![]() ![]() (If that phrase is allowable these days!) To some degree he managed to explain Tornay’s desperate measures and in other ways he painted him a darker shade of grey. Quick explanations of drastic events are usually fabricated, and definitely worth investigating. ![]() However, Follain was right to be suspicious about how cut and dried the whole matter was – according to the Vatican – within hours of the bodies being found. It painted the young man as a bit of a psycho and didn’t credit the reasons he had for doing what he did – none of which showed the Vatican or the Swiss Guards in a good light – but what else would one expect from the Catholic Church? Or indeed from any large organisation with a vested interest? What the Vatican came out with just after the three deaths was substantially true: two murders and a suicide. An article would have been appropriate, a hyped book, no. I suppose Follain did a fair amount of research, spent time and money, energy and thought, and did his best, so wanted to publish. ![]() I began to suspect about 2/3rds through that Follain wouldn’t find out anything which could be described as ‘The Startling Truth Behind the Vatican Murders’ as stated on the cover. I was surprised to see Opus Dei mentioned in connection with a book published in 2003 which I hadn’t come across, so I bought it and read it. Some time ago I did some research on Opus Dei to use in one of my Spanish crime series. Poor management, yes, bullying in the Guards, and homosexuality, possibly. Timely and explosive, City of Secrets is the story of a still-unsolved crime committed on holy territory, and of a systematic attempt to hide the fatal failings of a security force charged with protecting one of the world's most influential leaders.Well, if the Vatican had any secrets, they still have them, because they ain’t in this book. Echoing the pace and plotting of a highstakes thriller, Follain's true-life tale of intrigue moves from the guards' barracks and the pope's palace in Vatican City to Paris, Berlin, and the Swiss Alps, and features a fascinating cast: an old, suffering John Paul II his chief bodyguard, formerly accused of spying for the Soviet bloc a mysterious priest punished by the Vatican and the powerful Opus Dei sect. ![]() Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation - the first independent attempt to establish the truth - City of Secrets reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice and hide the scandals it dares not confess. But as John Follain's hard-hitting expos shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old C dric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in a fit of madness brought on by frutstration with the unit's discipline - a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry. It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Roman Catholics. On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, in Vatican territory, the bodies of the commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife, and a young lance corporal were found in the barracks of the picturesque force historically entrusted with protecting the pope. On the heels of one of the greatest public scandals to rock the Catholic Church comes an explosive expos of murder and corruption in the highest reaches of the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world. ![]()
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