A reader writes

You’ve been helpful in the past, and I was wondering if you could help again.

Somebody just sprang this quote of John Paul I, 1978, as an argument that the Church is evil, and when I tried to track it down, I couldn’t find any original source or proof that it was real:

“… this morning, I flushed my toilet with a solid gold lever edged with diamonds and at this very moment, bishops and cardinals are using a bathroom on the second floor of the papal palace which trappings, I am told, would draw more than fifty million dollars at auction … Believe me, one day, we who live in opulence, while so many are dying because they have nothing, will have to answer to Jesus as to why we have not carried out His instruction, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ We, the clergy of the Church together with our congregations, who substitute gold and pomp and ceremony in place of Christ’s instruction, who judge our masquerade of singing His praises to be more precious than human life, will have the most to explain.”

When I’ve tried to Google it, I’ve only found it on anti-Catholic web sites. It appears to have its roots in the book: Murder in the Vatican by Lucien Gregoire.

Would there be any way of verifying whether or not he actually said this?

I just have a hard time believing anybody would bother to make a toilet handle out of gold and put diamonds on it. I also find it hard to believe that a Pope would refer to having just used the toilet. But, I could be wrong about both of those.

Thanks for your obvious love of the Faith. Here are two beautiful words that will save you thousands of hours and many gray hairs: “Documentation, please?” It’s not your job to prove that some highly dubious quote is highly dubious. It’s the other guy’s job to demonstrate that he is not just making crap up or credulously regurgitating some lie that somebody else told him and that he was way too ready to believe due to his bigotry. I agree with you that this quote sounds like pure fiction. So challenge the guy to verify it. He won’t be able to, cuz it’s pretty obviously a piece of Know Nothing fiction from the fevered minds of people who buy rumors about the Sacred Monkeys of the Vatican.