Prayer Requests

Various readers write:

I’m entering a postulant year with the Fransiscans in Denver, CO. Would you please pray for me, or pass me on to a prayer chain?

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I know you are horrendously busy, and blogging is being way cut back, but if you can find it in your heart to honor my request, and post a link to this, I will be eternally grateful.

(I know I’ve some hard things about not being your toady, and I apologize. Actually, I still won’t be your toady, though I am your admirer . . . but I can assure you that I will gladly be Her Cuteness little Lucy Shea’s slave for life. Just in case she wants to set up on her own sometime with her own fawning minions . . .). Anyway:

As if poor John Paul I’s memory hasn’t had enough to suffer, what with having his death endlessly picked over, now come more hair-raising claims about his life and teaching. More and more people, Catholics and others, have been mentioning to me the books of Lucien Gregoire, who has written a self-published “biography” of John Paul I, the latest edition of which is called Murder in the Vatican: the Revolutionary Life of John Paul I: the CIA, Opus Dei and the Vatican Murders of 1978 (Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2008).

Gregoire says that the “real” Albino Luciani was certainly not a pious bishop, faithful to Church teaching. He was a revolutionary socialist, a supporter of artificial contraception, a campaigner for the Church to accept homosexual unions and remarriage for Catholics after divorce. He favored the Church accepting the practice of artificial insemination and test-tube babies and from the age of thirteen or so was even in favor of abolishing the Old Testament and the Mosaic law from the heart of Christianity, as he regarded these moral prohibitions as the source of the world’s woes. (No, I’m not making this up). Gregoire also claims that John Paul I was murdered for his leftist ideas by a plot involving the CIA, but that’s kind of old hat by now. It’s the other stuff that I fear is leading many people astray.

Gregoire claims that all this has only now come to light because the Vatican confiscated all the archives in the dioceses Albino Luciani served in as a bishop and censored his talks as Pope. Gregoire claims to know these things because he knew Luciani and interviewed him several times as a bishop. A great deal of the books are made up of quotes from these “interviews,” eyewitness reports from a friend Jack Champney, who Gregoire claims was Luciani’s personal assistant, and what Gregoire claims are Luciani’s revolutionary writings.

As someone who has done in-depth research on John Paul I’s life, I can unequivocally say that Gregoire’s claims are flat-out fiction. Not only are the quotes from the Pope’s writings bogus, it’s obvious that he never met AIbino Luciani in life or had a friend who worked for him. I am amazed that some well-educated people are actually wondering whether there might be something to these claims.

I’ve known about Gregoire’s book for some time, but since it had only a tiny following on Amazon where it was being sold, I thought mentioning it might only fuel the flames. Recently I found that some of the claims made in the book had crept into the Wikipedia entry on John Paul I, and were accepted there as fact. I managed to do something about that, but people are still going to be going on the internet to research John Paul I and will learn about this appalling book.

So I’m writing another expose, this time on Gregoire, and hope you will link to it.

The more people who link to it, the higher it will appear in the Google/Yahoo search listings (I’m told that this is the theory, anyway). People may even find out about me before they get to Gregoire’s book. I want them to do that especially between now and Wednesday August 26, the 31st anniversary of his election, since I think there will be a lot of searches then.

By the way, if Lucy should happen to say to you “goo-gaaaa-gee-bwwaaa-goo-goo,” I can assure you that this is babyese for “please let people know the truth about John Paul I.” I’m sure that being as perfect as she is, she has a great love for him already. And I hope that one day she’ll get to read the book I’m writing about him. At least I hope I get it finished before she learns to read.

Please pray, along with your readers that the truth gets out there.

Father, hear our prayer through your Son Jesus Christ!