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How did Pope John Paul I die?
Pope John Paul I
October 17, 1912 — September 28, 1978
Vatican City
Albino Luciani was born in a mountain village in the Veneto to a socialist bricklayer who worked seasons in Switzerland and a mother who was devout enough for both of them. He was ordained at twenty-two, became a bishop, then Patriarch of Venice, and was elected pope on the fourth ballot on August 26, 1978, by cardinals who wanted a pastor rather than a diplomat. He was the first pope to take a double name, the first to refuse the coronation, and the first in centuries to use "I" instead of the royal "we" in public. He was sixty-five when he died in his bed on the thirty-third night of his papacy.
He smiled constantly, which is the thing everyone who met him mentions first, and he had spent his life as a parish priest and a teacher rather than in the Curia, which is the thing the Curia mentioned. In a month he gave a handful of audiences in plain language that people still quote, and signaled, without doing, several things that made the Vatican's bankers and bureaucrats uneasy. Then he was gone, and John Paul II, who was pope for twenty-six years, was elected three weeks later.
He was beatified in 2022. His body lies in the grottoes beneath St. Peter's.
The record
What is established, from the authorities and the people who were there.
Official cause: Acute myocardial infarction (Vatican announcement, September 29, 1978). No autopsy was performed.
He was found dead in bed in the papal apartments early on the morning of September 29, 1978. The Vatican's first statement said he had been found by his secretary, Father John Magee, at about 5:30 a.m., sitting up with papers in his hands, reading The Imitation of Christ, and that the cause was a heart attack at around 11 p.m. the night before. He was 65 and had been pope for 33 days.
Most of that statement was wrong, and the Vatican changed it. He was actually found by Sister Vincenza Taffarel, the nun who ran the papal household, who had brought his morning coffee; the Vatican initially concealed this because a woman entering the pope's bedroom was considered unseemly. The papers in his hands were not The Imitation of Christ but, by various accounts, notes or a list of appointments he was planning to change. The Vatican's doctor, Renato Buzzonetti, certified a heart attack without an examination beyond the external, and no autopsy was done; the Vatican said papal autopsies were not customary, though in fact there was no rule against one. He was embalmed within hours.
The changing story, the speed of the embalming, the refusal of an autopsy, and the fact that he had reportedly been about to move against the Vatican Bank's president, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, whose dealings with the Banco Ambrosiano and the financier Roberto Calvi would collapse into scandal and Calvi's own suspicious death in 1982, fed the theory that he was murdered. David Yallop's 1984 book In God's Name made the case to millions of readers. John Cornwell's 1989 A Thief in the Night, written with Vatican cooperation, argued the opposite: that he was a frail man under enormous stress with a known heart condition who was neglected rather than killed. The 2017 publication of his medical records by the Vatican's own investigator for his beatification described chest pain the evening before his death that he had declined to have examined.
What happened
The family hasn’t confirmed a cause. These are the community’s theories, in the order the community finds them most likely. Everyone here is anonymous.
A pope died alone on his 33rd night, the Vatican lied about who found him and what he was holding, embalmed him within hours, and refused an autopsy. Heart attack, or something else?
The page creator
- Most likely42 of 51 readers find this likely
A heart attack in a frail man who ignored chest pain the night before
The 2017 release of his medical history settled most of this for most historians: he had a history of circulatory and heart trouble, had been ill in the days before, and had chest pain on the evening of September 28 that he waved away. He died in bed a few hours later. The Vatican's lies about the nun and the papers were about embarrassment, not murder, and they are the reason a plain death became a mystery. Cornwell's book makes the same case with the people who were there.
Anonymous. Says they are a cardiologist.
ReportThe page creator can confirm or correct this. - Also raised27 of 35 readers find this likely
Neglect: a sick man left alone with no doctor on call
Cornwell's harder conclusion. The papal household had no physician in residence, the pope had been visibly unwell, he complained of pain, and nobody insisted. He died with his light on and nobody checked on him until morning. Not a crime, but not quite a natural death either; the kind of thing that happens to old men whom everyone assumes someone else is watching.
Anonymous.
- Also raised18 of 30 readers find this likely
A pulmonary embolism: a clot, not a blocked artery
Several doctors who reviewed the accounts, including the swollen legs and the reported sudden death with no struggle, think a blood clot from the leg lodging in the lung is a better fit than a heart attack. It kills fast and quietly in exactly this way, in exactly this kind of patient. The practical difference from the official cause is small, but it's another thing an autopsy would have settled in an hour.
Anonymous.
- Also raised15 of 39 readers find this likely
He was poisoned, because of what he was about to do to the Vatican Bank
Yallop's thesis: Luciani had decided to remove Marcinkus and expose the Ambrosiano dealings, and was killed with a digitalis overdose that would mimic a heart attack and be invisible without an autopsy, which is why there was none. The cover story's collapse, the speed of the embalming, and the trail of bodies around the Ambrosiano affair in the following years give it a shape. What it has never had is a witness, a document, or a body.
Anonymous.
When the family confirms the cause, the confirmed answer moves to the top and gets this mark. Theories stay, but are labeled as what people thought before the family knew.
A heart attack (myocardial infarction) is a blocked artery starving part of the heart muscle. In a 65-year-old man with a history of circulatory problems and swollen ankles, under the most intense stress of his life, who complained of chest pain the evening before, it is the single most likely cause of a sudden overnight death. It is also the easiest to confirm at autopsy and impossible to confirm without one.
The reason this page exists is not the medicine. It is that an institution, by lying about small things for reasons of decorum, made it impossible for anyone to believe it about the large thing. Every theory below starts from the gap between what the Vatican said and what turned out to be true.
Vatican press statements, September 29 and October 1978 David Yallop, In God's Name (1984) John Cornwell, A Thief in the Night (1989) Stefania Falasca, Papa Luciani: Cronaca di una morte (2017), with the medical records released for the beatification cause Wikipedia, "Pope John Paul I"
Add a theory
Say what you think happened and why. You’re anonymous. If you have a reason to know (you were there, you do this for a living), you can say so.