I was looking at a biography of John Paul I…a pope I know about as an adult but don’t remember ever even hearing about when I was a kid. The year 1978 shows the following:
1978
6 August
Death of Pope Paul VI.
10 August
Left for Rome.
26 August
During the second day of the conclave, elected Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, choosing the name John Paul I.
27 August
Gave his first radiomessage «urbi er orbi».
3 September
Ceremony that initiates his pastoral service.
28 September
Died.
This kind of leaves me hanging. He was Pope for 32 days. Obvioiusly, he wasn’t 100 years old, or very ill or I wouldn’t think they would’ve elected him Pope.
The official cause of death was heart attack. I don’t think an autopsy was performed. As always in such situations there were plenty of conspiracy theories.
Among them the fantasy that the new Pope had discovered a major scandal with the Vatican Bank and that organization, to quote Eliza Doolittle, “did 'im in” to keep him from disbanding the Bank and ruining whatever arrangement they had with…well, whoever. It’s a conspiracy theory…making sense is secondary.
Calvi was found hanged from Blackfriars Bridge in London – which I have read is a classic Masonic punishment for traitors (denying him burial in land or water). Although, like most fearful Masonic punishments, in most lodges it would just be language from an initiation rite, not something that they ever actually do.
There are variations of ritual from place to place, but that doesn’t fit any initiation language I learned when I was a Mason. No, the resting place (again, never practiced) was wet.
I had a theology teacher in high school who actually speculated that JP I was about to speak ex cathedra about something incorrect, and so God Himself struck him down to protect Papal infallibility. Take that for whatever it’s worth.
What, God couldn’t have just sent him a vision or dream one night?
Angel: “JP, whatever you’re thinking of doing, I’d seriously re-consider it. The Big Guy thinks you’re off base. If you go ahead, well, the Big Guy might just call you home.”
JP: “Great, thanks, thanks for letting me know - it’s all copacetic, I won’t do it.”
I actually saw Pope John Paul I (who, I believe, actually incorporated that “I” in his official name) during his brief papacy. I was in Rome as part of a field trip from University. Well, it was supposed to be him but as he was high up and quite far away on his balcony it could have been a dummy for all I could tell.
The closest that anyone has come to something “resembling” a conspiracy theory that is within shouting distance of having any substantiation has been that the newly elected pope was not particularly popular with the Vatican staff who, when he got sick, did not force him to seek medical attention soon enough (since he was still rather young and they did not figure it was anything serious).
All the other claims of conspiracy have been put forth by people whose whole careers are built out of publishing idiotic claims of conspiracies for fun and profit.
He was not murdered.
He was not about to lay open some major scandal regarding the bank (which scandal wound up being opened under the reign of JP II, anyway, and no one murdered him).
He was certainly not “taken by God” for fear that he would make an incorrect declaration ex cathedra. (His theology was in no way extreme.)
He was just a guy in late middle age who succumbed to complications from the flu or some similar ailment the way that lots of guys in late middle age die when they shrug off early symptoms of diseases that they have successfully fought off throughout their younger, healthier lives. (See, for example, Jim Henson.) Typically, however, such guys are not the recently elected heads of the largest single Christian denomination in the world (since we only get one of those every decade and a half or so, on average).
There is a bit in wiki about Brit Historian John Cornwell, and his book on the Subject A Thief in The Night. That is like the Warren Commission having “a bit” on the JFK assassination.
I have always found this to be one of the most complete and excellent sourced discussions of this event by anyone, any where. He really is convincing in laying out (almost unquestionably) that JPI was seriously ill with Heart Disease and had suddenly began pushing the crap out of himself once he took office. (Less well sourced but not wildly reaching - he brings you along like a lawyer establishing a timeline) JPI Secretary’s started a small white lie, to protect themselves and Papal Dignity and that mushroomed into all sorts of crazy theories.
The Vatican felt it had to answer Yallop’s sensational book - the first one to yell conspiracy, sell well & gain some under the radar traction and start whispers .The Vatican picked Cromwell because, the Vatican believed, he would be fair and be seen as a neutral and Academic/Journalistic party – one whose research would be beyond question and who reputation would be beyond reproach. He was given extraordinary access to the Vatican and even had an audience with JP-II. He reached the conclusions outlined above. He convinced me, but not the World, that there was no conspiracy. Really if you are interested in this subject it has to be among the top 1or 2 must reads.
Lest we want to damn Cromwell as a Popish puppet - he parlayed all this access into 1999’s Hitler’s Pope an account that excoriates Pius XII as a tool of the Nazi’s. Cromwell is no tool of the Vatican.
Vatican officials refused to allow an autopsy on the grounds that it was against canon law. However other Popes have been autopsied to determing if they’d been poisoned.
