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Preface to Murder
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For those of us who remember him, I bring nothing new. Yet, for those of us who have allowed the Vatican’s misrepresentations of what he was all about, who have allowed its falsehoods to distort his legacy, I bring a treasure trove of yesterday.
In the crypt beneath St. Peter’s Basilica is a granite tomb,
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Like its counterpart in Arlington across the pond, it, too, marks an unknown tomb, 'The Tomb of the Unknown Pope.' Not even his period of reign marks his place in time. The Church would rather his life remain a secret, The Secret Life of John Paul I.
In the fall of 1978, I had scheduled a vacation to visit my friend Jack Champney in the Vatican. The nature of my visit would change when John Paul died. I would console Jack who had been so close to the Pope. A couple of days later, it would change again. Jack was killed by a hit-run driver and shipped back home.
Though I had suspicions at the time, I have no evidence other than coincidence Jack’s murder was linked to that of his long term friend and confidant, Albino Luciani. Nevertheless, I kept my date. When John Paul II—the CIA-Opus Dei candidate—rose to the papacy, I grew concerned. I flew to the Veneto country where Luciani had spent his ministry.
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The Bishop's Castle at Vittorio Veneto
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I visited my friend Antonio Cunial, bishop of Vittorio Veneto. I hoped to secure some of Luciani’s records that I might someday put them to print. He told me agents from the Vatican foreign minister’s office had shown up the week before and had taken everything with them. I asked him why he had surrendered the records.
During his installation a pope undergoes intense legal counseling as his status changes dramatically when he becomes pope.1
As a part of these procedures, a pope is required to file his will with the Vatican. Often a new will is drafted. Yet, at the very least, a proviso is added to accommodate the change in legal position.
Although Cardinal Felici insisted he had filed the will together with an appropriate rider, the Vatican Clerk reported it lost in the Vatican offices. After Luciani’s death, his lawyer in Venice was asked to send another copy of the original will to Rome.
At first he complied. A few days later, he sent a message he had discovered Luciani’s will missing from his files; he would secure a copy from the Venice office. The next day, he sent another message—the will was missing from the City Clerk’s files.
When confronted, Cunial called Luciani’s lawyer and was told the will had provided his records pertaining to his ministries as a priest and as a bishop had been willed respectively to the dioceses he had served in. Yet, as it could not be found, he had no right to resist and surrendered the records.
Cunial told me something else.
There had been a break-in at the local newspaper and some of its archives stolen. This did not mean much to me as when he was a bishop most of the important things he said and did reached notoriety and were recorded in many newspapers.
This is why what I have to say about his twenty years as a bishop is so well documented: irrefutable references from Italian and world periodicals and other public records which survived the Vatican’s attempt to annihilate the controversial life of Albino Luciani.
Yet, even newspapers can often be misleading depending on which side of the aisle they represent. For example, when he said, “God is more our Mother than She is our Father,” L’Osservatore Romano and other right wing newspapers did not report the incident at all while other right wing papers dropped the inference of the superiority of the fair sex: “God is the Father, but also the Mother.”2
Middle-of-the-road journals like La Repubblica may have come closer to what had actually been said: “God is our Father, more so, our Mother.”3
Left wing La Stampa and Il Mondo went so far as to speculate an imminent change in the Holy Trinity. 4
Yet, as a common priest, Luciani was far less politicized. One could depend on the integrity of Corriere delle Alpi for those twenty years he spoke out on humane issues as a priest.
I arrived in Belluno too late. Bishop Ducoli had given up Luciani’s records on demand.
When I approached Corriere delle Alpi, I was told there had been a break-in a week earlier. Much later, I found that the P2-Opus Dei coalition had bought out this paper in the early seventies to seal archives of articles it had published of John XXIII.
As Patriarch of Venice, Roncalli (John) had been critical of the visionary saints. It was he who coined the phrase ‘The Fatima Cult.’
In 1955, when Pius XII claimed to have a vision of Christ, Roncalli was caught off guard the Pope was making up stories to lead the world into a third world war. He told a reporter in Venice, “…If we are to have a true church it must be built on truth, not one built on myth.”5
Yet, what really made me realize what I was up against is a more recent incident in Vittorio Veneto with an aging seminary instructor. I asked what he knew of John and the visionary saints.
He told me he knew things which might be of interest to me—yet, all clergy in the Veneto country were required to run inquiries of both Roncalli and Luciani through Venice. He took my card.
A month later, I received an email describing Roncalli as a man who spent his life on his knees in adoration of plaster statues. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Regardless, for Luciani’s time as a child, as an outspoken seminarian and as a revolutionary priest, except for his more prominent stands on humane issues which reached notoriety, I rely primarily on my direct witness—my personal encounters with the man himself. I recall each of them as if it was yesterday. I relished those times, as I witnessed this good man Luciani smiling, grinning, laughing, teasing, joking and then smiling some more.
He went into great detail and spoke hours on end of his days as a teenage troublemaker in the seminary at Feltre and I recount much of that here. He had less to say of his days in the major seminary at Belluno and as a young priest. Yet, he gave me enough to bridge the gap between his childhood and the time he became a bishop.
Except for his more controversial behavior in which he defied papal decrees and stirred the world press, we may never be able to reconstruct the true Luciani. We may never be able to come up with precisely what kind of pope he would have been.
Yet, we can try. Even if we fail to recreate the man he truly was; we will, at least, get closer to what a pope should be.
Some of what I speak of here is the record of my friend Jack’s correspondence and the conversations he had with me. Only one of Jack’s letters arrived during John Paul’s papacy.
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1 One becomes a citizen of the Vatican when one becomes Pope. A pope’s will must adhere to the laws of the Vatican and not any other country. Also, a pope yields certain rights of ownership, etc.
2 Il Gazzettino 9 Sep 78. The Vatican held controlling interest in this Venice newspaper at the time
3 La Repubblica 7 Sep 78
4 La Stampa 7 Sep 78 Il Mondo 8 Sep 78
5 Messaggero Mestre 29 Sep 55. The French had pulled out of Vietnam, the Vatican had lost its foothold in mainland Asia. Pius feigned his vision to entice the United States to get involved.
Photo bishop’s castle - author photo
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