Luis Rocha - The Last Pope

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.

MARIO MORETTI. Founder of the Second Red Brigades. He kidnapped Aldo Moro and was the only one in contact with Moro throughout his captivity. He was also the sole killer of the statesman. The circumstances of the case were never determined. However, it is known that the P2 participated very actively in that case, in addition to an organization from another continent. He was condemned to six consecutive life sentences but surprisingly was freed in 1994.

J.C.Born… in… He was the actual instigator and perpetrator of countless macabre actions. He joined the P2 in… Now retired from politics and financial affairs, he still maintains great influence in the world of crime. He lives in… He killed John Paul I on the night of September 29, 1978.

THE REMAINING CHARACTERS presented in this book belong to the world of fiction.

NOTE 1. Assumptions will be replaced by confirmed facts in a future edition.

NOTE 2. The P2 still exists, more secretive than ever.

Q:Does the P2 Lodge truly exist? And if so, what facts do we know about it, and what did you create as a novelist for the sake of this story?

A:P2 existed and still exists. All details in the novel before and through 1978 are true, including the names of the members and leaders of the lodge. Everything that happens with Sarah Monteiro and Rafael, as well as the idea of JC’s being part of P2 in the current day, is fictional.

Q:Several nonfiction books have addressed the matter of whether Pope John Paul I was murdered. Do you believe they raise valid questions? Did you draw on conspiracy theories just to create a good thriller, or do you indeed believe there was a plot to murder the pope in 1978?

A:John Paul I was killed on September 29, 1978, at 1:00 a.m. Not at 11:00 or 11:30 p.m. on September 28, as officially stated. I’m sure of it.

There’s a very good piece (published and sold together with this novel in Spain) by a Spanish journalist, a correspondent in Rome, that recounts everything that happened that night. It was because of this journalist that the story became cloudy. He managed to speak with Sister Vincenza, the nun who said she was the one who found John Paul I’s body, but the official Vatican version was that Father John Magee, the pope’s assistant, found him. And that version lasted through the 1980s, when the Vatican confirmed that it wasn’t Magee who had discovered the body. The Vatican ordered everyone involved to a vow of silence. Why would they do that if there was nothing to hide? Because it was all a setup. John Paul I was in fact killed. How do I know? The person who killed him told me, and proved it to me.

The character JC in the book is based on a real figure, John Paul I’s assassin, whom I knew as an Italian ministerial assistant. In truth, apparently, he wasn’t. He told me specifically that I should write a novel about the affair, because we live in a fictional reality and we don’t know anything, even the things we think we know. The Last Pope is that book.

Q:You were a child when Pope John Paul I died, so it’s presumably not an experience you remember from direct media reports at the time. Was there anything in particular about John Paul I’s life and death that inspired the novel?