Good Deeds Don't Go Unpunished

Perhaps the greatest crime of the last century was the murder of Pope John Paul I, the predecessor of the current Pope, John Paul II. But before attempting to understand the death of John Paul I we first have to understand the three Prophecies of Fatima. The Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, appeared six times to three shepherd children near the town of Fatima, Portugal between May 13^th and October 13^th, 1917.

Appearing to the children, the Blessed Virgin told them that She had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman and child living in the last century. Coming at a time when civilization was torn apart by war and bloody violence. She promised that Heaven would grant peace to the entire world if Her requests for prayer, reparation and consecration were heard and obeyed. Our Lady of Fatima explained to the children that war is a punishment for sin and warned that God would further castigate the world for its disobedience to His Will by means of war, hunger and the persecution of the Church, the Holy Father and the Catholic Faithful.

God's Mother prophesized that Russia would be God's chosen "instrument of chastisement," spreading the "errors" of atheism and materialism across the earth, fomenting wars, annihilating nations and persecuting the Faithful everywhere. In all Her appearances at Fatima, the Blessed Mother repeatedly emphasized the necessity of praying the Rosary daily, of wearing the Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and of performing acts of reparation and sacrifice. To prevent the terrible chastisement at the hands of Russia and to convert "that poor nation".

Our Lady requested the solemn public Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart by the Pope and all the Catholic bishops of the world, She also asked that the Faithful practice a new devotion of reparation on the first Saturday of five consecutive months ("the Five First Saturdays"). The heart of Our Lady's Message to the world is contained in what has come to be called the "Secret" which She confided to the three child seers in July 1917.
 

The Secret actually consists of three parts, the first two of which have been publicly revealed. The first part of the Secret was a horrifying vision of hell "where the souls of poor sinners go" and contained an urgent plea from Our Lady for acts of prayer and sacrifice to save souls. The second part of the Secret specifically prophesized the outbreak of World War II and contained the Mother of God's solemn request for the Consecration of Russia as a condition of world peace. It also predicted the inevitable triumph of Her Immaculate Heart following Russia's consecration and the conversion "of that poor nation" to the Catholic Faith.

The last part of the Secret (often called the "Third Secret") was written down by Lucy DOS Santos, the last living Fatima seer, in 1944 and has been in the possession of the Holy See since 1957. Most informed sources speculate that this portion of the Secret concerns chaos in the Catholic Church, predicting widespread apostasy and a loss of faith beginning in the seventh decade (1970's) of the 20^th century.

Though instructed by the Blessed Mother to release the third secret in 1960 the Vatican failed to do so and offered no explanation for their doing so. When Pope John Paul II finally did release what he claimed was the third secret he also imposed a strict ban on anyone having access to the last surviving Fatima seer, which remains in effect to this very day. But listen to the Pope from this article in the German magazine "Stimme des Glaubens," which published the following account of Pope John Paul II's interview, with a small group of German Catholics, on the occasion of his visit to Fuida, in November of 1980.

Question: "Holy Father, what has become of the 3rd Secret of Fatima? According to Our Lady's instructions, wasn't it supposed to be revealed in I960? And what will happen in the Church?"

 

John Paul II: "Because of the seriousness of its contents, in order not to encourage the world wide power of Communism to carry out certain coups, my Predecessors in the Chair of Peter have diplomatically preferred to withhold its publication. On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this much: if there is a message in which it is said that the oceans will flood entire sections of the earth; that, from one moment to the other, millions of people will perish... there is no longer any point in really wanting to publish this secret message. Many want to know merely out of curiosity, or because of their taste for sensationalism, but they forget that 'to know' implies for them a responsibility. It is dangerous to want to satisfy one's curiosity only, if one is convinced that we can do nothing against a catastrophe that has been predicted."

 

At this point, the Holy Father took hold of his Rosary and said:

"Here is the remedy against the evil! Pray, pray and ask for nothing else. Put everything in the hands of the Mother of God!"

Then he went on to say:

"We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-to-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because it is only in this way that the Church can be effectively renewed. How many times, indeed, has the renewal of the Church been effected in blood? This time, again, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong, we must prepare ourselves, we must entrust ourselves to Christ and to His holy Mother, and we must be -attentive, very attentive, to the prayer of the Rosary. "

Pope John Paul I however, and as soon as he had read the third secret, reportedly shook with horror. It was his 32^nd day as the Holy Father, he had one more day to live! Though the reasons and cause for his death are still the matter of much dispute there is one undeniable fact. The afternoon prior to his mysterious death John Paul I announced through the Vatican press office that the following day he was going to address the world on matter "...of utmost importance to all humanity."

After almost three years of research, David Yallop wrote, in his book, "In God's Name" (1984), that the precise circumstances attending the discovery of the body of John Paul I,

"eloquently demonstrate that the Vatican practiced a disinformation campaign."

The Vatican told one lie after another:

"Lies about little things, lies about big things. All these lies had but one purpose: to disguise the fact that Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, had been assassinated."

Sister Vicenza found the Holy Father dead at approximately 4:45 a.m. on September 29, 1978 and was forced to keep silent by the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Villot, who imposed a vow of silence upon her to cover-up the whole affair. The secretaries were likewise forbidden to advise anyone of the events without Cardinal Villot's authorization. A trustworthy person conveyed to Fr. Saez personally that Sister Vicenza had said, "But the world must know the truth."

Sister Vicenza gave two conflicting reports concerning the state that she first found Pope John Paul I. According to her breathless words to a group of French priests that same morning, it was "in his bathroom" that she had "found him dead." Yet another report (no doubt arranged by Cardinal Villot) says that Sister Vicenza entered the room and found the Pope sitting up in bed, "with an expression of agony" before he died.

This discrepancy is very important: if it was determined that Sister Vicenza found the Holy Father dead in the bathroom, still in his papal robes, this would indicate that Pope John Paul I died shortly after his "toast" with Cardinal Villot the night of September 28, 1978. David Yallop reconstructs the actions of Cardinal Villot and paints a very suspicious portrait. It is reported that at 5:00 a.m. Cardinal Villot confirmed the Holy Father's death. The Pope's glasses, slippers, and will disappeared, "none of these items has ever been seen again". Speculation is that there may have been vomit on the slippers, which if examined would identify poison as the cause of death.

Cardinal Villot, or an aide, telephoned the embalmers and a Vatican car was sent to fetch them. Incredibly, the car was at their door at 5:00 a.m.! What ensued in the following hour is still a mystery. It was not until 6:00 a.m. that Dr. Buzzonati, not Professor Fontana, the head of the Vatican medical service, arrived and confirmed the death, without drawing up a death certificate.

Dr. Buzzonati attributed the death to acute myocardial infarction, heart attack. At about 6:30 a.m. Villot began to inform the cardinals, an hour and a half after the embalmers had arrived! Yallop notes that, for Cardinal Villot, the embalmers took precedence over the cardinals and the head of the Vatican medical service. By 6 p.m. that evening, the Papal Apartments had been entirely polished and washed.

Yallop writes that the secretaries packed up and carried away the Pope's clothes,

"including his letters, notes, books and a small handful of personal mementos.... By 6:00 p.m., the entire 19 rooms of the Papal Apartments were totally bereft of anything remotely associated with the Papacy of Luciani."

Villot arranged for the embalming to be performed that evening, a procedure as unusual as it was illegal. Why the rush? It is also reported that during the embalming it was insisted that no blood was to be drained from the body, and neither were any of the organs to be removed. Yallop notes that,

"a small quantity of blood would of course have been more than sufficient for a forensic scientist to establish the presence of any poisonous substances."

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