Vatican denies plot to kill Pope
Newspaper claims cardinal spoke of matter while in China
The Vatican is vehemently denying a newspaper report of a document spelling out a plot to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI by November.
The Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano on Friday published what it called a “top secret confidential” document written in German about a cardinal’s conversation in China that was delivered to the Pope by Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos last month.
The “death plot” document, the newspaper said, provides details of an alarming conversation that Cardinal Paolo Romeo, the archbishop of Palermo, had during a visit to Beijing. Romeo told his hosts last November that the Pope would be dead by November 2012, the document said.
The archbishop of Palermo also described bitter infighting around the pontiff, the document alleged. In particular, the Pope was supposedly upset with his secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone.
Il Fatto Quotidiano speculated the timing of the document’s release was to rip open the internal wounds inside the Vatican.
“These are clearly ravings, which are not at all taken seriously. I will not even consider it,” Vatican Press Office director Father Federico Lombardi told the newspaper.
The document was written in German, the newspaper said, so it could be read by Pope Benedict himself and as few people as possible inside the Vatican. And it names his successor: Archbishop of Milan Angelo Scola.
In1999, Romeowas the papal nuncio to Canada. Thestar.com