Vatican rejects pope murder plot claim

Feb 10, 2012, 13:06 GMT

Rome - The Vatican on Friday dismissed as 'unbelievable' an Italian newspaper report citing a confidential Vatican document warning of a plot to kill Pope Benedict XVI.

In a front-page article, Rome-based daily Il Fatto Quotidiano cited a leaked Vatican document reportedly submitted to the pontiff in January by Vatican Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos.

The document refers to a private visit to Beijing made in November by Archbishop of Palermo Paolo Romeo. It details how, in a meeting with Italian business representatives in the Chinese capital, the archbishop allegedly expressed concern that Benedict had 'only another 12 months left to live.'

Romeo's 'remarks - made by a person probably informed of a serious criminal plot - were made with such certainty and firmness, that his interlocutors in China, with fear, thought that an attack against the Holy Father is being planned,' the document cited by Il Fatto Quotidiano said.

Papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, who was contacted by the newspaper for comment before the report was published, said: 'It seems unbelievable and I don't even want to comment.'

The document, written in German and of which Il Fatto Quotidiano published an image and its translation in Italian, also quoted Romeo as referring to the 'very conflictual relations' between Benedict and the Vatican's second highest official, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

Romeo allegedly suggested that to offset Bertone's growing influence in the Vatican, the pontiff was, in the event of his own death, paving the way for the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Angelo Scola, to succeed him.

On Friday, Lombardi again dismissed the report as a 'rant that should not be taken seriously in any way.'

In a separate response, Romeo confirmed he had travelled to Beijing in November, but said that the remarks attributed to him were 'baseless' and that they 'appeared so unreal that they must not be taken into consideration.'

However, several top Vatican observers noted that the embarassing leak to the Italian media was only the latest in a series.

Writing in the Turin-based daily La Stampa, Andrea Tornielli, one of Italy's top Vatican experts, said he did not doubt that the document cited by Il Fatto Quotidiano was authentic, albeit 'obviously inconclusive.'

'The only real news is the fact that a document ... submitted by a cardinal to the pope ... is made available to the media,' Tornielli wrote, adding that the leaking could be another sign of an internal power struggle within the Vatican.

Tornielli and other Vatican observers compared the latest revelations to the surfacing in the Italian media earlier this month of a letter written to Benedict by a former top official of the Vatican City Governorate, or state administration, who was recently appointed the Holy See's nuncio, or ambassador to the United States.

In the letter, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who had earned a reputation for making the Vatican's financial practices more transparent, reportedly suggested to the pontiff that his transfer to the US would undermine the Vatican's credibility in fighting corruption.