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He barely made it to the bathroom… it was hard to stand up. He clutched the sink and squinted painfully against the bright lights. Fumbling with his glasses didn't help. Why did everything look so yellow? He fought in vain to breathe, his heart quivering wildly in his chest. A lurch, a stumble, and Pope John Paul heaved out his life on the cold marble floor. Or did it happen this way… Just a note to capture the sudden inspiration, and then he could finish dressing for bed. Would the talk be good enough? Nothing was ever good enough...

Code read, novel crisis looms anew 19dec05 THE Vatican, having weathered author Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code, will now be battening down the blockbuster hatches against a new novel claiming that Pope John Paul I was assassinated. John Paul I died of an apparent heart attack just 33 days after becoming Pope in 1978. But Portuguese author Luis Miguel Rocha, 29, dubbed the "new Dan Brown", says he was murdered because he was aware of money laundering involving the Vatican Bank and planned to liberalise church doctrine. Rocha says his The Last Pope is based on documents...

While the media focuses on the upcoming anniversary of John Paul II’s election Oct. 16, it’s easy to forget that 2003 also marks 25 years from the election, brief pontificate, and death of his predecessor, John Paul I. “The Smiling Pope,” as he came to be known, reigned just 33 days, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 28, 1978. To mark the occasion, I sat down over two days, Aug. 26 and 27, with the man who was the late pope’s closest collaborator, Fr. Diego Lorenzi. He had been Cardinal Albino Luciani’s private secretary in Venice for two years, and then...