betrayed the Church.
‘The preliminary report on the Vatican Bank that I gave you for safekeeping, did you read it?’
‘No, Holiness, I wasn’t sure if I should. I put it in the safe.’
Luciani smiled. Had the positions been reversed he would have done the same. ‘We need to apply the same rules here as we did in Venice, Giovanni. Neither of us is used to Vatican politics but you need to be across all the issues. When you have time I’d like you to read the investigation. I’m not sure how to proceed yet, but tomorrow I will be relieving Archbishop Petroni of all his duties.
‘Your Chief of Staff?’ Giovanni was no great fan of the arrogant and aggressive Petroni, but he was still stunned at the levels to which corruption and deceit had reached within the Vatican.
As Pope John Paul I and Giovanni continued their conversation, and the nuns of the Papal household relaxed in the kitchen, a figure dressed in a priest’s black soutane left the Pope’s bedroom as quietly as he had entered.
‘The Vatican Bank has been involved in serious criminal activities for at least as long as Petroni has been at the helm.’
Giovanni listened intently.
‘Over the past few years we have criminally abused our position as a Papal State and our immunity from investigation by the Italian authorities. The Vatican Bank has been laundering billions of lire for the Mafia and we are heavily involved in a fake invoicing scheme that is defrauding the Italian people of billions more. We have shares in companies that make tanks and munitions, and I’m told that of the more than ten thousand accounts in our Bank, fewer than 10 per cent have a legitimate purpose. Most of them are slush funds for Petroni’s cronies in the Mafia.’
‘We should make a clean breast of this, Holiness,’ Giovanni observed astutely.
‘I intend to, including the fact that at one stage, Istituto Farmacologico Sereno was owned by the Vatican.’
‘The big pharmaceutical?’
Pope John Paul I nodded. ‘One of their biggest selling products is Luteolas, the oral contraceptive pill. You know my views on our doctrine on contraception, Giovanni, but to be condemning birth control while at the same time manufacturing millions of contraceptive pills because it makes us money plunges us to a new depth of hypocrisy. There is, however, an even more sensitive issue. The investigation has revealed that earlier this year we purchased a Dead Sea Scroll for ten million dollars. Have you ever heard of the Omega Scroll?’
‘I’ve heard of it, Holiness, but I had no idea it actually existed, much less that the Vatican might have bought it.’
‘We have known each other for a long time, Giovanni, and when I’m long gone it will be up to you and others like you to carry the Church forward. If what I’m told is true, the Omega Scroll will force us to rethink much of our doctrine and that will upset a great many people, but we must never shy away from the truth. At my request, an old retired Professor of Middle East Antiquities from Universita Ca’ Granda, Professor Salvatore Fiorini, has been here for the last week secretly translating it. I have a brief that I will read tonight. My initial impression is that amongst other revelations, the Omega Scroll contains a terrible warning for us all.’
Giovanni woke to the urgent ringing of the Holy Father’s bell. He looked at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It was just after five in the morning. Giovanni struggled into his robe and hurried down the corridor that connected his own small apartment to that of the Pope’s.
‘Sister Vincenza. You look ill!’ Giovanni said as he reached the end of the hallway. ‘What on earth’s happened?’
‘Something terrible, Father. His Holiness… He’s…’ Sister Vincenza choked on the words.
Giovanni recoiled in shock when he entered the Pope’s bedroom. His Holiness was upright in bed, his face twisted in agony, eyes bulging. His glasses had slipped to the end of his nose. Giovanni felt a strange and overwhelming need to remain calm as he glanced at the Pope’s slippers that had been kicked off in disarray beside the bed, the toes covered in vomit. He picked up the phone beside the Pope’s bedside and rang the Cardinal Secretary of State in his Lateran Palace Apartment. The Cardinal answered almost immediately.
‘ Mon dieu, c’est vrais tous ca? My God, is that true?’
The Cardinal, Giovanni would reflect later, sounded awake and alert.
‘When did you find him, Sister?’ Giovanni asked.
‘Just before I woke you, Father,’ Sister Vincenza replied, tears streaming down her kindly old face. ‘I left the Holy Father’s coffee outside his room at four-thirty as I always do and when I checked just before five it hadn’t been touched, so I knocked and then…’ Her voice trailed off as she started to sob.
‘You did all you could,’ Giovanni said, comforting the old nun. ‘Make yourself a cup of tea,’ he said, giving her something to do.
‘Would you like one, Father?’ Sister Vincenza asked, ever concerned about the welfare of those in her care.
‘Only if you feel up to it.’
When the old nun had left Giovanni looked more closely at the dead Pope. In the short time he had held the Keys of Peter, Albino Luciani had come to be loved by most and feared by some. He was a man of unassuming charm and softness, with a searing intellect. Giovanni glanced at the small bottle of medicine the Pope kept on his bedside table for low blood pressure, then at the crimson folder clutched in the dead Pope’s hand. The papers that had spilled from it onto the bed were part of Professor Fiorini’s brief on the Omega Scroll. Giovanni felt a cold fear in the pit of his stomach as he scanned the scattered pages. And in the beginning, the third will triumph over the first and second… all mankind will be annihilated.
‘Don’t touch anything, Father.’ Lorenzo Petroni’s voice was steely, his lack of emotion sinister. ‘Does anyone else know that the Pope is dead?’ He was clean-shaven and fully dressed in the formal robes of an archbishop. Only minutes had passed since Giovanni had alerted the Cardinal Secretary of State. It was not yet five-fifteen.
‘Only Sister Vincenza and the Cardinal Secretary of State.’
‘You should have rung me as well, Father Donelli. To protect Sister Vincenza from the media she is to be returned to her convent in Venice. Immediately.’
‘Eminence, a terrible thing,’ Petroni said smoothly. The Cardinal Secretary of State, also fully dressed and clean-shaven, hurried into the room. He was followed a little later by the Papal Physician, Dr Renato Buzzonetti. While Dr Buzzonetti examined the body, Archbishop Petroni systematically removed the papers and the file from the bed, as well as the dead Pope’s glasses, his slippers and his medicine. He crossed to the Pope’s desk and removed the file on the impending sackings and transfers, as well as the Holy Father’s appointment book.
Later in the morning Giovanni, still trying to come to terms with both his and the Church’s loss, was stunned to hear the official announcement of the Pope’s death on Vatican Radio: This morning, 29 September 1978, at about five-thirty, the private secretary of the Pope, not having found the Holy Father in the chapel of his private apartment, looked for him in his room and found him dead in bed with the light on, like one who was intent on reading. The physician, Dr Renato Buzzonetti, who hastened to the Pope’s room, verified the death, which took place presumably around eleven o’clock yesterday evening, as ‘sudden death’ that could be related to acute myocardial infarction.
‘The Vatican Radio has got it wrong, Excellency,’ Giovanni remonstrated with Petroni.
‘The Vatican Radio has got it absolutely correct, Father Donelli. Their statements are in accordance with the official press release, which is going on the wire as we speak. All press inquiries are to be handled by the Vatican Press Office and should anyone else ask, the Holy Father was found reading a copy of the devotional The Imitation of Christ. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Excellency,’ was Giovanni’s only response, a touch of steel in his own voice.
Petroni watched the young priest leave his office and wondered how much of the brief on the Omega Scroll he had seen. Time enough to deal with him after the conclave elected the next Pope. Hopefully this time, the Curial Cardinals would get it right and the Church could return to the right path.
Tom Schweiker prepared to go to air, adding to the growing calls for the truth about the death of John Paul I. Up until now the CCN network had not had a reporter dedicated to ‘religious affairs’ and although Tom Schweiker was CCN’s correspondent across the Mediterranean in the largely Muslim Middle East, given the relative proximity to Rome, management had not objected to Tom’s request to cover the Holy See. Management had no idea the request was part of Tom’s search for his own haunting truth, something that had driven him since his youth.
