Pope JP I killed over ‘reform plans’

POPE John Paul I, who died from an apparent heart attack just 33 days after becoming pontiff in 1978, was assassinated over his plans to radically reform the Catholic Church, a novel to be published worldwide next year charges.

Portuguese author and television scriptwriter Luis Miguel Rocha, 29, said he based The Last Pope on documents he obtained through an undisclosed Vatican source, which he will make public once the novel is published in April.
The novel expounds the theory that John Paul I had become a threat because he was aware of money laundering involving the Vatican Bank as well as due to his plans to liberalise some aspects of centuries-old church doctrine.

“He wanted to be the last wealthy pope. John Paul I wanted to redistribute the riches of the church, open the church to women and authorise the use of contraceptives,” Rocha told AFP in an interview.

The novel depicts John Paul I’s assassination as the result of a conspiracy involving top financial officials, several European governments and a Mafia group that counted top officials of the Roman Curia, including the pontiffs personal secretary, as members.

Rocha’s novel triggered huge interest during October at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest trade fair for publishers, as editors from more than 50 nations indicated they wanted to buy the rights, Portuguese publishers said.

John Paul I’s death on September 28, 1978 instantly gave rise to speculation due to discrepancies between the official story of the discovery of his body and the facts, combined with the Vatican’s refusal to perform an autopsy.
Rocha’s book is not the first to point to foul play.

In 1984, British author David Yallop, who writes mostly about unsolved crimes, published In God’s Name, which proposed the theory John Paul I’s death was linked to alleged corruption at the Vatican Bank.

The book has sold over six million copies but many of its points of suspicion were challenged four years later by British historian and journalist John Cornwell in his book A Thief in the Night.

Rocha’s Portuguese publishers, Saida de Emergencia, said the new book would be the first to be based directly on Vatican documents.

“This book is a work of fiction based on real facts,” said the author’s Portuguese editor, Luis Corte Real.

The novel is one of several religious thrillers to be launched in 2006 following the runaway success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which has more than 25 million copies in print worldwide.

The Portuguese media has already labelled Rocha, who divides his time between London and Portugal’s second city, Oporto, as the “new Dan Brown” and Rocha has reportedly agreed to write a preface to The Last Pope.

Elected on the third ballot of the 1978 papal conclave, Pope John Paul I – born Albino Luciani – immediately sparked controversy with his refusal to have the traditional papal coronation ceremony, choosing to have a less formal papal inauguration mass instead.

His successor, Pope John Paul II, who left a deeply conservative stamp on the church he led for 26 years until his death in April, opted to copy the low-key ceremony rather than reinstate the millennium-old papal coronation.

The Last Pope will be published in April in Portugal, Britain and the United States, Corte Real said.

The English edition alone is expected to sell more than two million copies, according to forecasts by the book’s British publishers, he added.

Agence France-Presse