The Vatican Murders

Authors Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle team up to find a determined killer whose victims are tied to the inner workings of the Roman Catholic Church.

"A monumental work of twentieth century capitalism as it was jointly embraced by the Vatican and the United States and those caught up in it. Top-shelf CIA-Vatican intrigue." T. Francis Elliott, London Times._____ Driven by Paul VI's edicts 'Populorum Progressio' and 'Liberation Theology,' there were two fronts on which the CIA was confronted by communism as a democratic society-Italy and Central America. If Italy fell to communism, all of Europe would surely follow. If Central America fell to communism, all of Latin America would surely follow. It was in these parts of the world communism was raising its head as the will of the people that was so dangerous to the United States and its capitalistic allies. Henry Kissinger sounded the alarm, "Domination by Moscow is not the issue. Communist control of Italy and Central America is the issue. It would have terrible consequences for the United States and it is the number one threat to its national security." On the afternoon of March 13, 1978, fifteen men sat around a table in a sidewalk cafeacute; in a remote mountain village in northern Italy. In casual clothes, they went unnoticed, though one was the reigning Pontiff, and another Aldo Moro, and the others ranking cardinals of poverty stricken countries who comprised the leadership of the Marxist movement in the Church and the western world. They left at four o'clock. Aldo reserved the table "for this time next year." On March 13, 1979, Cardinals Benelli and Felici decided not to travel to Vittorio Veneto that day. After all, all the others were dead. They, themselves, unaware of their impending doom, were, too, as good as dead. _____ "One beautiful life...explodes into a trail of death and destruction in the Roman Catholic Church." Howard Jason Smith, Boston Globe.

Murder in the Vatican is two books in one book: The Revolutionary Life of John Paul (the only existing biography of the 33-day Pope) and The CIA, Opus Dei and the 1978 Murders. Why two books in one book? Unless one understands the mystery of his life - something the Vatican prefers to keep secret - The Secret Life of John Paul - one will never understand the mystery of his unwitnessed death. This book is in its fourth edition. In that time, I have changed little of what I have said about this good man's life other than to expand my account in this new edition to include stories of his childhood and his young life as a seminarian and as a priest. Yet, the mystery of his death and the deaths of those around him has involved an investigative process that has taken me to Italy and elsewhere in the world many times and spanned many years. I knew much more five years ago, than I knew five years before that, and I knew much more two years ago, than I knew five years before that, and I know much more today, than I did then. Here for the first time is the proof. How John Paul, and those around him, fell victim to twentieth century capitalism as it was jointly embraced by the Vatican and the United States. BEWARE OF THE USED BOOK MARKET: 2003, 2005 and 2006 editions do not include the complete biography or the solution to the murders. Only this 404 page 2008 edition includes both compete books.

On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, in Vatican territory, the bodies of the commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife, and a young lance corporal were found in the barracks of the picturesque force entrusted with protecting the pope. It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Catholics. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old Cédric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in "a fit of madness" brought on by frustration with the unit's discipline -- a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry. But as John Follain's hard-hitting exposé shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation, City of Secrets reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice -- and hide the scandals it dared not confess.

"Did his struggle for basic human rights and dignity for born-out-of-wedlock children, the handicapped, women, the remarried, homosexuals and the poor cost him his life?"

Over 50 billion dollars in securities. Gold reserves that exceed those of industrialized nations. Real estate holdings that equal the total area of many countries. Opulent palaces containing the world's greatest art treasures. These are some of the riches of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet in 1929 the Vatican was destitute. Pope Pius XI, living in a damaged, leaky, pigeon-infested Lateran Palace, could hear rats scurrying through the walls, and he worried about how he would pay for even basic repairs to unclog the overburdened sewer lines and update the antiquated heating system. How did the Church manage in less than seventy-five years such an incredible reversal of fortune? The story here told by Church historian Paul L. Williams is intriguing, shocking, and outrageous. The turnaround began on February 11, 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Through this deal Mussolini gained the support of the staunchly Catholic Italian populace, who at the time followed the lead of the Church. In return, the Church received, among other benefits, a payment of $90 million, sovereign status for the Vatican, tax-free property rights, and guaranteed salaries for all priests throughout the country from the Italian government. With the stroke of a pen the pope had solved the Vatican's budgetary woes practically overnight, yet he also put a great religious institution in league with some of the darkest forces of the 20th century. Based on his years of experience as a consultant for the FBI, Williams produces explosive and never-before published evidence of the Church's morally questionable financial dealings with sinister organizations over seven decades through today. He examines the means by which the Vatican accrued enormous wealth during the Great Depression by investing in Mussolini's government, the connection between Nazi gold and the Vatican Bank, the vast range of Church holdings in the postwar boom period, Paul VI's appointment of Mafia chieftain Michele Sindona as the Vatican banker, a billion-dollar counterfeit stock fraud uncovered by Interpol and the FBI, the "Ambrosiano Affair" called "the greatest financial scandal of the 20th Century" by the New York Times, the mysterious death of John Paul I, profits from an international drug ring operating out of Gdansk, Poland, and revelations about current dealings. For both Catholics and non-Catholics this troubling expose of corruption in one of the most revered religious institutions in the world will serve as an urgent call for reform.

An inquiry into the death of Pope John Paul I, the Smiling Pope, the investigation uncovering lies, half-truths and neglect within the Catholic church. The author has written two novels, and his last book Earth to Earth won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger Award.

On March 25, 2001, the nude body of Michelle Lewis, a 39-year-old nun, was discovered in her sleeping quarters at South Florida’s Holy Cross Academy. She had been stabbed 92 times. It wasn’t long before homicide detectives zeroed in on her killer: a young apprentice monk and former Holy Cross student, Mykhaylo Kofel. Under questioning, he confessed to the crime. But Kofel’s disturbing defense would not only rock the future of the upscale Dade County academy, it would also sound an alarm that would resonate all the way to the Vatican, making it one of the most sensational and controversial crimes in Florida history. What happened on that dark night in Holy Cross was unspeakable enough. The deeper the investigation got, the more sordid and disturbing the story became.

"A monumental work of twentieth century capitalism as it was jointly embraced by the Vatican and the United States and those caught up in it. Top-shelf CIA-Vatican intrigue." - T. Francis Elliott, The Times........ Some claim the Vatican Bank had to do with his murder. Others claim his threat to change doctrine that unfairly penalizes the lives of innocent people drove curial cardinals in the clandestine deed. Others claim the threat he was to the capitalistic tenets upon which the United States was founded rallied the CIA to action. Others whisper his sexual orientation led to his demise. 'The Vatican Murders' reveals how each of these possibilities played a role in the murder of the youngest pope to die in four hundred years.......... When elected--based on the few bits which had reached outside Italy--he was tabbed "...a moderate with an open mind to change doctrine in those cases it places unfair restraints on the lives of innocent people." Like the time he ordered his priests to melt down their golden chalices and other implements of idol worship to build an orphanage, to the times he had been caught baptizing born-out-of-wedlock children, to the times he had been caught officiating at funerals of the remarried, to the times he ordered hospitals to admit partners of homosexuals into intensive care units, to the time he defended their right to parent children, to the times he had been caught giving the Eucharist to communists, to the times he defied the ban on contraception, to his courageous defense of the first artificially inseminated child just a month before his election, to the time as a pope he declared "God is the Father. More so, the Mother." .......... On the afternoon of March 13, 1978, fourteen men sat around a table in a sidewalk café in a mountain village in northern Italy. In casual clothes they went unnoticed though one was the reigning Pontiff and another the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. Included were Italian cardinals and statesmen who had been behind the rise of the Communist Party in Italy. The others were cardinals of impoverished parts of the world. Together they comprised the leadership of the Marxist movement in the western world. They left at four o'clock and Aldo Moro reserved the table "...for this time next year." On March 13, 1979, Cardinals Benelli and Felici decided not to travel to Vittorio Veneto that day. After all, all the others were dead. They, too, unaware of their impending doom, were as good as dead........ TRUE LIFE - TRUE CRIME

From corruption to nepotism, from crusade to witch-burning to Inquisition, from popes sanctioning murder to popes being murdered, Dark History of The Popes explores more than 1000 years of sinister deeds surrounding the papacy.