Synopsis

October 6, 2012.  At Sister Assunta’s 100 year old birthday party, she mutters that the pope was murdered.  She then recounts the story of Pope Mark Peter who was elected pope on August 26, 1978 and died 33 days later on September 28^th.

 Mark Peter sought to make radical changes in the church.  He was determined to return the church to its core beliefs and away from the big business (“Vatican Incorporated”) it had become.  His goal: to care for the poor worldwide and shed the Vatican from all the wealth it had accumulated.

Keenly aware of social issues facing the billion Catholic members all over the world, he sought to make church teachings relevant and current to present day life. 

 One such issue was in the church’s stance on birth control.  When Mark Peter was a cardinal under the previous pope, he was asked to research and compile a report on contraception.  His conclusion was that the church should relax its ban on birth control and allow loving husbands and wives to use any birth control method available.

 Not only did Mark Peter encounter resistance to his social agenda from the Vatican traditionalists but he also faced a massive cover-up of the Vatican Bank’s corruption.

 Bishop Andreikus, “God’s Banker”, who headed the Vatican Bank had managed to grow the bank into an international financial behemoth with assets well into the tens of billions of dollars.

To accomplish this, some investments had to be made while “holding one’s nose”.  As Andreikus concludes: “The church doesn’t run on Hail Marys.”  One such investment was in a pharmaceutical house (Sereno) that manufactures a widely popular birth control pill.

 Mark Peter uncovers a money laundering scheme involving one of Italy’s top bankers and Andreikus.  They were using the Vatican Bank as a conduit to clandestinely funnel millions of dollars from unsavory “investors” into Swiss bank accounts.

 During the day on September 28^th, Mark Peter demanded the resignation of Bishop Andreikus and four other cardinals, top members of the Vatican hierarchy.  All were involved in the Vatican Bank’s shady operation.

 That night, Mark Peter was dead.  The official Vatican report was that he suffered a massive heart attack.  A heart attack?  Usually a heart attack occurs from excessively high blood pressure. Mark Peter was on Effortil for many years to treat his low blood pressure condition.  His personal physician confirmed that based on his examination of Mark Peter on the previous Sunday that he was in excellent health given the pope’s vigorous, daily exercise regimen.

 Sister Assunta had a bird’s eye view of all the pope’s activity (and visitors) as she was his personal assistant at the Vatican as well as throughout his tenure as bishop and cardinal. The morning that the pope’s lifeless body was found, under pain of excommunication from the church, she was bound to silence and banished to a cloistered convent in Northern Italy far from the Vatican, far from reporters.

 Her birthday party ends at the conclusion of her retelling of Pope Mark Peter’s story.  She murmurs as her wheelchair is pushed to her room: “Long live the dead pope”.