sold the shares in your Venice bank at a deliberately low price and Calvi paid the balance, a separate 31 billion lire deal on Credito Varesino.’ 

Luciani became angry. ‘What has all this to do with the Church of the poor? In the name of God . . .’ 

Benelli held up a hand to silence him. ‘No, Albino, in the name of profit.’ 

‘Does the Holy Father know these things?’ 

Benelli nodded. 

‘So?’ 

‘So you must remember who put Paul Marcinkus in charge of our bank.’ 

‘The Holy Father.’ 

‘Precisely. And I must confess I fully approved. I’ve had cause to regret that many times.’ 

‘Then what are we to do? What am I to tell my priests and bishops?’ 

‘You must tell them to be patient, to wait. Eventually Marcinkus will over-reach himself. His Achilles heel is his greed for Papal praise.’ 

‘But what does he want to do with all this money?’ 

‘He wants to make more money.’ 

‘For what purpose?’ 

‘To make more money.’ 

‘And in the meantime should my priests get out begging bowls and tramp through the Veneto?’ 

‘In the meantime you must counsel patience. I know you have it. Teach it to your priests. I’m having to apply it.’ 

Albino Luciani returned to Venice and called his fellow bishops to his office. He told them some of what had transpired in Rome, enough to make it abundantly clear that the Banca Cattolica was now for ever lost to the diocese. Later some of them talked about it. They concluded that this would never have happened in the days of Cardinal Urbani. They felt that Luciani’s innate goodness had proved a useless weapon against the IOR. Most of them, including Luciani, sold what remaining shares they held in the bank to express their disapproval of the Vatican’s conduct. In Milan Roberto Calvi was gratified to note that his brokers had acquired on his behalf another small piece of the priests’ bank in Venice. 

Albino Luciani and many others in Venice closed their accounts at the Banca Cattolica. For the Patriarch of Venice to move the official diocesan accounts to the small Banco San Marco was an extraordinary step. He confided to one colleague, ‘Calvi’s money is tainted. The man is tainted. After what I have learned of Roberto Calvi I would not leave the accounts in his bank if the loans they granted to the diocese were totally free of interest.’ 

Luciani then attempted to get the directors of Banca Cattolica to change the name of the bank. He insisted that for the word Catholic to appear in their title was an outrage and a libel on all Catholics. 

In Rome Pope Paul VI was made fully aware of the added burden that had been placed on the Veneto region by the sale of the Banca Cattolica. Giovanni Benelli urged the Holy Father to intervene but by then the sale to Calvi was already a reality. When Benelli argued for the removal of Marcinkus the Pope responded with an agonized helpless shrug of the shoulders but the fact that Luciani had not led an open rebellion left a deep impression on Paul. At the slightest opportunity he would proclaim the goodness of the man he had appointed Patriarch of Venice. In an audience with Venetian priest Mario Ferrarese he declared three times, ‘Tell the priests of Venice that they should love their Patriarch because he is a good, holy, wise, learned man.’ 

In September 1972, Pope Paul stayed at the Patriarch’s Palace on his way to a Eucharistic Congress in Udine. In a packed St Mark’s Square the Pope removed his stole and placed it over the shoulders of a blushing Luciani. The crowd went wild. Paul was not a man to make insignificant public gestures. 

When the two men were being served coffee in the Palace he made a more private one. He indicated to Luciani that ‘the little local difficulty over finance’ had reached his ears. He had also heard that Luciani was trying to raise money for the creation of a work centre for the subnormal at Marghera. He told Luciani how much he approved of such work and said that he would like to make a personal donation. Between Italians, that most voluble of races, much is often unsaid but understood. 

Six months later during March 1973, the Pope made Albino Luciani a Cardinal. Whatever his deep misgivings about the fiscal policies of the IOR, Luciani considered that he owed the Pope, his Pope, complete and unswerving loyalty. Italian bishops are in a unique position with regard to their relationship to the Vatican. Control of their actions is tighter. Retribution for any failure, real or imagined, is quicker. 

When Luciani was made Cardinal he was aware that Ottaviani and other Curial reactionaries, far from demonstrating total obedience, were in fact involved in a long, acrimonious argument with the Pope. They were quite simply trying to destroy any good that had flowed from the historic Vatican Council II series of meetings. Called upon to make a speech in front of not only the other new cardinals and the Pope but also Ottaviani and his clique, Albino Luciani observed, ‘Vatican Council I has many followers and so has Vatican Council III. Vatican Council II, however, has far too few.’ 

Two months later during May 1973, Luciani found himself playing host yet again to a visitor from Rome, Giovanni Benelli. In general Benelli had come to assure him that the problems they had discussed the previous year had not been forgotten. In particular he had an extraordinary story to tell about the American Mafia, nearly one billion dollars’ worth of counterfeit securities and Paul Marcinkus. 

On April 25th, 1973, Benelli had received some very unusual guests in his offices at the Secretariat of State in Vatican City: William Lynch, Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering section of the US Department of Justice, and William Aronwald, Assistant Chief of the Strike Force in the Southern District of New York. Two members of the FBI had accompanied them. 

‘Having met these gentlemen from the United States,’ Benelli told me, ‘I made my apologies and left them in the capable hands of three of my staff. They of course subsequently reported to me exactly what had taken place.’ 

The secret FBI report that I acquired many months after my conversation with Cardinal Benelli confirmed that his account was very accurate. It also told a story which reads like an outline for a Hollywood movie. Monsignors Edward Martinez, Carl Rauber and Justin Rigali listened while William Lynch told of a police investigation that had begun in the world of the New York Mafia and had led inexorably to the Vatican. He told the priests that a package of 14.5 million dollars’ worth * of American counterfeit bonds had been carefully and painstakingly created by a network of members of the Mafia in the USA. The package had been delivered to Rome in July 1971 and there was substantial evidence to establish that the ultimate destination of those bonds was the Vatican Bank. 

Lynch advised them that much of the evidence, from separate sources, strongly indicated that someone with financial authority within the Vatican had ordered the fake bonds. He pointed out that other evidence also indicated the 14.5 million dollars was merely a down payment, and that the total of counterfeit bonds ordered was 950 million dollars’ worth. 

The attorney then revealed the name of the ‘someone with financial authority’ who had masterminded the illegal transaction. On the basis of the evidence in Lynch’s hands, it was Bishop Paul Marcinkus. 

Displaying remarkable self-control the three priests listened as the two US attorneys outlined the evidence. 

At this stage of the investigation a number of the conspirators had already been arrested. One of them who had felt the desire to unburden himself was Mario Foligni, self-styled Count of San Francisco with an honorary doctorate in Theology. A first-class conman, Foligni had on more than one occasion narrowly avoided prison. When he was suspected of having manipulated the fraudulent bankruptcy of a company he controlled, a Rome magistrate had issued a search warrant to the finance police. Opening Foligni’s safe, the police had discovered a signed blessing from Pope Paul VI. They had apologized for the intrusion and departed. 

Subsequently others had been equally impressed with Foligni’s Vatican connections. He had opened the Vatican doors to an Austrian named Leopold Ledl. It was Ledl who had put the Vatican deal together – the purchase of 950 million dollars’ worth of counterfeit bonds, the purchase price to be 635 million dollars. ‘Commission’ of 150 million dollars would be paid back by the gang to the Vatican, leaving the Mafia with 485 million dollars and the Vatican with bonds that had a face value of nearly one billion dollars. 

The American Mafia had been sceptical about the deal until Ledl produced a letter from the Vatican. Written under the letter heading of the Sacra Congregazione Dei Religiosi it was confirmation that the Vatican wished to ‘buy the complete stock of the merchandise up to the sum of 950 million dollars’. 

Foligni had told the American investigators that Marcinkus, ever prudent, had requested that a trial deposit of one-and-a-half million dollars’ worth of the bonds be made at Handelsbanken Zürich. According to Foligni, Marcinkus had wanted to satisfy himself that the bonds would pass as genuine. Late in July the ‘trial’ deposit was duly made by Foligni. He nominated Vatican cleric Monsignor Mario Fornasari as the beneficiary of the account he opened. 

A second ‘trial’ deposit of two-and-a-half million dollars’ worth had been made at the Banco di Roma in September 1971. On both occasions the bonds had passed bank scrutiny, a tribute to Mafia skill. Regrettably for the conspirators, both banks had sent samples to New York for physical examination. The Bankers Association in New York ascertained that the bonds were false. Hence the unusual presence of American attorneys and men from the FBI within the Vatican walls. 

Apart from a desire to recover the balance of 10 million dollars’ worth of the initial delivery, Lynch and his colleagues were anxious to bring all the participants in the crime to justice. 

Foligni had told the investigators that the reason the Vatican required the fake bonds was to enable Marcinkus and Italian banker and businessman Michele Sindona to buy Bastogi, a giant Italian company with wide interests including property, mining and chemicals. Bastogi’s headquarters were in Milan; so were Sindona’s. It was in this city that the then Archbishop Montini, later Pope Paul VI, had met Sindona. When Montini had become Pope, the Vatican gained a new heir to Peter and the Vatican Bank gained a new lay financial adviser, Michele Sindona. 

William Lynch, himself a devout Catholic, continued his story. Mario Foligni, it transpired, had fired a series of accusations at Bishop Marcinkus during the US Department of Justice interrogations. Apart from the allegation that Sindona and Marcinkus had planned to buy Bastogi with fake bonds, Foligni also asserted that with Sindona’s assistance, the Bishop had several secret numbered bank accounts in the Bahamas for his personal use.

Under interrogation Mario Foligni had claimed that he had been working personally with Benelli’s office, the Secretariat of State, and that as a direct result of his cooperation ‘the Secretary of State had caused stringent administrative action to be taken against Bishop Marcinkus, which severely restricted the Bishop’s enormous financial power within the Vatican.’ Foligni had insisted that he had told the Secretariat of State of the trial deposits he had made in Switzerland and Rome and that this information was used by Benelli’s office against Marcinkus. He had also advised the Justice Department that he was under orders from the Secretary of State’s office not to give the investigators any further details concerning the swindle. 

Having put this evidence forward the Americans sat back and waited for a response. As William Lynch and William Aronwald made clear when I interviewed them, this first meeting at the Vatican was not seen by either side as an interrogation. It was informal, an opportunity to lay before members of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State some very serious allegations. 

The Justice Department was aware that the central thrust of the allegations stemmed from two expert con-men but there was also powerful internal evidence to support the validity of the statements of Foligni and Ledl. 

It was because of that evidence that William Aronwald had contacted Cardinal Cooke of New York via the US attorney for the southern district of that city. The Cardinal had been most cooperative and via the Papal delegation in Washington this extraordinary meeting had been arranged. Its real object was not merely to lay information, but ultimately to confront Marcinkus. 

While more coffee was served the three monsignors remained silent but thoughtful. Eventually Monsignor Martinez, Assessor of the Secretary of State’s office, responded. He assured the Americans that he and Monsignor Rauber had complete knowledge of all the affairs of Archbishop Benelli and categorically denied that Foligni had turned over any evidence to Benelli’s office. As for the counterfeit bonds and the trial deposits this was the first time that anyone on the Secretariat of State had heard about the affair. Taking a classic Curial position he remarked that, ‘It is not the intention of the Vatican to collaborate with the United States officials in their investigation at this point, since this is considered to be an informal meeting, and our purpose at the present time is only to listen.’ 

What Lynch and his colleagues were confronted with was a mentality that has defeated many better minds than theirs – that of the Curia, a body of men that gives absolutely nothing away; a Government machine that holds the Roman Catholic Church in a vice like grip. Lynch reminded the monsignors that to date only four million dollars’ worth of the fake bonds had been recovered and continued: ‘Since all evidence strongly indicates that the eventual destination for all of the bonds was the Vatican Bank and in view of the fact that the total amount ordered is worth 950 million dollars perhaps I can give you a list of the types of bonds?’ 

Martinez merely swayed out of the path of that punch. Lynch persisted. ‘That way the records of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione can be checked to determine if any of the counterfeit stocks have been “inadvertently” received on deposit at that bank.’ 

The style of Martinez in the ring was really most impressive. 

‘I, of course, have no idea if any of these American counterfeit bonds have been received by our bank. I cannot, however, take a list from you to check. That would be the function of Bishop Marcinkus. He handles such matters. Perhaps if you have difficulty in contacting the Bishop you might send a list with a formal letter to the Papal Nuncio in Washington.’ 

It was obviously time for a change of tactics. 

The US attorneys produced a document they had taken from Leopold Ledl after his arrest. The Vatican seal was on the letterhead below which was printed, ‘Sacra Congregazione Dei Religiosi’. It was the Vatican order for nearly one billion dollars’ worth of counterfeit securities. It had convinced the Mafia. The monsignors examined it carefully. There was much staring and holding up to the light. 

Martinez rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The Americans leaned forward eagerly. Perhaps they had finally got one past the redoubtable Martinez. 

‘The letterhead appears to be identical to the letterhead of one of our sacred congregations which is located here in the Vatican.’ 

There was a pause. Just time for the Americans to enjoy the moment. Then Martinez continued: 

‘However, I would note that while the letterhead appears to be legitimate that particular congregation changed its name in 1968 and that as of the date of this letter, June 29th, 1971, the name shown on the letterhead would be incorrect. The new name is Sacra Congregazione per i Religiosi e gli Istituti Secolari.’ 

The American investigators had, however, succeeded in their main objective. It was agreed that they could see Bishop Paul Marcinkus face to face the following day. This in itself was an extraordinary achievement, for Vatican City fiercely guards its independent statehood. 

During my interview with Cardinal Benelli he confirmed that he had indeed received information about the whole affair from Mario Foligni before the Vatican visit of the American investigators. It had seemed to the Cardinal to be a self-serving effort by Foligni, who by that time knew the game was up. As to the validity of the information, Benelli confined himself to the observation that he found the information ‘very interesting and useful’. 

On the morning of April 26th, 1973, the two American attorneys and the two FBI men were shown into the private office of Bishop Paul Marcinkus. Lynch and Aronwald repeated the story they had told the previous day while Marcinkus puffed on a large cigar. In the light of some of his subsequent omissions his initial remark is of particular interest. 

‘I am very disturbed by the seriousness of the allegations. In view of them I’ll answer each and every question to the best of my ability.’ He began with Michele Sindona. 

‘Michele and I are very good friends. We’ve known each other for several years. My financial dealings with him, however, have only been very limited. He is, you know, one of the wealthiest industrialists in Italy. He is well ahead of his time as far as financial matters are concerned.’ 

He extolled the virtues and talents of Michele Sindona at some considerable length. Then, placing the Vatican Bank on a par with the confessional, Marcinkus remarked: 

‘I would prefer to withhold names in many of the instances I intend to give because although the charges that Foligni makes against me are extremely serious they are so wild that I do not believe it necessary to break banking secrecy laws in order to defend myself.’ 

While the previous day’s meeting had been largely of an informal nature, this confrontation with Marcinkus was an interrogation. On the evidence that the US Department of Justice had carefully and painstakingly acquired over more than two years, Lynch and Aronwald and FBI agents Biamonte and Tammaro had before them the man who had masterminded one of the world’s greatest swindles. If the evidence was correct then the Chicago suburb of Cicero’s claim for world notoriety would in future be shared by Al Capone and Paul Marcinkus. But as Mrs Beeton observed, ‘first catch your hare’. 

William Lynch raised the temperature a little. ‘If it becomes necessary at some future date will you make yourself available for a face to face confrontation with Mario Foligni?’ 

‘Yes, I will.’ 

‘If it becomes necessary are you also prepared to testify in a United States court?’ 

‘Well, yes, if it’s absolutely necessary. I hope it won’t be though.’ 

‘Why?’ 

‘Well the only people who would gain anything if I appeared in court would be the Italian Press.’ 

‘How’s that?’ 

‘They frequently relish the opportunity to write inflammatory material concerning the Vatican, whether it’s true or not.’ 

Lynch and Aronwald showed a total lack of concern at the Vatican’s sensitivity towards the Italian Press. 

‘Do you have a private numbered account in the Bahamas?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Do you have an ordinary account in the Bahamas?’ 

‘No, I don’t.’ 

‘Are you quite certain, Bishop?’ 

‘The Vatican does have a financial interest in the Bahamas but it’s strictly a business transaction similar to many controlled by the Vatican. It’s not for any one person’s private financial gain.’ 

‘No, we are interested in personal accounts that you have.’ 

‘I don’t have any private or public account in the Bahamas or anywhere else.’ 

How Marcinkus constantly carried his salary and expenses around in cash was not explored. Neither did Marcinkus reveal that he was in fact on the board of directors of Banco Ambrosiano Overseas in Nassau and had been since 1971. He had been invited on to the board by the two men who had set up this Bahamas operation, Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Both men used the Bishop’s name frequently in their business deals. Sindona put it bluntly to Marcinkus on one occasion: ‘I’ve put you on the board because your name helps me to raise money.’ 

Sindona and Calvi showed their gratitude by giving Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank 2.5 per cent of the Nassau Bank’s stock. This eventually rose to 8 per cent. Marcinkus frequently attended board meetings and took holidays in the Bahamas. It must have been irksome constantly having to change the large amounts of currency that, according to the statements he made to the American investigators, he would have been obliged to carry – the first President of a Bank in the world’s history without a personal bank account. 

At this point in the interrogation Bishop Marcinkus observed: ‘You know my position within the Vatican is unique.’ One of the world’s great understatements was followed by: ‘I’m in charge of what many people commonly refer to as the Vatican Bank. As such I have complete control of Vatican financial affairs. One of the things that makes my position completely unique is that I am answerable only to the Pope as to how I handle those financial affairs. In theory my operations are directed by a group of cardinals who meet from time to time and generally act as overseers to the Bank. In reality, however, I virtually have a sole hand in directing the financial affairs of the Vatican.’ 

The personal testimony did not impress the Bishop’s listeners. 

‘What’s the point you’re trying to make?’ 

‘Well, this position that I hold has led to, shall we say, certain hard feelings by other men in responsible positions within the Vatican.’ 

‘Really?’ 

‘Oh yes, it’s just part of the job I’m afraid. I am the first American ever to have risen to such a position of power within the Vatican and I’m sure that this has also caused a certain amount of hard feelings.’ [Basically a Chicago Thug DC]

Whether he was guilty or not of being the mastermind behind this enormous swindle, Paul Marcinkus undoubtedly spoke the truth when he talked about ‘certain hard feelings’ held by other senior men within the Vatican, and not only there. In Venice, Cardinal Albino Luciani was another whose feelings towards Marcinkus grew somewhat more than ‘hard’ as Benelli told him of this latest episode in the Marcinkus saga. Ironically what Benelli did not know was that, during that private interview with the American investigators, Paul Marcinkus had attempted to entangle him in the swindle. 

To read the statement Marcinkus made, it is clear that in his eyes everyone but himself merited investigation. Of Father Mario Fornasari, who was allegedly deeply involved in the affair, Marcinkus noted: 

‘Some of the people who work for me at the Bank have pointed Fornasari out to me as an individual to avoid. I’m sure you know that Fornasari was denounced some time ago for writing libellous letters.’ 

‘Really, what happened?’ 

‘I believe the charges were dropped.’ 

Marcinkus conceded that he had been involved with Mario Foligni, without doubt one of the principal figures in the billion dollar swindle, on at least two business ventures. The first concerned a 100 million dollar investment scheme that did not come to fruition. The second was a 300 million dollar deal involving Foligni and the Italian industrialist Carlo Pesenti. That too had aborted, but as Marcinkus told his convoluted tale he was at pains to drag in Benelli’s name. Apart from demonstrating that his ego had been bruised because Benelli had asked Pope Paul to consider the 300 million dollar deal and Marcinkus clearly believed that no one should talk to the Pope about money but him, Marcinkus also attempted to link Benelli and Foligni, presumably working on the law of guilt by association. In view of the subsequent activities of Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, both close friends of Marcinkus, it would be interesting to know if Marcinkus still holds to this dubious legal tenet. 

What Marcinkus neglected to explain, perhaps because he was not asked to, was why he was even prepared to consider the 300 million dollar deal involving Foligni, some eight months after Foligni had unloaded 1.5 million dollars’ worth of fake securities in a Swiss Bank and some six months after he had unloaded 2.5 million dollars’ worth of phoney bonds in the Banco di Roma. As President of the Vatican Bank it is inconceivable that Marcinkus was the only head of a bank in Europe not to know of these criminal activities. 

At the end of a long interrogation, Marcinkus maintained total innocence and disclaimed all knowledge. He happily accepted a list of the counterfeit bonds and said he would keep his eye open for them. 

A variety of people were eventually found guilty of involvement in the billion dollar swindle. With regard to the allegations that Bishop Paul Marcinkus was involved, Attorney William Aronwald told me: 

The most that could be said is that we were satisfied that the investigation had not disclosed sufficiently credible evidence to prove or disprove the allegation. Consequently since we were not morally satisfied ourselves that there was anything wrong, or that Marcinkus or anyone else in the Vatican had done anything wrong, it would have been improper of us to try to grab some headlines. 

It is abundantly clear that what seriously restricted this investigation was not the lack of will of the United States investigators. They tried hard, very hard. It would later be alleged that they were themselves part of a giant cover up, * that they had merely gone through the motions of an enquiry. This is nonsense and shows total ignorance of the very real problems that are posed when an investigation which begins in one country has to be continued inside another. The Vatican City is an independent State. That Lynch and Aronwald and the men from the FBI got inside the Vatican gates at all is a tribute to their tenacity. One cannot go rushing over the Tiber like a TV New York cop, armed with a .45 gun, search warrants, authority to hold and question witnesses and the many other legal devices that can be used within the United States. 

If Vatican City were part of the United States then doubtless all members of the Curia working in the Sacra Congregazione Dei Religiosi would have been interrogated in depth. Fingerprints would have been taken. Forensic tests on all typewriters within the Congregation would have been made. If all that could have been done the question of Bishop Marcinkus’s guilt or innocence might have been resolved. The fact that the United States Government took the evidence seriously enough to risk a very delicate political situation is illuminating in itself. As William Aronwald said to me, ‘We were not about to waste that amount of taxpayers money unless we took the evidence very seriously indeed. At the end of the investigation the case against Marcinkus had to be filed for lack of evidence that might have convinced a jury.'

The question therefore remains unanswered. Who was the customer who ordered the counterfeit bonds? Based on all the available official evidence it is possible to draw only two conclusions. Each is bizarre. Leopold Ledl and Mario Foligni were planning to steal from the American Mafia a huge fortune in counterfeit bonds, having first conned the Mafia into going to the very considerable expense of creating the bonds. This particular section of the Mafia had a number of members who killed or maimed people who they merely imagined had insulted them. If this is the real reason then Ledl and Foligni were seeking an unusual form of suicide. The other conclusion is that the 950 million dollars’ worth of counterfeit bonds were destined for the Vatican.

In Venice, Albino Luciani continued to wear the robes that had been left by his predecessor, Cardinal Urbani. Throughout the entire period of his Patriarchship he refused to buy new ones, preferring instead to have the nuns who looked after him mend and re-mend. Indeed he wore the robes of Cardinal and Patriarch rarely, preferring his simple priest’s cassock. 

His personal humility often created interesting situations. Motoring through Germany in 1975 with Father Senigaglia, the Cardinal arrived at the town of Aachen. Luciani particularly wanted to pray at a very ancient altar in the main church. Senigaglia watched as Luciani was told in rather a peremptory manner by the Church officials that the altar was closed and he should return another day. Back in the car Luciani translated the conversation he had had for Senigaglia’s benefit. Enraged, Senigaglia erupted from the car, ran to the church and gave the dignitaries a burst of Italian. They understood enough to know that he was declaring that the little priest they had turned away was the Patriarch of Venice. It was now Luciani’s turn to get angry with his secretary as he was almost dragged from the car by the German priests. As Luciani entered the church one of the still apologetic priests murmured to him, ‘Eminence, a little bit of red, at least, could be useful.’ 

On another occasion in Venice, Luciani was attending a conference on ecology. He became deeply involved in conversation with one of the participants. Wishing to continue the dialogue he invited the ecologist to call on him at his home. 

‘Where do you live?’ asked the ecologist. 

‘Just next door to St Mark’s,’ responded Luciani. 

‘Do you mean the Patriarch’s Palace?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘And whom do I ask for?’ 

‘Ask for the Patriarch.’ 

Underneath his humility and gentleness was a man who, by his environment and his vocation, was exceptionally strong. Neither to the left nor the right, he refused to become involved with the warring factions in Rome. The power plays inside the Vatican left Luciani on occasions puzzled as to why some of these men had become priests at all. In an Easter sermon of 1976 he observed: 

Some are in the Church only as troublemakers. They are like the employee who first moved heaven and earth to get into the firm but once he had the job was perpetually restless and became a pestilential hair shirt on the skin of his colleagues and his superiors. Yes, some people seem only to look at the sun in order to find stains on it. 

His desire to achieve a new synthesis by taking what in his view was right from both sides led him into considerable conflict in Venice. The issue of divorce is an example. 

In Italy in the mid-1970s divorce was legal in the eyes of the State but unacceptable in the eyes of the Church. A move began to test the issue again through a referendum. Luciani was deeply opposed to the referendum simply because he was convinced it would split the Church and result in a majority committing themselves at the polling booths to a decision that the divorce laws should remain unchanged. If that happened it would be an official defeat for the Roman Catholic Church in the country it traditionally claimed as its own. 

Benelli took the opposite view. He was convinced that the Church would win if there was a referendum. 

The debate, not only within the Church but throughout Italy, reached an intense level. Shortly before the referendum took place, FUCI, a student group organized by a priest in Venice, sent a forty-page document to every bishop in the Veneto region. In it was a powerful argument supporting the prodivorce position. Albino Luciani read the document carefully, considered for a while, then made national headlines by apparently disbanding the student group. In the Church it was seen by many as an act of courage. In the country commentators seized upon Luciani’s action as yet another example of the bigotry of the Catholic hierarchy.

What had outraged Luciani was not the pro-divorce statements but the fact that to buttress their arguments the group had quoted extensively from a wide variety of church authorities, leading theologians and a number of Vatican Council II documents. To use the latter in such a way was to Luciani a perversion of Church teaching. He had been there at the birth of Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae. Error might well have rights in the modern Church but in Venice 1974 for Luciani there was still a limitation to those rights. Thus to see a quotation from Dignitatis Humanae that extolled the rights of the individual ‘Protecting and promoting the inviolable rights of man is the essential duty of every civil power. The civil power must therefore guarantee to every citizen, through just laws and through other suitable means, the effective protection of religious liberty’, followed by the statement: 

‘On other occasions the Church has found itself confronted by serious situations in society against which the only reasonable possibility was obviously not the use of repressive methods but the adoption of moral criteria and juridical methods which favoured the only good which was then historically possible: the lesser evil. Thus Christian morality adopted the theory of the just war; thus the Church allowed the legalization of prostitution (even in the Papal States), while obviously it remained forbidden on a moral level. And so also for divorce . . .’ 

To see such statements juxtaposed in a plea that the Church take a liberal view on divorce for the sake of expediency was unacceptable to Luciani. Obviously his beloved Vatican Council II teachings, like the Bible, could be taken to prove and justify any position. Luciani was aware that as he was head of the Bishops’ Council for the Veneto region, the Italian public would consider the statement official policy and then be faced with the dilemma of whether they should follow the bishops of the Veneto region or the bishops in the rest of Italy. In fact he did not disband the student group as is generally thought. He used a technique that was central to his philosophy. He firmly believed that you could radically alter power groups by identifying the precise centre of power and removing it. So he simply removed the priest who was advising the student group. 

In reality, as Father Mario Senigaglia confirmed to me, Luciani’s personal view on divorce would have surprised his critics: 

It was more enlightened than popular comment would have it. He could and did accept divorcees. He also easily accepted others who were living in what the Church calls ‘sin’. What outraged him was the biblical justification. 

As Luciani had prophesied, the referendum resulted in a majority for the pro-divorce lobby. It left a split Church, a Pope who publicly expressed his amazement and incredulity at the result, and a dilemma for those who had to reconcile the differences between Church and State. 

Luciani’s own dilemma was that he was committed to an unswerving obedience to the Papacy. Often the Pope would take a different position from that held by the Patriarch of Venice. When that position became public, Luciani felt it his duty publicly to support it. What he did on a one-to-one basis with members of his diocese frequently bore no resemblance to the Vatican line. By the mid-1970s he had moved even further towards a liberal position on birth control. This man, who upon the announcement of Humanae Vitae had allegedly declared ‘Rome has spoken. The case is closed,’ clearly felt that the case was far from closed. 

When his young secretary Father Mario Senigaglia discussed with Luciani, with whom he had developed an almost father-son relationship, different moral cases involving parishioners, Luciani always approved the liberal view that Senigaglia took. Senigaglia said to me, ‘He was a very understanding man. Very many times I would hear him say to couples. “We have made of sex the only sin when in fact it is linked to human weakness and frailty and is therefore perhaps the least of sins”.’ It is clear that Albino Luciani did not want for critics in Venice. Some considered that he revealed a nostalgia for the past rather than a desire for change. Some labelled him to the right, others to the left. Others saw his humility and gentleness as mere weakness. Perhaps posterity should judge the man on what he actually said rather than on what others thought he should have said. 

On violence: 
Strip God away from the hearts of men, tell children that sin is only a fairy tale invented by their grandparents to make them good, publish elementary school texts that ignore God and scoff at authority, and then don’t be surprised at what is happening. Education alone is not enough! Victor Hugo wrote that one more school means one less prison. Would that that were so today! 

On Israel: 
The church must also think of the Christian minorities who live in Arab countries. She cannot abandon them to fortune . . . for me personally, there is no doubt that a special tie exists between the people of Israel and Palestine. But the Holy Father, even if he wanted to, could not say that Palestine belongs to the Jews, since this would be to make a political judgment. 

On nuclear weapons: 
People say that nuclear weapons are too powerful and to use them would mean the end of the world. They are manufactured and accumulated, but only to ‘dissuade’ the enemy from attacking and to keep the international situation stable. 

Look around. Is it true or not that for 30 years there has not been a world war? 

Is it true or not that serious crises between the two great powers, the USA and the USSR have been avoided? 

Let’s be happy over this partial result . . . A gradual, controlled and universal disarmament is possible only if an international organization with more efficient powers and possibilities for sanctions than the present United Nations comes into being and if education for peace becomes sincere. 

On racism in the USA: 
In the United States, despite the laws, Negroes are in practice on the edge of society. The descendants of the Indians have seen their situation bettered significantly only in recent years. 

To call such a man a reactionary nostalgic may have validity. He yearned for a world that was not largely ruled by Communist philosophies, a world where abortion was not an every minute event. But if he was a reactionary he had some remarkably progressive ideas. 

Early in 1976 Luciani attended yet another Italian Bishops’ Conference in Rome. One of the subjects openly discussed was the serious economic crisis Italy was then facing. Linked with this subject was another which the bishops discussed privately: the Vatican’s role in that economic crisis and the role of that good friend of Bishop Marcinkus, Michele Sindona. His empire had crashed in spectacular fashion. Banks were collapsing in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the USA. Sindona was wanted by the Italian authorities on a range of charges and was fighting his extradition from the United States. The Italian Press had asserted that the Vatican had lost in excess of 100 million dollars. The Vatican had denied this but admitted that it had sustained some loss. In June 1975 the Italian authorities, while continuing their fight to bring Sindona to justice had sentenced him in absentia to to a prison term of three-and-a-half years, the maximum they could give for the offences. Many bishops felt that Pope Paul VI should have moved Marcinkus from the Vatican Bank when the Sindona bubble burst in 1974. Now, two years later, Sindona’s friend was still controlling the Vatican Bank. 

Albino Luciani left Rome, a city buzzing with speculation about how many millions the Vatican had lost in the Sindona affair, left a Bishops’ Conference where the talk had been of how much the Vatican Bank owned of Banca Privata, of how many shares the Bank had in this conglomerate or that company. He returned to Venice where the Don Orione School for the handicapped did not have enough money for school books. 

Luciani went to his typewriter and wrote a letter which was published in the next edition of the diocese magazine. It was entitled ‘A loaf of bread for the love of God’. He began by appealing for money to help the victims of a recent earthquake disaster in Guatemala, stating that he was authorizing a collection in all churches on Sunday, February 29th. He then commented on the state of economic affairs in Italy, advising his readers that the Italian bishops and their ecclesiastical communities were committed to showing practical signs of understanding and help. He went on to deplore: 

The situation of so many young people who are looking for work and cannot find it. Of those families who are experiencing the drama or prospect of sacking. Those who have sought security by emigrating far away and who now find themselves confronted by the prospect of an unhappy return. Those who are old and sick and because of the insufficiency of social pensions suffer worst the consequences of this crisis . . . 

I wish priests to remember and frequently to refer in any way they like to the situation of the workers. We complain sometimes that workers go and seek bad advice from the left and the right. But in reality how much have we done to ensure that the social teaching of the Church can be habitually included in our Catechism, in the hearts of Christians? 

Pope John asserted that workers must be given the power to influence their own destiny at all levels, even the highest scale. Have we always taught that with courage? Pius XII while on the one hand warning of the dangers of Marxism, on the other hand reproves those priests who remain uncertain in face of that economic system which is known as capitalism, the grave consequences of which the Church has not failed to denounce. Have we always listened to this? 

Albino Luciani then gave an extraordinary demonstration of his own abhorrence of a wealthy, materialistic Church. He exhorted and authorized all of his parish priests and rectors of sanctuaries to sell their gold, necklaces, and precious objects. The proceeds were to go to the Don Orione centre for handicapped people. He advised his readers that he intended to sell the bejewelled cross and gold chain which had belonged to Pius XII and which Pope John had given to Luciani when he had made him a bishop. 

It is very little in terms of the money it will produce but it is perhaps something if it helps people to understand that the true treasures of the Church are, as St Lorenzo said, the poor, the weak who must be helped not with occasional charity but in such a way that they can be raised a little at a time to that standard of life and that level of culture to which they have a right. 

He also announced that he intended to sell to the highest bidder a valuable pectoral cross with gold chain and the ring of Pope John. These items had been given to Venice by Pope Paul during his September visit of 1972. Later in the same article he quoted two Indians. Firstly, Gandhi: ‘I admire Christ but not Christians.’ 

Luciani then expressed the wish that the words of Sandhu Singh would perhaps one day no longer be true: 

One day I was sitting on the banks of a river. I took from the water a round stone and I broke it. Inside it was perfectly dry. That stone had been lying in the water for a very long time but the water had not penetrated it. Then I thought that the same thing happened to men in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity but Christianity has not penetrated, does not live within them. 

The response was mixed. Some of the Venetian priests had grown attached to the precious jewels they had in their churches. Luciani also came under attack from some of the traditionalists of the city, those who were fond of recalling the glory and power that was interwoven in the title of Patriarch, the last vestige of the splendour of the Serenissima. This man who was pledged to seeking out and living the essential, eternal truth of the Gospel met a deputation of such citizens in his office. Having listened to them he said: 

I am first a bishop among bishops, a shepherd among shepherds, who must have as his first duty the spreading of the Good News and the safety of his lambs. Here in Venice I can only repeat what I said at Canale, at Belluno and at Vittorio Veneto. 

Then he phoned the fire brigade, borrowed a boat and went to visit the sick in a nearby hospital. 

As already recorded, one of the methods this particular shepherd employed to communicate with his flock was the pen. On more than one occasion Luciani told his secretary that if he had not become a priest he would probably have become a journalist. To judge by his writings he would have been an asset to the profession. In the early 1970s he devised an interesting technique to make a variety of moral points to the readers of the diocesan magazine: a series of letters to a variety of literary and historical characters. The articles caught the eye of the editor of a local newspaper, who persuaded Luciani to widen his audience through the paper. Luciani reasoned that he had more chance of spreading the ‘Good News’ through the press than he did preaching to half-empty churches. Eventually a collection of the letters was published in book form, Illustrissimi – the most illustrious ones. 

The book is a delight. Apart from providing an invaluable insight into the mind of Albino Luciani, each letter comments on aspects of modern life. Luciani’s unique ability to communicate, unique that is for an Italian Cardinal, is demonstrated again and again. The letters are also a clear proof of just how widely read Luciani was. Chesterton and Walter Scott receive a letter from the Patriarch, as do Goethe, Alessandro Manzoni, Marlowe and many others. There is even one addressed to Christ which begins in typical Luciani fashion. 

Dear Jesus, 
I have been criticized. ‘He’s a Bishop, he’s a Cardinal,’ people have said, ‘he’s been writing letters to all kinds of people: to Mark Twain, to Péguy, to Casella, to Penelope, to Dickens, to Marlowe, to Goldoni and heaven knows how many others. And not a line to Jesus Christ! 

His letter to St Bernard grew into a dialogue, with the Saint giving sage advice, including an example of how fickle public opinion could be. 

In 1815 the official French newspaper, Le Moniteur, showed its readers how to follow Napoleon’s progress: ‘The brigand flees from the island of Elba’; ‘The usurper arrives at Grenoble’; ‘Napoleon enters Lyons’; ‘The Emperor reaches Paris this evening’. 

Into each letter is woven advice to his flock, on prudence, responsibility, humility, fidelity, charity. As a piece of work designed to communicate the Christian message it is worth twenty Papal encyclicals. 

Spreading the ‘Good News’ was one aspect of Luciani’s years in Venice. Another was the recalcitrance constantly demonstrated by some of his priests. Apart from those who spent their time evicting tenants or complaining about having to sell Church treasures there were others who embraced Marxism as wholeheartedly as yet others were preoccupied with capitalism. One priest wrote in red paint across the walls of his Church, ‘Jesus was the first socialist’; another climbed into his pulpit in nearby Mestre and declared to his astonished congregation, ‘I shall do no more work for the Patriarch until he gives me a pay rise.’ 

Albino Luciani, a man with a highly developed sense of humour, was not amused at such antics. In July 1978 from the pulpit of the Church of the Redemptor in Venice he talked to his congregation of clerical error: ‘It is true that the Pope, bishops and priests do not cease to be poor men subject to errors and often we make errors.’ 

At this point he lifted his head from his manuscript and looking directly at the people said with complete sincerity: 

‘I am convinced that when Pope Paul VI destined me to the See of Venice he committed an error.’ 

Within days of that comment Pope Paul VI died; at 9.40 pm on Sunday, August 6th, 1978. The throne was empty.

Next
The Empty Throne

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