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Fact check

Is it true: John Paul I sudden death (Sep 28 1978)?

Unsubstantiated88% confidence

There's no solid evidence for it.

The claim is that John Paul I was murdered, usually said to have been poisoned, by P2 and Vatican Bank figures to stop his reforms, and that the Vatican covered it up. That claim is unsubstantiated. No toxicological, documentary or eyewitness evidence of poisoning has been produced, and Yallop's specific supports have been challenged on the record: the 4:30 a.m. discovery time his scenario needs, his premise that the pope was in perfect health, the 'missing' personal effects, and a motive that rests on a conversation nobody else heard. The nuns who found him, the Vatican doctors' records and a chest-pain episode the evening before point to a natural death, whether a heart attack (the Vatican's finding, restated by Stefania Falasca in 2017) or the pulmonary embolism John Cornwell proposed in 1989. The true part is the context: no autopsy was performed, the Vatican first wrongly said his secretary found him, and the P2 and Vatican Bank scandals were real. With no autopsy and no exhumation reported, poisoning cannot be excluded forensically, so the claim is rated unsubstantiated rather than debunked.

The claim

Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani) did not die naturally: he was murdered in the Vatican on the night of 28 September 1978, usually said to have been poisoned, by figures linked to the Vatican Bank and the P2 Masonic lodge to stop his planned financial reforms, and the Vatican covered it up by skipping an autopsy and giving false accounts of his death.

Key evidence

No autopsy was performed

Yallop's 'In God's Name' (1984): no direct evidence of poisoning

Read the full evidence file

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