Word: pontiff
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Charges of murder most foul On the evening of Sept. 28, 1978, Pope John Paul I said prayers in his private chapel in the Apostolic Palace, then retired to his bedroom a few yards away. It would be his last night alive: next morning, the Pontiff was found dead in his bed. The official cause of death was a heart attack. What made John Paul's demise especially poignant was that he had been elected Pope only 33 days earlier...
...book to be published in the U.S. this week offers a shocking judgment: that John Paul I was murdered. In his work, titled In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of John Paul I (Bantam; $16.95), British Author David Yallop contends that the Pontiff was ordered killed by one or more of six suspects, all of whom "had a great deal to fear if the papacy of John Paul I continued...
Having set up characters and motives so diverse, Yallop then fails to finger any one suspect. Instead, he devotes four pages, complete with reconstructed dialogue, to Cardinal Villot's last meeting with John Paul I, on Sept. 28, in which the Pontiff outlines his proposed personnel changes. Villot, according to Yallop, "advised, argued and remonstrated, but to no avail." Yallop speculates that the Pope was poisoned, perhaps by someone tampering with a bottle of low-blood-pressure medicine called Effortil that the author says John Paul I kept at his bedside. Yallop insists that inconsistencies in the Vatican...
Clad in simple white albs, 77 candidates for the priesthood prostrated themselves before the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica last week as the Supreme Pontiff invoked the blessings of the saints in heaven. Then, while the group knelt in four neat rows, Pope John Paul, followed by Monsignor Alvaro del Portillo, laid hands on the candidates' heads to convey to them the powers of priesthood...
...Pontiff traveled next to Thailand, where he was welcomed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej in Bangkok's Grand Palace. Catholics make up less than 1% of Thailand's 52 million people. In an unusual ecumenical gesture, John Paul paid a 17-minute call on the Buddhist Supreme Patriarch...