Word: vaticans
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...doubts of a struggling Church and the frightening burden of succeeding a man the world had come to think of as a saint. At first it did not seem the scholarly Archbishop of Milan would be equal to the challenge laid down by Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council; yet when the roaring crowds greeted Paul in New York in 1965, they hailed a man who had let the "fresh air" into the Church with a wondrous combination of skill and piety. The man was called a peacemaker, a reformer, a voice of sanity crying, with hope...
Monsignor Giuseppe Righi, a tall, erect Vatican diplomat, is flying to New York to take up his post as the Holy See's observer to the United Nations. During a stopover at London's Heathrow Airport, he is accosted by a pair of thugs, bundled into a waiting truck and whisked off into the night. When Righi's ongoing flight departs, the "prelate" in his seat is Colonel Vladimir Panin of the Soviet KGB, physically the monsignor's double, and now fully disguised with a black suit, clerical collar, and a briefcase on his knee...
...begins Requiem per una Spia (Requiem for a Spy), a tantalizing espionage yarn that was no sooner published in Italy last week than it drew critical praise for the authenticity of its Vatican and U.N. settings. Small wonder: the author is Monsignor Alberto Giovannetti, 65, a retired papal diplomat of 30 years standing. The stout, deceptively cherubic Giovannetti was the Holy See's observer to the U.N. for nine years; he obviously knows as much about the murky subterfuge that pervades the corridors of the U.N. as Jacques Cousteau knows about the deep...
Through 307 pages of intrigue and skullduggery, the book takes assorted sideswipes at the windy futility of the U.N. as well as the trundling bureaucracy of the Vatican. The author concedes that it was an opportunity to get some personal peeves off his chest. Sitting through one especially ineffectual debate, for instance, Panin reflects that "all the great tragedies of our time have been resolved without recourse to the U.N." The book's digs at the Vatican are gentler but nonetheless pointed; in one instance a cardinal complains that priests in the Roman Curia too often forget that "their mission...
...avowed anti-Communist who once wrote a pseudonymous indictment of religious persecution in East bloc countries, Giovannetti intended his novel to dramatize the conflict between Marxism and Christianity. Progressively affected by his priestly role, Panin in the end undergoes a spiritual conversion. He defects to the Vatican, and after offering himself in exchange for the real Righi (who has been kept alive by the Soviets for a possible exchange in case Panin was captured) goes to his execution in Moscow's Lubyanka prison...