Pope Fact... or Fiction?

(posted on my Friendster blog, 12 August 2007)

I was born in the year of the three popes, i.e., 1978, the year Paul VI died, the year the "Smiling Pope" and the first pontiff with a double-barreled name, John Paul I, was elected and found dead in his bed 33 days later, and the year the "Foreign Pope," John Paul II, assumed the throne of St. Peter. I don't know if being born in this year has something to do with my fascination with the papacy, but I would like to believe it is a special grace or blessing that came with my birth in such a significant year for the Holy Roman Church.

John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla, 1978-2005)

We, people in my generation at least, are also very fortunate to have witnessed the life and death of a great pope and then the election of a new pope. I once told myself that I would cry if and when John Paul II died (which in fact, I did). But faith and reason tell me it is for the greater good of the Church.

Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger, 2005-present)

Much is already known about John Paul II or John Paul the Great as many believers began calling him after his death in 2005. The faithful are beginning to discover the qualities and management style of "la semplice e umile lavoratore nella Vigna del Signore" (the simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard), Benedict XVI, as his papacy is unraveled.

John Paul I (Albino Luciani, 1978)

Maybe a number of people my age have heard about John Paul I, the Smiling Pope, who died only a month after being elected. It is said that he suffered from some sort of a pulmonary embolism. Even before being elected, his health was already questionable, and he was thus at high-risk of succumbing to the pressures of his office. But conspiracy theories on how he was murdered by certain people whom he was about to sack because of irregularities in the Vatican bank, dealings with the Masons and the Mafia, and differences in theological beliefs, among other things, circulate to this day.

Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini, 1963-1978)

Then there is the story about the Impostor Pope, the decoy of Paul VI. I particularly remember this "legend" after my friend Ryel showed me some flyers that his family got hold of in the 1970s. In the pamphlets were a series of articles which showed "proof" that the Paul VI that millions of faithful see and hear on radio, television and in public audiences was in fact the Impostor Pope. The true Pope Paul VI was said to be sedated in some Vatican dungeon. Photos of how the nose and ear lobes of the true and impostor popes differ were placed side-by-side, and an analysis of how the voice recordings supposedly taken from 2 Vatican Radio broadcasts also differed were presented in the booklet. I don't know what the motivation behind the floating of a theory of an impostor Pope is, but papal reviews on Paul VI say that he was indecisive, supposedly even being referred to by Blessed John XXIII, as "Hamlet" for his indecisiveness. The imaginative would certainly link this seeming indecisiveness to be the behavior of 2 different people: the manipulative decoy who was directing the papacy into its ruin and the real McCoy who was struggling to assert his authority under a state of induced catatonia.

John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, 1958-1963)

Biographers and critics have been good to John XXIII. Only kinds word can be spoken of the now Blessed John XXIII, otherwise known as the "Good Pope." But some say he was a Mason, one of the many who had infiltrated the Vatican at that time. I forget what Masonic Lodge the people in the Vatican were referred to, but they were regarded as a powerful block to reckon with. But perhaps the greatest controversy that can be hurled against the Good Pope (by traditionalists, that is) is convening the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II.) Here was a seemingly old school pope who, because of his age, was not believed to cause any major stir in the Church during his papacy, but suddenly shook its very foundations by adapting a more updated and lay-centered approach, especially to liturgy. Up to now, opposition to this change can still be felt, but the Holy Mother Church is still one and intact, despite the dawn of a new order.

Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli, 1939-1958)

Of the 20th century popes, perhaps the most unjustly and unfairly treated by the world was Pius XII. He has been referred to as "Hitler's Pope," because of his supposed silence to the atrocities of the Nazi's towards the Jews, including the Holocaust during World War II. Much work is now being done to rehabilitate this poor image of Eugenio Pacelli, who, as Vatican records show, helped many Jews escape death by hiding them in the Vatican.

More than this tarnished image of Pius XII as a leader, however, his death, more particularly his funeral is a cause of embarrassment and an unfortunate moment for him and the entire Church.

Throughout his papacy, Pius XII maintained the services of Dr. Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who, as the Vatican and other reports would reveal, was nothing more
than an eye-specialist, a quack as others put it. But somehow, Galeazzi-Lisi managed to become the papal physician and insisted on being called "Professor" in the Vatican, although he did not actually attain such academic prominence.

The highlight of Galeazzi-Lisi's work as Pius XII personal physician was his botched embalming of the Pope's body, whom Galeazzi-Lisi insisted on gaining custody of, when the Pope died in 1958. Galeazzi-Lisi claimed to have rediscovered an ancient embalming method that would keep the body of Pius XII pristine and intact for years to come. The method employed encasing the body in a large plastic bag and curing it with herbs and spices for a prescribed period of time. Galeazzi-Lisi and his assistant worked day and night using this peculiar embalming method and when he finally perfected it, set out the pope's cadaver for exposition to the public.

A series of embarrassing events then followed. When the pope's body, which was in a coffin, was being transferred from the Apostolic Palace to St. Peter's Basilica, a sound likened to a gun shot or a clap of thunder, resonated around the square. The sound was in fact the sound of the coffin splitting or popping because of the accumulation of gases and fluids from the Pope's body, which was decaying at an accelerated rate. Instead of slowing down the decay of Pius XII's body, Galeazzi-Lisi's process hastened it.

At one point, green and purple blotches were noticed on the Pope's face as a result of the accelerated decomposition. It was also reported that the Pope's nose fell off at one time. The stench caused by the decay was so great that guards had to be rotated every 15 minutes, otherwise they would collapse.

The bungling of Pius XII's funeral indeed caused a lot of embarrassment to the Vatican . One of the first acts of the newly-elected John XXIII was to banish Galeazzi-Lisi from Vatican City. In 1960, Galeazzi-Lisi tried to redeem himself through the book, In the Shadow and the Light of Pius XII. He has since remained in obscurity, never to be allowed to return to the Vatican for life.

Incidentally, I acquired a book, Secrets of the Vatican, which gives numerous accounts of the dark side of the Vatican, including the absurd posthumous trial and conviction of Pope Formosus by his successor Stephen VII, the unpopular rule of Alexander VI or the Borgia Pope, and the Spanish Inquisition, among other "dark" stories of the Vatican.