laupäev, 20. november 1999 19:00.00 UTC+11 kirjutas banana:   
   > The Guardian, 20 November 1999   
   >    
   > ***BEGIN ARTICLE***   
   >    
   >    
   > Poison pen stains the Vatican    
   >    
   > A new book alleges that the chief of the papal Swiss Guard, killed last   
   > year, was a victim of a church power struggle    
   >    
   > Philip Willan in Rome    
   > Saturday November 20, 1999    
   >    
   > A group of disaffected priests inside the Vatican claimed yesterday that   
   > the commander of the Swiss Guard who was murdered last year was the   
   > victim of a Vatican power struggle.    
   > The authors, identified anonymously as "the disciples of truth", claim   
   > that evidence was tampered with in order to fit the hypothesis that the   
   > killing was the result of a moment of madness on the part of a non-   
   > commissioned officer, Cedric Tornay. The claim, printed by a small Milan   
   > publisher in a book entitled Blood Lies in the Vatican, is the latest   
   > scandal to rock the Catholic church.    
   >    
   > Coming only a day after the decision by prosecutors in southern Italy to   
   > recommend that the cardinal of Naples be sent for trial on charges of   
   > loan-sharking, the latest allegations are causing acute unease   
   > throughout the clerical hierarchy.    
   >    
   > Emotionally unstable and convinced that he was being victimised by   
   > Colonel Alois Estermann, according to the Vatican account, vice-corporal   
   > Tornay shot dead his newly appointed commander and Estermann's   
   > Venezuelan wife, Gladys Meza Romero, before turning his revolver on   
   > himself.    
   >    
   > But according to the anonymous authors, Col Estermann was the victim of   
   > a struggle for control of the Swiss Guard - which had been in charge of   
   > papal security for the past five centuries - between the secretive,   
   > traditionalist Catholic movement Opus Dei and a masonic power faction   
   > ensconced in the Curia.    
   >    
   > "In the Vatican, there are those who maintain that vice-corporal Tornay   
   > was attacked after coming off duty and dragged into a cellar," the book   
   > says. Tornay was then "suicided" with a silenced 7mm pistol, and his   
   > duty revolver used to kill the Estermanns in their Vatican apartment.   
   > His body was dumped in the Estermann's flat so that the triple killing   
   > would look like a murder-suicide.    
   >    
   > "It is murmured that Alois and Gladys Estermann and Cedric Tornay were   
   > killed by a commando [unit] comprising a killer and two accomplices. It   
   > is said that someone saw the commando but will never testify to that   
   > effect," the authors say.    
   >    
   > The authors, who appear to have had a detailed knowledge of many of the   
   > episodes they describe, alleged that four used glasses, originally   
   > present in the flat, subsequently disappeared, along with the   
   > photographs taken by the first official photographer to arrive on the   
   > scene.    
   >    
   > Both Col Estermann and his wife, who worked at the Venezuelan embassy to   
   > the Holy See, were actively engaged in secret international financial   
   > deals for the benefit of Opus Dei, the book alleges.    
   >    
   > Opposition to Col Estermann's appointment resulted in a nine-month power   
   > vacuum at the head of the guard. Just nine hours after the announcement   
   > of the Vatican's choice, the new commander was dead.    
   >    
   > "Before the arrival of the magistrate, someone searched not only the   
   > Estermann's apartment, but also the commander's office and the vice-   
   > corporal's room in the barracks," it alleges.    
   >    
   > "The element that undermines the official truth is the fact that no one   
   > heard the five loud shots fired, according to the Holy See, by the   
   > powerful pistol found under Cedric Tornay's body."    
   >    
   > Superficial investigation   
   >    
   >    
   > The book argues that the Vatican's investigation was superficial and   
   > tailored to coincide with the reconstruction offered immediately after   
   > the event by the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, himself a   
   > member of Opus Dei.    
   >    
   > It contains a footnote written by Tornay's mother, Muguette Baudat,   
   > expressing her dissatisfaction with the way the Vatican handled the   
   > affair.    
   >    
   > "Reasons of state appear to reign at the head of the church, and I think   
   > this is the origin of the great effort made by the heads of the Roman   
   > Curia to prevent a terrible truth being revealed to the world," Ms   
   > Baudat writes.    
   >    
   > Blood Lies in the Vatican also examines financial scandals that have   
   > tarnished the Vatican's reputation in the past.    
   >    
   > It claims that in 1982 the Banco Ambrosiano affair, which at one point   
   > resulted in magistrates issuing an arrest warrant for Archbishop Paul   
   > Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican bank, was part of the same power   
   > struggle between freemasons and Opus Dei that cost Col Estermann his   
   > life almost two decades later.    
   >    
   > If anything, the request that Cardinal Michele Giordano of Naples be   
   > tried for usury is even graver than the scandal that lapped around   
   > Archbishop Marcinkus's institute for the works of religion.    
   >    
   > As church head in a major Italian city, the short, portly Cardinal   
   > Giordano is an authentic prince of the church and it is unprecedented   
   > for the Italian judiciary to move against a figure of such seniority.   
   > The crimes of which he is accused - usury, criminal conspiracy and   
   > embezzlement - have a particular social gravity in Italy's impoverished   
   > south.    
   >    
   > Yesterday, the Vatican maintained silence on his case and Vatican radio   
   > and the semi-official newspaper Osservatore Romano pretended it had   
   > never happened. But other Catholic newspapers and his supporters said he   
   > was a victim of a vendetta by leftwing prosecutors.    
   >    
   >    
   >     
   > ***END ARTICLE***   
   > --    
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