November 5, 2017 headlines
Canon212.com
New book says the 'mystery' has been solved
over Papa Luciani's death after only 33 days as Pope
On the night he died, he suffered a strong chest pain
but he did not want his doctor to be told
by Andrea Tornielli
VATICAN CITY, Nov. 4, 2017 - For the first time, thanks to a documented investigation, as compelling as a police investigation and as accurate as historical research, the circumstances of the death of John Paul I, whose pontificate lasted only 33 days in 1978, have been brought to light: Just before dining the night he died, the Pope had a sudden but fleeting chest pain that was under-estimated by all.
On Tuesday November 7th, a book based on unpublished documents and testimonies, will be out in stores which will hopefully put an end to the "mystery" on the death of the Pontiff from Veneto. Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin wrote the preface of "Pope Luciani. Chronicle of a Death" (Piemme, pp. 252,17 euro).
Journalist Stefania Falasca, vice-postulator of Papa Luciani's beatification cause, and author of the booshas questioned witnesses never heard before, and had acces to the secret files of the Holy See as well as Luciani’s medical records.
In her account, Sister Margherita Marin, now 76 years old, but at the time, the youngest of the Venetian religious at the service of the Pope, says she entered the bedroom of John Paul I at dawn on 29 September 1978, immediately after Sister Vincenza Taffarel, the elderly religious who had been assisting Luciani for over twenty years.
But it was Marin who had witnessed what happened in the hours prior to the sudden death of the Pope. She denies that he was fatigued, much less 'crushed', by the burden of his new responsibilities: "I always saw him calm, serene, full of trust, confident".
She attests that he did not follow any particular diets and that he ate what everyone else ate in the papal apartment. She describes how John Paul I spent what would be his last afternoon alive: "I was ironing in the wardrobe with the door open and I saw him walking back and forth. He was walking in the apartment holding some papers he was reading.... I remember him seeing me ironing and saying, "Sister, I make you work a lot... don’t bother ironing the shirt so well because it's hot, I sweat and need to change them often... just iron the collar and wrists, that the rest is not seen, you know…".
From other testimonies, among which is that of papal valet Angelo Gugel, we learn of the on the sudden but apparently fleeting illness that afflicted Luciani that evening, just before dinner, while praying in the chapel with his Irish private secretary, John Magee. It is all described in a secret document drawn up in the days after his death written by Renato Buzzonetti, the first doctor to be called to the bedside of the dead Pope, wrote it.
In the detailed report addressed to the Secretariat of State on 9 October 1978, he described an "episode of pain localized at the third superior of the sternal region [i.e., chest pain] suffered by the Holy Father around 7:30 pm. on the day of death. The episode lasted for more than five minutes, occurred while the Pope was seated and reciting a prayer with Father Magee. But the pain regressed without any treatment."
The testimony is significant because this was learned soon after the death. Other details: Nobody saw the need to call the Vatican Pharmacy; nobody told Sister Vincenza, who was a nurse and spoke on the phone on that same evening to the Pope's doctor, Antonio Da Ros, resident in Vittorio Veneto, and of course, did not mention what she did not then know.
Luciani was not given any medication, nor was a doctor called to check him out make any checks, despite the fact that chest pain was severe and most likely, a symptom of the coronary artery problem that probably stopped his heart later when he was in bed. Father Magee in his testimony recounted that it was the Pope himself who did not want to warn his doctor. Buzzonetti was only told about it the next day, when he came to the dead pope's bedside.
Falasca‘s book brings out some contradictions in the stories of the two special secretaries of the Pontiff. Don Diego Lorenzi, the Orionian priest who had followed Luciani from Venice, was not present when the Pope had the chest pain. That night, Sept. 28, he immediately left the papal apartment after dinner.
On the morning of 29 September, it was not the secretaries who found the body of the Pope, but Sister Vincenza and Sister Margherita. The Pope had not touched the coffee that had been left for him in the sacristy at 5:15 a. m., and so Sister Vincenza after knocking several times, entered the room and said, "Holiness, you shouldn't joke with me!" The older nun, in fact, had a weak heart herself. religious woman in fact wa weak of heart. "Then she called me, coming out shocked," Sist er Margherita recounts, "I immediately went in and saw him too... I touched his hands, they were cold, I saw, and I was struck by my his slightly dark fingernails".
Among the unpublished documents in the appendix to the book are Papa Luciani's medical records which show that, already in 1975, during a hospitalisation, a minor cardiovascular pathology was reported, treated with anticoagulants and considered resolved.
There is also the note that the cardinals, before the conclave to elect Luciani's successor, addressed in complete secrecy to the doctors who had embalmed the body. Through the Secretariat of State, the Cardinals asked if "the examination of the body" allowed to "exclude traumatic lesions of any kind"; if the diagnosis of "sudden death" was ascertained; and if "Sudden death is always natural”. The the cardinals did not exclude a priori the hypothesis that the death could have been 'caused', which the doctors denied.
On Tuesday 7 November, on the same day as the release of Falasca's book, an ordinary session of the cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood will be held in the Vatican,during which they will be called to pronounce on Albino Luciani's "heroic virtues". That same day, or the day after, the Vatican will be announcing that the pope has signed the corresponding decree
In the meantime, two hearings are underway on two claimed miracles attributed to the intercession of the Venetian Pontiff. Confirmation of one miracle by panels of doctors and theologians would lead to his beatification.
To me, the real mystery is why the Vatican did not just release all this information as soon as it was seemly to do so. Why did it allow decades of speculation that he could have been murdered? Books were written to advance this hypothesis. I do not see anything in the information as reported by Tornielli from Falasca's book that could not have been officially announced then.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/11/2017 07:17]