Pope John Paul I
Pope John Paul I, born Albino Luciani, led the Catholic Church for only 33 days in 1978. When the cardinals asked whether he accepted his election, he answered, "May God forgive you for what you have done." Then he accepted.
Before the conclave he had told people close to him that he would refuse the office if it ever came to him. He remains the most recent Italian-born pope. His death made 1978 the year of three popes, the first such year since 1605.
Why did a man who was daunted by the papacy end up holding it? What did he change in a few weeks, and what did he leave unchanged? And what really happened during his final night, a question that has fed conspiracy theories ever since?
Albino Luciani was born on the 17th of October 1912 in Forno di Canale, a village now called Canale d'Agordo, in the Belluno province of Veneto. The midwife baptised him the same day because she feared he would not survive. The formal rites followed two days later in the parish church.
His father, Giovanni, was a bricklayer, and his mother was Bortola Tancon. Albino had two brothers and a sister. One brother, Federico, lived only from 1915 to 1916.
Albino was a restless child. In 1922, at the age of ten, he heard a Capuchin friar preach the Lenten sermons in his village and decided he wanted to be a priest. He asked his father for permission. Giovanni agreed and added a hope of his own: "I hope that when you become a priest you will be on the side of the workers, for Christ Himself would have been on their side".
In 1923 the boy entered the minor seminary of Feltre, where his teachers thought him "too lively". He moved on to the major seminary of Belluno. There he tried to join the Jesuits, but the rector, Bishop Giosuè Cattarossi, refused him.
He was ordained on the 7th of July 1935 and served first as a curate in his home village. In 1937 he returned to the Belluno seminary as a professor and vice-rector. His subjects included dogmatic and moral theology, canon law and sacred art.
In 1941 he began a doctorate in sacred theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. The degree normally required at least a year of attendance in the city, yet his superiors wanted him to keep teaching. Pope Pius XII settled the matter with a special dispensation on the 27th of March 1941.
Luciani's thesis examined the origin of the human soul according to Antonio Rosmini. It largely attacked Rosmini's theology, and it earned him the doctorate magna cum laude in 1947.
That same year Bishop Girolamo Bortignon of Belluno made him chancellor. On the 15th of December 1947 he also received the title of Supernumerary Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness, the most junior rank of papal prelate. In 1949 he published his first book, Catechesis in crumbs, which explained the truths of the faith in a simple way that anyone could follow. He became vicar general of the Belluno diocese in 1954.
His name kept coming up for appointment as a bishop. Each time it was set aside because of his poor health, his small stature and his resigned appearance. A later appointment from Pope John XXIII would finally end that pattern.
On the 15th of December 1958, Pope John XXIII appointed Luciani Bishop of Vittorio Veneto. Later that month the pope consecrated him personally, with Bishops Bortignon and Gioacchino Muccin as co-consecrators.
Luciani took possession of the diocese on the 11th of January 1959. He chose the motto Humilitas, which means Humility. To his new people he promised to be "a bishop who is a teacher and a servant".
He attended every session of the Second Vatican Council, which ran from 1962 to 1965. On the 18th of April 1962 he issued a pastoral letter, "Notes on the Council", to explain to ordinary believers how the proceedings worked and what they were meant to achieve.
His firm side showed in Montaner, a hamlet of Sarmede. Between 1965 and 1969, almost all its residents renounced Catholicism and embraced the Orthodox religion. The quarrel began in 1966, when Luciani appointed a priest named John Gava. The villagers wanted to choose their own priest.
They then proposed a compromise: their choice would serve as vice-rector of the parish. Luciani replied that so small a village needed only one priest and that he alone decided such matters. Each priest he recommended was rejected. In the end, police escorted him as he took the Eucharist out of the Montaner church and left it unblessed.
In 1966 he visited Burundi in East Africa. On the 15th of December 1969, Pope Paul VI named him patriarch of Venice. He took possession of the archdiocese the following February, and that month Vittorio Veneto made him an honorary citizen.
Paul VI personally invited him to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971. There Luciani proposed that dioceses in heavily industrialised countries give up about 1% of their income to Third World nations. He wanted it given "not as alms, but something that is owed".
In 1975 he suggested disciplinary punishment for priests who spoke out in favour of the Communist Party or other leftist groups. In 1978 he forbade the Tridentine Mass in the Archdiocese of Venice.
His generosity was just as visible. In 1976 he sold a gold cross and pectoral chain that John XXIII had given him, which had once belonged to Pius XII. The money went to disabled children. He urged Venetian priests to sell their own valuables and live simply. He also opened family counselling clinics to help poor people with marital, financial and sexual problems.
From the 6th to the 21st of November 1975 he toured Brazil and met clergy including Aloísio Lorscheider. Back in Italy he suffered an embolus in his right eye. A few months later he visited Fatima and met Sister Lucia dos Santos. She was the surviving visionary of three children who claimed to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1917. Sister Lucia greeted him as "Holy Father", and the humble cardinal was shocked.
Pope Paul VI died on the 6th of August 1978, ending a papacy of fifteen years, and Luciani was summoned to Rome. Time reported that Carlo Confalonieri, the dean of the College of Cardinals, was the first to suggest his name. Confalonieri himself was too old to take part in the vote.
Luciani was elected on the fourth ballot. He had told his secretary, Father Diego Lorenzi, and Father Prospero Grech, later a cardinal himself, that he would refuse. He had planned to vote for Aloísio Lorscheider, whom he had met in Brazil. Cardinal Sin of the Philippines told him plainly: "You will be the new pope."
Jean-Marie Villot put the formal question, and Luciani accepted despite his earlier vow. When Sin then paid him homage, the new pope said: "You were a prophet, but my reign will be a short one".
On the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, Pericle Felici announced that the cardinals had chosen Albino Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, who had taken the name John Paul I. No pope had ever chosen a double name before. Luciani explained that it honoured the two men to whom he owed his career. John XXIII had made him a bishop, and Paul VI had made him patriarch and cardinal.
He also added the ordinal "I" to his name, which is normally given afterwards when another pope takes the same name. Catholic media reported that he did not realise how unusual this was.
He later confided to his brother Edoardo that his first thought had been to call himself Pius XIII, in honour of Pius XI. He dropped the idea because he worried that traditionalists in the Church might exploit it.
Observers have described his election as a compromise between rival camps. One group backed Giuseppe Siri and wanted a more conservative reading of Vatican II, or even a reversal of ideas promoted in its name. Another group, joined by some Italian cardinals, favoured a more liberal reading and supported Giovanni Benelli, whose critics called him autocratic. A third group consisted of cardinals from the increasingly international college, such as Karol Wojtyła, who saw the influence of the Italians fading.
In the days after the vote, many cardinals spoke of having chosen "God's candidate". Eduardo Francisco Pironio of Argentina said, "We were witnesses of a moral miracle." Basil Hume, the British primate, recalled: "Once it had happened, it seemed totally and entirely right... We felt as if our hands were being guided as we wrote his name on the paper".
Mother Teresa went further. She called him "the greatest gift of God, a sun beam of God's love shining in the darkness of the world".
On the 27th of August 1978, the first full day of his papacy, John Paul I gave an Angelus address that impressed the world with its natural friendliness. He spoke of himself as "I" instead of the royal "we", the first modern pope to do so. His aides often undid this. They rewrote his speeches in a formal style and restored the royal "we" in press releases and L'Osservatore Romano.
He at first refused to be carried on the sedia gestatoria, the portable throne that lifts a pope above a crowd. Others convinced him that people needed to see him, and he became the last pope to use it. He also turned down the coronation and the papal tiara. In their place he held a simplified inauguration Mass, where he received the pallium as the symbol of his role as Bishop of Rome.
Sister Margherita Marin, who worked in the Vatican, shared memories in late 2017. Paul VI had admitted only his secretaries to his apartment chapel for morning Mass. John Paul I let the sisters in. He spoke the Venetian dialect with the Venetian sisters to put them at ease. He also joked about newspaper photographs of himself, telling them, "But you see how they got me".
His kindness was tested on the 5th of September 1978. Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, who led the Russian Orthodox delegation, collapsed and died during an audience with the pope. John Paul I rushed over and prayed for him.
The tone of his preaching had a source. In January 1976 he had published Illustrissimi, meaning "To the Illustrious Ones", a collection of letters written in earlier years. They were whimsically addressed to figures from history and fiction, including Dickens, G. K. Chesterton, Maria Theresa of Austria, Teresa of Avila, Goethe, Figaro, Pinocchio, the Pickwick Club, King David and Jesus. Others went to Mark Twain and Christopher Marlowe.
He read several newspapers every morning, including one from Veneto, before starting his day.
Not everyone in Rome was charmed. Some saw him as an intellectual lightweight who was not equal to the office. David Yallop, in In God's Name, says this impression came from a whispering campaign by people who opposed Luciani's policies. John Cornwell wrote that they treated him with condescension. One senior cleric remarked, "they have elected Peter Sellers".
Critics contrasted his sermons mentioning Pinocchio with the learned discourses of Pius XII or Paul VI. Visitors spoke of his isolation and loneliness. He was also the first pope in decades who had held neither a diplomatic post nor a Curial post.
His aides rejected the idea that he was a naive idealist. Giuseppe Caprio, the substitute Papal Secretary of State, said that he quickly accepted his new role and carried it out with confidence.
British researcher Paul Spackman described Luciani as a man of "doctrinal rigour leavened by pastoral and social open-mindedness". The papal programme he drew up fits that description. It had six aims: renewing the Church through the policies of Vatican II, revising canon law, reminding the Church of its duty to preach the Gospel, promoting unity without watering down doctrine, encouraging dialogue, and working for world peace and social justice.
Contraception tested him most. In 1968 he wrote a report for Giovanni Urbani, then Patriarch of Venice, arguing that the contraceptive pill should be permitted. Fellow Veneto bishops agreed, and the report went to Paul VI. When Humanae vitae reaffirmed the Church's ban, Luciani defended it. Yet four days after its release he wrote to his diocese in terms that seemed to contradict that defence.
In May 1978 a Milan conference invited him to mark the encyclical's tenth anniversary. He declined to speak or even attend. Two writers named Raymond and Lauretta read his record differently. They describe him as firm toward those who disobeyed out of intellectual pride, and patient with those who sincerely tried and failed.
When the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978, he was asked for his reaction. He warned that artificial insemination could turn women into "baby factories". Even so, he refused to condemn her parents. He offered his best wishes to the baby, and he saw no reason to separate the transmission of life from the marriage act.
In a 1975 talk to a group of sisters he addressed the ordination of women. He said Christ never accepted the prejudice about the inferiority of women. But he held that women perform "a different, complementary, and precious service in the church" and are not "possible priests".
His dealings with other worldviews were mixed. He repeated the Church's view that Marxism and Catholicism were incompatible, and in Venice he struggled with Marxist students demanding political change. Toward Islam he was friendly. He told Venetian Catholics that faithful Muslims had the "right to build a mosque".
He told his niece that his diocese contained people "of three councils". Some were stuck at Vatican I, or even at Trent. Others gladly welcomed the updating of Vatican II. A small group made the council say things it never said and pushed toward a "Vatican III" that did not exist. On religious freedom he wrote that "The choice of religious belief must be free".
He also preached that holiness was open to every Catholic. In a homily on the 6th of January 1962 he declared, "We are called by God to be true saints".
As pope he spoke three times about mercy. On the 13th of September 1978 he told his audience that "God has so much tenderness for us". On the 24th of September he urged people to "infect others with a goodness" that carries the meekness and love Christ taught.
On the 27th of September 1978, only a day before his final evening, he turned to the traditional acts of mercy. He said that the list "is not complete and it would be necessary to update it".
At about 7:30 pm on the 28th of September 1978, John Paul I felt a severe pain in his chest while reciting vespers in the chapel with Bishop John Magee. It lasted about five minutes. He refused to let anyone call his doctor, Renato Buzzonetti.
Later that evening he spoke for half an hour by telephone with Giovanni Colombo. He said he wanted Egidio Viganò, Rector Major of the Salesians, to agree to succeed him as Patriarch of Venice.
Around 10 p.m. he heard that young neo-fascists had fired on a group of young people reading L'Unità, the communist newspaper, outside a party office in Rome. One boy was killed and another was seriously wounded. The pope told Magee, "Even the young are killing each other." He then went to his room and read Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ in bed.
The next morning, the 29th of September, Sister Vincenza Taffarel left his coffee in the sacristy at 5:15. His habit was to drink it and then pray in the chapel. After about ten minutes it was untouched. She went looking for him, knocked on his door several times and heard only silence.
Sister Margherita Marin gave her account in 2009. She stayed in the hallway and heard Sister Vincenza say, "He hasn't come out yet? Why not?" When the older sister opened the door and walked in, Marin heard her say, "Your Holiness, you shouldn't pull these jokes on me". Sister Vincenza had heart problems of her own.
Marin remembered that his hands were cold and that his nails looked dark. She said "he was in bed with a slight smile". The reading light above the headboard was still on. He lay propped on two pillows in his pyjamas, with his legs stretched out and typewritten sheets in his hands. His head was turned slightly to the right, his eyes were partly closed and his glasses rested on his nose.
Marin also said the Vatican's first account was wrong. It had credited the pope's secretaries, Lorenzi and Magee, with finding him.
Bolivia declared six days of mourning. Spain, Zaire and Lebanon each declared three, and the Dominican Republic declared two. His funeral took place in Saint Peter's Square on the 4th of October 1978, led by Carlo Confalonieri. In his eulogy Confalonieri compared him to a flashing comet that briefly lit up the Church. He was buried in the Vatican Grottoes.
Suspicion followed almost at once. Before the conclave that chose his successor, the cardinals sent written questions to the doctors who had embalmed him. They wanted to know whether any sign of traumatic injury suggested he had not died naturally.
In 2017 the journalist Stefania Falasca published Pope Luciani, Chronicle of a Death. She is the vice-postulator of his cause for beatification. She interviewed the sisters who found him and studied documents in the Vatican Apostolic Archive, and she concluded that he died of a heart attack in the late evening of the 28th of September.
Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin wrote the book's preface. He called the conspiracy accounts "noir reconstructions" built on opinion rather than fact.
On the 9th of October 1979, Dr Buzzonetti sent a detailed report to Cardinal Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli. It placed the pope's chest pain in the upper part of the sternal region.
In 1990, 226 Brazilian bishops, four of them cardinals, petitioned Pope John Paul II to open a cause for the canonisation of his short-lived predecessor. The preliminary phase was announced by Bishop Vincenzo Savio on the 26th of August 2002. On the 17th of June 2003 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints moved the forum to Belluno-Feltre and named him a Servant of God. The diocesan process formally opened in Belluno Cathedral on the 23rd of November 2003, with José Saraiva Martins presiding.
The diocesan inquiry closed on the 11th of November 2006, and the Vatican validated it on the 13th of June 2008. That opened the Roman phase.
A large dossier called the Positio, with a biography and an examination of his virtues, was due on the 17th of October 2012, the centenary of his birth. Supporters asked for another check of the documents, and it slipped. Tarcisio Bertone promised it for September 2014. It was not submitted until the 17th of October 2016, in five volumes of about 3600 pages.
Among the messages supporting the cause was a handwritten card from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Testimony from a pope or former pope is extremely unusual. Benedict apparently recommended waiving the requirement for miracles.
Theologians unanimously approved his heroic virtue on the 1st of June 2017. The cardinal and bishop members of the congregation did the same on the 7th of November. Pope Francis named him Venerable on the 8th of November 2017.
Miracles proved harder. A reported cancer cure credited to Giuseppe Denora di Altamura was investigated from the 14th of May 2007 to the 30th of May 2009. A medical board in Rome rejected it on the 24th of April 2015.
The accepted miracle was the recovery of an 11-year-old in Buenos Aires from inflammatory encephalopathy. Medical consultants found no scientific or medical explanation on the 31st of October 2019. Theologians approved it on the 6th of May 2021. Pope Francis recognised the miracle by decree on the 13th of October 2021. John Paul I was beatified in Saint Peter's Square on the 4th of September 2022.
Popular culture had already taken up his story. In 2006 the Italian broadcaster RAI aired a miniseries, Papa Luciani: Il sorriso di Dio, which means "Pope Luciani: The Smile of God". It starred the comedian Neri Marcorè. The 1990 film The Godfather Part III showed a fictional pope, named Lamberto, killed with poisoned tea in a plot tied to the Vatican Bank. Mark E. Smith wrote the play and song Hey! Luciani.
His successors spoke of him warmly. Karol Wojtyła was elected on the 16th of October 1978, taking the same name, John Paul. The next day he thanked the world for the warmth of charity his predecessor had shown in so few days.
On the 28th of September 2008, the thirtieth anniversary of the death, Benedict XVI praised him as an incomparable catechist. He recalled a line from John Paul I's audience: "We must feel small before God." Francis wrote about him in his 2016 book The Name of God Is Mercy. He quoted Luciani saying that the Lord prefers some things written "in the dust" rather than in bronze or marble, so that the merit would plainly be God's.
More recently, Pope Leo XIV told seminarians from the Triveneto dioceses that John Paul I was a "true model for priestly life".
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Common questions
How long was Pope John Paul I's reign?
He served for 33 days, from the 26th of August 1978 until his death in September 1978. It is among the shortest reigns in papal history.
Why did he choose the name John Paul?
He honoured his two immediate predecessors. John XXIII had made him a bishop, and Paul VI had made him Patriarch of Venice and a cardinal. No pope had used a double name before.
What did he change about the papacy?
He used the singular "I" instead of the royal "we", refused a coronation and the papal tiara, and held a simplified inauguration Mass instead. He was also the last pope to use the sedia gestatoria.
How did he die?
He was found dead in his bed on the morning of the 29th of September 1978. Research published in 2017 by Stefania Falasca concluded he died of a heart attack the previous evening. Cardinal Pietro Parolin dismissed the conspiracy theories as "noir reconstructions".
When was he beatified?
Pope Francis beatified him in Saint Peter's Square on the 4th of September 2022. The miracle recognised for the cause was the recovery of an 11-year-old in Buenos Aires from inflammatory encephalopathy.
All sources
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