Who Killed Pope John Paul I?: Key Facts

By Lawrence Erickson

Compared to the conclaves of 1958 and 1963, the 1978 conclave concluded with little drama. The smiling and nonthreatening Albino Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, was elected on the fourth ballot and took the name John Paul I. This name was picked to honor his two predecessors, and as that indicates, John Paul I was not expected to rock the boat or produce any significant shift from the policies of Paul VI. What was expected to be a quiet papacy quickly took a dramatic turn though when John Paul I was found dead in his bedroom on the morning of the 28th of September, 1978. Having served just 33 days, Luciani was the shortest reigning pope in nearly 400 years, dating back to when Leo XI died of a fever in 1605.

The stated cause of death from the Vatican’s doctor was a heart attack. It’s obviously quite unusual for a leader to die of a health condition so shortly after his election, as someone who seems sickly is very unlikely to be elected. Even in the case of Leo XI or American president William Henry Harrison, their sudden deaths were caused by random fevers they contracted in the days before modern medicine, rather than anything to specifically do with their own health. Of course it is not impossible for someone to randomly die of a hidden health problem, but when this happens to a very powerful figure immediately after he assumes power, it certainly raises some suspicions, and a poll carried out by La Stampa in 1991 showed that nearly a third of Italians believed the pope had been murdered.

This suspicion was compounded by the fact that the Vatican refused to perform an autopsy and gave conflicting accounts as to how his body was discovered. The Catholic Herald reports how “the fact the then Pontiff was found smiling, sitting up in bed and holding reading material has fueled conspiracy theories, given how unlikely it would be that someone who had suffered a fatal heart attack would look like that.”

In this article, I will again be going through the key facts of this case, arguing that John Paul I was assassinated as part of a larger geopolitical scheme. More detail can be found in my book, Vatican Coup: On Blackmail and Espionage in the Catholic Church.

Key Fact #1: Natural Explanations Don’t Make Sense

Vatican doctor Renato Buzzonetti’s heart attack diagnosis has attracted widespread disagreement from medical experts, mainly because there was no evidence of a struggle. In fact, even the director of the Holy See Press Office who was also a physician disagreed with the diagnosis. Dr. Navarro Valls took this office in 1984 and said:

Look, death was instantaneous and without pain. Such type of death does not match the theory of myocardial infarction.… What is most probable is that he suffered a pulmonary embolism that night, and, as a result, death was instantaneous.¹

This was told to John Cornwell in an interview for his book, A Thief in the Night: Life and Death in the Vatican. Cornwell was actually hired by the Vatican to refute an earlier book by David Yallop accusing them of a conspiracy, so this admission to Cornwell shows that even the Vatican itself recognized that the official story of a heart attack was untenable.

The backup theory of pulmonary embolism also doesn’t hold much water either though. A Spanish priest named Jesús López Sáez has become one of the foremost researchers on John Paul I, and he spoke to Dr. R. Cabrera, a forensic specialist from Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences in Seville. Cabrera said

Pulmonary embolism is even less probable than infarction, taking into account the antecedents and the scene in question: for example, there was no bloody foam in his mouth… The given picture of the body points more toward a death that has been caused by a depressant and that happened in deep sleep, following a process that could have lasted all night: first, sleep; then, the coma; and, finally, death.²

Key Fact #2: Papal Secretary Magee Lied to the Vatican Doctor

If the heart attack diagnosis makes so little sense, then how did Buzzonetti come up with that? It turns out that he was given a little nudge by Papal Secretary John Magee. Buzzonetti recalled:

Father Magee, while we were at the side of the bed of the deceased, told me that around 7:30 p.m. the Holy Father 1. Repeatedly brought his hand to his chest; 2. Had complained of a pretty strong retrosternal pain; 3. Not accompanied with shortness of breath; 4. Lasted over 5 minutes; 5. Regressed without therapy; 6. While he was seated; 7. Trying to say his evening prayers with secretary Magee. 7. The pope declined the recourse of calling the physician of the Vatican Medical Guard, alleging that it was one of those painful episodes that were not infrequent in him, and that they were classified as of a “rheumatic nature”³

The problem with Magee’s story is that it appears to be completely false. Stefania Falasca was hired by the Vatican to make a case for John Paul I’s canonization, and she wrote a book entitled Pope Luciani: Chronicle of Death, which also adheres strictly to the official narrative. Despite that, Falasca casts suspicion on Magee’s story, seeing him as on guard for his reputation. She notes that neither of the pope’s two nun caretakers, Vincenza and Marin, recall the pope having had any chest pains that day. In addition, John Paul I’s personal doctor, Dr. Da Ros, called the Vatican that night and spoke with Vincenza and the pope, and neither one of them mentioned any of that. Around 9 p.m., John Paul I also had a phone conversation with cardinal Giovanni Colombo that lasted about 30 minutes, and the cardinal, recalling later that phone conversation, stated that the pope didn’t mention having had any pain, and that, actually, he sounded very good.⁴

In addition, Magee did not mention these chest pains in his interview with Cornwell. Despite this incident seeming to vindicate the Vatican, no one brought it up until Papal Secretary Lorenzi did in 1987.

It’s extremely hard to believe that the pope would not have mentioned these pains to his personal doctor in a phone call shortly after they happened. It also seems inexplicable that Magee would not have brought them up in his interview with Cornwell which was intended to defend both himself and the Vatican. The most likely explanation here is that Magee was covering something up, and that he made up the chest pain story so that Buzzonetti would record the death as natural.

Key Fact #3: Magee was a Closet Homosexual

If John Paul I was murdered, Magee is the figure who surely must have been involved. Now, who is John Magee? In 1987, Magee was made the bishop of the diocese of Cloyne in Ireland. Despite this being a rural and relatively lightly populated area, it ended up as one of the most prominent hotbeds of child sexual abuse in the entire world, so much so much so that this small diocese even has its own Wikipedia page just to summarize its abuse issues. Magee himself was forced to resign due to his mishandling of this issue, and he appears to be the central figure responsible for the problem. The “Cloyne Report” was the report that laid out the history of misconduct and resulted in Magee’s resignation. The BBC summarizes the report’s finding’s regarding Magee:

-The report found that Bishop John Magee falsely told the government and the health service that his diocese was reporting all abuse allegations to authorities. It also found that the bishop deliberately misled another inquiry and his own advisors by creating two different accounts of a meeting with a priest suspecting of abusing a child, one for the Vatican and the other for diocesan files.

-It discovered that, contrary to repeated assertions on its part, the Diocese of Cloyne did not implement the procedures set out in the church protocols for dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse. It said the greatest failure was that no complaints, except one in 1996, were reported to the health authorities until 2008.

Since Magee lied repeatedly to authorities as Bishop of Cloyne, it’s unsurprising that he also probably lied to Buzzonetti.

The report also describes highly questionable behavior from Magee personally, such as the following interaction with a potentially underage boy that was described by the diocesan delegate as “inappropriate.”⁵

Later, because of changed family circumstances, Joseph decided not to take up his place in the seminary. Just before the start of the seminary year he met Bishop Magee to notify him of his decision. The meeting took place in the reception room at the bishop’s residence. It was the first time that Joseph had spent time alone with Bishop Magee. According to Joseph, that meeting marked a change in the bishop’s behaviour towards him, both in word and deed. Joseph reported to Fr Bermingham and has told the Commission that, in the course of this particular meeting, the bishop embraced him tightly and at the same time inquired of him as to whether that “felt good.”Joseph reported that this embrace was protracted; it lasted for approximately one minute. He stated that the bishop also kissed him on the forehead. Joseph had a number of further meetings alone with the bishop, some when he was under 18 and some when he was over 18. In the course of those meetings there were similar pro longed tight embraces and kisses on the forehead. There is some ambiguity about the precise age Joseph was when some of the alleged behaviour occurred. According to Joseph, the bishop declared that he loved him and told him that he had dreamt about him – this may have happened before he was 18 or soon thereafter.

Given this and what we know from the Vatican II era, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that Magee was a homosexual, who had been elevated to his position as papal secretary because he was a blackmailed intelligence asset.

Key Fact #4: Mossad’s Perfect Poison

John Paul I kept a bottle of Effortil next to his bed, a medication which he had been taking for years to alleviate low-blood pressure. Yallop, a writer who favors a conspiracy, has suggested that someone may have slipped digitalis into this medicine, 15 drops of which would result in death. However, another conspiratorial writer pointed out that this would cause violent vomiting, something inconsistent with the peaceful scene discovered.

Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First, the authoritative account on Mossad assassinations, relays an interesting incident. In 1997, Mossad wanted to subtly assassinate Khaled Mashal, and so they settled on using a poison called Levofentanyl. Levofentanyl was perfect for making it appear that someone died in their sleep of natural causes, such as a heart attack.

While Bayonet [special team] was gathering information in Jordan, operatives at Mossad HQ were figuring out how to pull off the “silent operation” Netanyahu had demanded. The killing could not cause a commotion, could not draw attention to the assassins, and, ideally, would make it look like Mashal had died of natural causes. Various options, such as a road accident, were considered and rejected, finally leaving only one: poison. Consultations over which toxic agent to use were held in the Mossad’s technological unit, in cooperation with the Israel Institute for Biological Research, a top-secret government facility located in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv. They eventually settled on levofentanyl, an analogue of the powerful opioid fentanyl, which itself is one hundred times stronger than morphine… The plan was to surreptitiously administer a fatal dose to Mashal. Levofentanyl is a relatively slow-acting drug – over a period of hours, Mashal would feel more and more drowsy, until eventually he’d fall asleep. Then the drug would slow his breathing, finally stopping it. His death would appear to be nothing more than a stroke or a heart attack, and levofentanyl leaves almost no signs. Unless someone tested for it specifically, an autopsy would reveal nothing. “Potion of the gods,” some in Caesarea called it.⁶

Key Fact #5: John Paul II Was Siphoning Money to Poland

If we hypothesize that Magee was a Mossad asset in the same way that John XXIII and Paul VI seem to have been, we still have the major question mark of why Israel would want John Paul I dead? John Paul I doesn’t appear to have ever said much of anything about Israel and he certainly was no reactionary. Therefore, I suggest that the killing of John Paul I wasn’t really about John Paul I, it was about John Paul II.

The origin of the “Neocons” is well known at this point. After the 1973 “Yom-Kippur War,” Israel became extremely hostile towards the Soviet Union since the USSR was backing Israel’s Arab enemies. This led Israel and its allies to back many conservative politicians in the West who were intent on confronting the Soviet Union, such as Ronald Reagan.

But before there was Reagan, there was Pope John Paul II. It’s well known that John Paul II helped fracture the Warsaw pact by galvanizing Polish resistance to the USSR. Notorious Neocon Charles Krauthammer praises John Paul II for this effort:

It is no accident that Solidarity, the leading edge of the East European revolution, was born just a year after the pope’s first visit. Deploying a brilliantly subtle diplomacy that never openly challenged the Soviet system but nurtured and justified every oppositional trend, often within the bosom of the local church, John Paul II became the pivotal figure of the people power revolutions of Eastern Europe.

While it’s well known that John Paul II supported Polish resistance efforts diplomatically, it’s less well known that he was actually funneling Church funds to Poland to support this movement. Francesco Pazienza, a central player in the 1980’s Vatican Bank scandal, reported this in his autobiography. Journalist Philip Willan describes this in his book The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons, and the Killing of Roberto Calvi:

By his own account, Pazienza worked for Calvi on some of his most delicate projects. In his autobiography Pazienza describes how the Banco Ambrosiano funnelled money to the anti-communist trade union Solidarity in Poland, a cause close to the hearts of Pope John Paul and President Ronald Reagan… “The money flowed towards Warsaw via the IOR and, more concretely, via the financial institution that served as the secular ally par excellence of the Vatican bank and Marcinkus: the Banco Ambrosiano,” Pazienza wrote. He had received confirmation of these flows from French intelligence in January 1981, he said. According to this account, Calvi had been the protagonist and Pazienza the passive observer.⁷

At the 2006 Calvi murder trial, Pazienza admitted to organizing a shipment of gold worth four million dollars to Solidarity in March 1982, with the approval of Paul Marcinkus, head of the Vatican bank.⁸ Willan also reports that the widow of Roberto Calvi, another central player in the scandal, revealed the following:

In an interview with La Stampa on 7 October 1982, his widow claimed Calvi was planning to reveal his role in channelling a total of $50 million to Solidarity. ‘If the whole thing comes out it’ll be enough to start the Third World War,’ he had allegedly confided to her.⁹

Flavio Carboni, an associate of Calvi, secretly recorded a conversation with Calvi where Calvi talked about warning Marcinkus of the dangers of sending money to Solidarity on behalf of Wojtyla.¹⁰

If Calvi’s widow is correct and Calvi had channeled $50 million (2026 equivalent: $172 million) to Solidarity by 1982, one can only imagine how much may have been transferred to Solidarity from or through the Vatican by the end of the decade. It’s unclear if Solidarity’s revolution would have even been possible without the Vatican’s ability to leverage its contacts with Polish clergy to fund Solidarity in such a hefty manner.

Key Fact #6: John Paul II’s Hidden Scandal

The suspicious circumstances around John Paul I’s death and John Paul II’s elevation point to Mossad’s hidden hand. Elevating a conservative pope contained risks though that would need to be mitigated. Fear of the right-wing authoritarian still runs deep in the Jewish cultural memory, and therefore right-wingers tend to be supported only if it can be assured that they are controllable and will not suddenly revert into domineering reactionaries who could threaten Jewish influence.

Fortunately for Mossad, it appears there was a secret of John Paul II’s that could have blown up his papacy if he stepped out of line. In 2022, Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek was granted access to the archives of the communist-era Polish Secret Service (SB), along with two conservative Polish journalists. What Overbeek found was a lengthy history of John Paul II (then Bishop Wojtyla) covering for sexual abusers, and he documented this in his book Maxima Culpa: John Paul II Knew. One of the most damning cases involved a priest named Fr. Saduÿ.

Saduÿ was an ambitious young priest who took a special interest in pastoral work among the youth. For his efforts he attracted the attention of then Auxillary Bishop Wojtyla, who became quite close with him. According to SB documents, Wojtyla even suggested to Saduÿ that he could live where he does, as there was still some free rooms. Saduÿ was eventually promoted by Wojtyla to an elite position in the curia, where he became responsible for supervising catechesis education outside schools.

The SB makes numerous attempts to “recruit” Saduÿ and get information from him, and Saduÿ is sometimes cooperative and sometimes not. However, in 1965 the SB has a stroke of good fortune. They discover that Saduÿ is a sexual predator. An officer reports that Saduÿ “attempted to lure a young boy into his tent, offering him sweets and wine.” Three separate SB informers later reported questionable behavior regarding Saduÿ and young boys. As reported by one informer

Concerning the Roman Baths, I established the following during my stay there on November 25, 1967, i.e. Saturday: I saw the parish priest of St. Catherine, Fr. Dr., in the Baths. Sadusia. Saduÿ comes to the bathhouse usually every Saturday, he is a homosexual. Apart from him, there were a lot of homosexuals in the bathhouse. […] All these [38] bring young boys there and rent cabins.

As talk of Saduÿ’s behavior grows and backlash begins to arise from mothers of the young boys, Wojtyla removes Saduÿ from his position and sends him to a parish with a glowing letter of recommendation. After Saduÿ continues to molest young boys at this parish position, Wojtyla decides that Saduÿ needs to be sent to a parish out of the country. For some reason, Wojtyla never decides to isolate Saduÿ.

Saduÿ is later moved to Austria, and no one but Wojtyla would have had the authority to send him abroad. Overbeek notes how this leads to two possibilities, “either the future pope kept silent Saduÿ’s tendencies in front of his fellow cardinals and “pressed” on them a priest preying on the young, or the cardinals knew why Wojtyla wanted to get rid of this man and participated in saving the sexual predator.”

It was Cardinal Franz König who took Saduÿ for Wojtyla, and interestingly it was König who spearheaded the movement for Wojtyla in the 1978 conclave. Time magazine reports that many Germans and Americans supported Wojtyla for his doctrinal conservatism, but the “original impetus came from a more liberal nucleus of Europeans rallied by Austria’s Franz König, who stressed Wojtyla’s commitment to the Second Vatican Council’s reforms.”¹¹

Mossad’s Cunning Move

With Poland being the wavering state in the Warsaw pact, the possibility of mobilizing and funding Polish Catholic resistance with a Polish pope was a possibility simply too good for Mossad to pass up. This plan was likely pushed but foiled in the first conclave. With a few more pieces in place and weakening resolve for an Italian pope, Pope John Paul I’s life would be the only obstacle between Mossad and a major geopolitical coup. They had the means and the motive, and Secretary Magee provided them with the opportunity.

After Cardinal Wojtyla was elected, he provided the United States government and the State of Israel with something worth far more than the billions of dollars spent on tanks and bombs every year. Ultimately, he helped bring down the USSR without a single shot fired. It seems very likely that John Paul I was murdered, and it’s also quite clear who gained from that.

Archived Links:

BBC Cloyne Report:

https://archive.ph/WgNNQ

1. John Cornwell. (1989). A Thief in the Night: The Death of Pope John Paul I. (p. 60). Viking.

2. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/wlc-fac-pubs/19/

López Sáez Se pedirá cuenta 34

3. Falasca Pope Luciani: Chronicle of Death p. 59 on pdf

4. Ibid.

5. The Cloyne Report

6. Ronald Bergman. (2018). Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. (pp. 415 on pdf). Random House.

7. Phillip Willan. (2007). The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons, and the Killing of Roberto Calvi. (pp. 148, 149). Robinson.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid. p. 191

10. Ibid.

11. (1978, October 30). A Foreign Pope. TIME. https://time.com/archive/6845963/a-foreign-pope/