A Thief in the Night: Life and Death in the Vatican

John Cornwell

When Pope John Paul I died suddenly after only 33 days into his Papacy, conspiracy theories and rumors of murder erupted because of inconsistencies in the Vatican's statements. Officially, the Pope died of a heart attack, but there were conflicting stories as to who found the body, what time the body was found, what time the Pope died, which spawned further questions outside the Vatican about things like why there was no autopsy, why the embalming began so soon, etc. And as time went on, the murder-conspiracy theories got really out of hand.

John Cornwell, who also wrote Hitler's Pope, investigates these allegations as an independent journalist, ten years after the fact. He interviews all the major Vatican players, gains access to the current Pope, and learns very little new information. Except that there is all sorts of confusion about aspects of that night which seems to be inherent to the way the Vatican is run, not specifically to why this pope died. Cornwell ultimately comes up with his own theory of what happened that night. He concludes the pope wasn't murdered. It wasn't much of a revelation.

Each chapter is pretty much a transcript of one of Cornwell's interviews. It goes something like this: I arrived here, had to get through red tape, finally got permission to talk to so and so, and this is what they said to me: transcript. I found it pretty uninspiring.

If there is any interest to be found here at all, it's the glimpse you get into the Vatican. One of the advantages of having so much of the book be in other people's words, is the immediate access the reader has into the personalities that make up the Vatican. There is so much gossip going on it and so much back-stabbing, at times it feels like a soap opera. As far as Cornwell's investigation goes, it's pretty wimpy. Yeah, he talks to a bunch of people, and he does find out some interesting tidbits that clear up a few minor points up, but all in all, there was very little here to warrant a book. He should have written a magazine article and been done with it.