It is one of the last steps to elevate Pope John Paul I to the rank of Saint. The former leader of the Catholic Church is beatified this Sunday, in a ceremony that takes place ten years after the miraculous healing of an Argentine child was attributed to him. John Paul I had one of the shortest papacies in history, which is still talked about today.
The Vatican touches this Sunday a long-standing wound: the sudden death of a Pope who, 44 years ago, began one of the shortest pontificates of the Catholic Church. It was only 33 days, in the summer of 1978.
Albino Luciani, his papal name John Paul I, born in northern Italy and from a modest family, followed an ecclesiastical life, having been Patriarch of Venice. Those brief days of pontificate were famous for his original speeches, at the time when John Paul I called God his mother and wrote letters to personalities from the political, social and fictional world.
Thus he wrote a letter to Pinocchio, was in Fatima as Patriarch of Venice and visited his sister Lucia in Coimbra.
The conspiracy theory attributes the death of this Pope to poisoning by the Italian mafia. At stake were serious problems at the Vatican Bank, as was later confirmed.
Source: TSF
