“Open it.”
Sarah obeyed. It was a bundle of papers.
“What’s this?”
“Read those documents carefully. We’ll talk later.”
“Do you think this could be enough to convince the Vatican to surrender those papers?”
“Without a doubt. We all have our weak points. Wait for my instructions.”
The earpiece stopped. She took it out and threw it on the bed. She sat on the edge, still with the bundle of papers in her hand, and read the heading. There was a name in all capital letters.
MEHMET ALI AGCA
EPILOGUE
When I first contacted the author to write this book, the most important requirement was that he had to mix fact and fiction. Why? The answer was simple. I knew from my own experience that that’s the way real life happens. Many historical truths that we consider authentic are no more than mere fictions. The set of circumstances surrounding the death of John Paul I is an example and, believe me, not the only one.
I must confess that the result surprised me very positively. Fact and fiction did mix adequately. With this artifice, it wasn’t my intention to ask readers to use their own means to distinguish fact from fiction. I just wanted them to know that not everything that has been said with an open smile, or with a look of deep despair, is the truth.
In these pages the author has created a character who represents me and honors me. I am grateful to him for the skill he showed in developing the plot, using me for his own purpose, as well as mine.
With all the conspiracy theories about the death of John Paul I that have been generated over the past thirty years, I’ve enjoyed staying in the shadows, particularly with all those experts commenting on it as if they were sole proprietors of the truth.
The institutions were not to blame, but rather the people who constituted them or worked for them.
I was a member of the P2 Loggia, and as a human being I am not, nor do I pretend to be, immune to sin or to making mistakes.
However, don’t fool yourselves. Only God will be my judge.
– J.C.
CHARACTERS
CARMINE “ MINO ” PECORELLI. Born in Sessano del Molise, Isernia province, September 14, 1928. Founder of the weekly Osservatorio Politico, specializing in political and financial scandals. He gained power not only through his knowledge of the ins and outs of Italian politics, but also because he was a man of vision. He joined Licio Gelli’s P2. After the assassination of Aldo Moro, he began printing unpublished documents, including three letters that the former prime minister had written to his family. The articles published in his weekly enraged many people, including cabinet members, representatives, ministers, and also Licio Gelli, because Pecorelli made a list of the members of the P2 and sent it to the Vatican. He intended to publish it. He was assassinated on March 20, 1979, with Gelli’s knowledge and consent. The instigator was a noted Italian politician.
ALDO MORO. Italian statesman, born September 23, 1916, in Maglie, in Lecce province. He was prime minister of Italy five times, as well as one of the two most distinguished leaders of the Christian Democracy. Kidnapped by the Red Brigades in the center of Rome, on March 16, 1978, he was held captive until his death, on May 9 of the same year. Disregarding the requests for help that Moro wrote to his party and to his family, the government adopted a tough stance and refused to negotiate with the terrorists. Moro even appealed to Pope Paul VI, a personal friend of his, but to no avail. Officially, Aldo Moro was shot to death by the Red Brigades and placed in the trunk of a car because of the Giulio Andreotti administration’s intransigence, its unwillingness to negotiate. But this is only the official story.
LICIO GELLI. “Venerable Master” of the P2 Masonic Lodge. Born in Pistoia on April 21, 1919, he was involved in practically all the great Italian scandals of the past thirty-five years. He fought on Franco’s side, among the forces sent to Spain by Mussolini, and he was an informant for the Gestapo during the Second World War, even maintaining direct contact with Hermann Göring. Once the war was over, he joined the CIA, and together with NATO, he provided cover for Operation Gladio, which amounted to the creation of a kind of secret rapid-response force, established in Italy and other European countries, including Portugal, with the objective of eliminating Communist threats. He was responsible for innumerable terrorist acts. The murder of John Paul I was one of many that he ordered. His involvement in the deaths of Aldo Moro, Carmine “ Mino ” Pecorelli, Roberto Calvi, the Portuguese prime minister Francisco Sá Carneiro, and others is well known. His illicit alliance with Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, Roberto Calvi, and Michele Sindona was responsible for the embezzlement of $1.4 billion in the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR). He currently lives in house detention in his villa in Tuscany.
PAUL MARCINKUS. American archbishop. He was born in the outskirts of Chicago, January 15, 1922. From 1971 to 1990, he served as director of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, better known as the Vatican Bank. He was directly involved in countless financial scandals with Licio Gelli of the P2 and Roberto Calvi of the Banco Ambrosiano (whose primary share-holder was the Vatican Bank), and Michele Sindona, Italian banker and mafioso, named papal financial adviser by Paul VI. Together they laundered illicit money and hid the profits made by the bank controlled by Marcinkus, supposedly to be invested in charitable works. His name was involved in many little-known stories, particularly the disappearance in 1983 of Emanuela Orlandi, a fifteen-year-old girl, in an attempt by Mehmet Ali Agca to hold her for ransom. Marcinkus always enjoyed the trust of Pope Paul VI. Later, John Paul II had no other recourse but to keep him in his post, allowing him to become the third most powerful man in the Vatican. What John Paul I intended to do with Marcinkus is well known. He was one of the main suspects in the death of Albino Luciani. In 1990, Marcinkus returned to Chicago, after leaving the directorship of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, and later withdrew to a parish in Arizona. He was found dead in his home on February 20, 2006.
ROBERTO CALVI. Milanese banker, born April 13, 1920, known in the press as “God’s banker” for his connections to the Vatican and to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. As president of the Banco Ambrosiano, he was threatened and manipulated by Gelli and Marcinkus, which resulted in a tremendous financial fraud. He had been opposed to the elimination of John Paul I, and that death did not benefit him much. Calvi fled to London with a fake passport, and a few days later, on June 17, 1982, his body was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge. The British police treated the case as a suicide, despite all the indications to the contrary. His pants pockets were full of stones, along with $15,000. The case has been reopened recently in Italy and in the United Kingdom, but it is highly unlikely that the true culprit will ever be found.
JEAN-MARIE VILLOT. French cardinal, born October 11, 1905. Named secretary of state of the Vatican in 1969, during the papacy of Paul VI, a post he kept until the death of that pope and the start of the very brief papacy of John Paul I. He was to be replaced on September 29, 1978. The death of the pontiff allowed him to keep his post during the first year of the papacy of John Paul II, until his own death on March 9, 1979. He was a member of Licio Gelli’s P2, and is considered by some investigators one of the suspects in the murder of Albino Luciani.
LUCÍA DE JESÚS DOS SANTOS . Born March 22, 1907, in Aljustrel, Portugal. She was one of the seers of Fátima, the one who announced the three secrets that the Blessed Virgin Mary revealed to the world and that the Church has controlled with an iron fist, spreading falsehoods in their place. She met with Albino Luciani on July 11, 1977, in the Convent of Santa Teresa, in Coimbra. Their conversation lasted more than two hours, during which she fell into a trance and alerted the future pope as to what was in store for him. She died on February 13, 2005.