The Vatican City is the world’s smallest country. It has an area of 110 acres and a population of just 1000. The Vatican City is a sovereign state enclaved within Rome, Italy.
Even though it is a small country, quite a few conspiracy theories exist about Vatican City. There are two out of all, which are the most famous, which are the death of Pope John Paul I and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
Pope John Paul I was the head and sovereign of the City of Vatican from August 26, 1978, till his death just 33 days after. There are a few confusions about his death. At first, his death was ruled as suicide, but later on was returned an open verdict, after being ordered so by his family. David Yallop published a book in 1984 called In God’s Name in which he proposed the theory that the Pope could have been in supposed danger because of the corruption in the Vatican bank. This corruption was real and is known to have involved the bank’s head, Bishop Paul Marcinkus. When Pope John Paul I became Pope, it is claimed that he was holding a piece of paper which had names of high-ranking members of the curia who were Freemasons and others who had a role in numerous corruption scandals and the laundering of mafia drug money. That paper was later destroyed. One of the names believed to be on the paper was that of Bishop Paul Marcinkus, who was later promoted by Pope John Paul II to Pro-President of Vatican City, making him the third most powerful person of the Vatican City.
All this gives way to the possibility that Pope John Paul I might have been a victim of murder, most likely planned and committed by the very people who were involved in the Bank corruption case.
Another conspiracy theory is about the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II which took place on May 13, 1981. He was shot 4 times by Mehmet Ali Ağca when he was entering St. Peter’s Square. After he failed to complete his mission of escaping to the Bulgarian embassy under the cover of the panic generated by a small explosion, Ağca was sentenced in July 1981 to life imprisonment for the assassination attempt but was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in June 2000 at the Pope’s request.
Several theories exist concerning Ağca’s assassination attempt. The leading most was that the assassination attempt had originated from Moscow and that the KGB had instructed the Bulgarian and East German secret services to carry out the mission. The Bulgarian Secret Service was allegedly instructed by the KGB to assassinate the Pope because of his support of Poland’s Solidarity movement, seeing it as one of the most notable threats to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. Ağca himself has twisted the truth and never confessed to one thing, causing confusion about who actually was behind the attempted assassination.
Both these theories have not been solved, and the Vatican City usually does not bring up the conversation either to allow further research.
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