Vatican City, 29 September 1978: the world wakes to the shocking news that Pope John Paul I is dead, just a month after his accession.

Thirty years later, in London, young journalist Sarah Monteiro receives a mysterious package. Enclosed is a list of names and a coded message.

Moments later a masked assassin attempts to silence her for ever. It seems Sarah holds the key to unveiling a deadly secret - a plot that implicates unscrupulous mercenaries and crooked politicians, and which goes to the very heart of the Vatican. Sarah has no choice but to run, forced into a ruthless game of cat-and-mouse. She can trust no one, especially when her father's name appears on the incriminating list.

Sarah finds herself at the centre of a world-wide conspiracy its keepers will stop at nothing to protect.

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A Conversation with Luis Miguel Rocha, author of The Last Pope

First of all, does the P2 Lodge truly exist?  And if so, what facts do we know about them and what did you create as a novelist for the sake of this story?

P2 existed and still exists. All facts that appear in the novel before and through 1978 are true. As are the names of the members and rulers. Everything that happens with Sarah Monteiro and Rafael and the idea of JC being part of P2 in the current day is fiction.

There have been several non-fiction books that address the question of whether Pope John Paul I was murdered.  Do you believe they raise valid questions?   Did you draw on these conspiracy theories just to create a good thriller, or do you actually believe there was a plot to murder the Pope in 1978?

John Paul I was killed on September 29^th 1978 at 1 o’clock AM. Not at 11 PM nor 11: 30PM on the 28^th as officially said. I’m sure of it.

There’s a very good piece of journalism (published and sold together with this novel in Spain) by a Spanish journalist that describes everything that happened in that day. It was because of him, a correspondent in Rome, that things became cloudy. He managed to speak with sister Vincenza who said she was the one who found the body, but the official Vatican version was that Father John Magee, the Pope’s assistant, was the one who found him. And the official version of the Vatican last through the eighties, when they confirmed that it wasn’t Magee to find the body. They ordered all involved a vow of silence. Why would they do that if there was nothing to hide? Because it was all a set up. And John Paul I was actually killed. How do I know? It was the person who killed him that told me and proved it to me. JC, a character in the book, is based on a real figure, John Paul I’s assassin, whom I knew as an Italian minister assistant. Apparently, he wasn’t. He said specifically that I should write a novel about it, because we live in a fictional reality and we don’t know anything, even the things we think we know. The Last Pope is that book.

You were a child when Pope John Paul I died, so it’s presumably not an experience you remember first-hand.  Was there anything in particular about John Paul I’s life and death that inspired this novel?

I didn’t know anything about John Paul I until April 2005. I just knew John Paul II and a little Vatican history, not much, I must confess. It was then that a person of my acquaintance, Italian, told me how everything happened. Who was Albino Luciani, what he did to be killed, why, when, how. Later I saw documents proving what he said to me (one of those were the papers that JPI had with him the night of his death, that disappeared on that same night). Sister Vincenza saw them, as did Dom Lorenzi, but they were never found.

Now, knowing a little more about Albino Luciani and other facts of Vatican history, I’m glad I got in touch with that world.

One of the novel’s most haunting characters is the mystic Sister Lucia de Jesus, one of the three children who encountered the Virgin Mary at Fatima.  She is Portuguese, as you are, so was it a risk for you to write about someone who is so revered in your culture?   Do you think that the secrets of Fatima are somehow linked to current events and disasters, as the novel suggests?

There was more a sense of curiosity. There’s a certain ambivalence concerning the facts of Fatima. We believe in them, but we also know that Sister Lucia was totally controlled by the Church. So some things are true and others aren’t. Like the secrets. Some believe that the secrets were all made up by the Church to control population. And the revelation of the 3^rd secret in 2000 by John Paul II in Fatima left everyone disappointed. Most people don’t know that the secrets were actually written in 1941. I know for a fact that she was a psychic and she saw The Virgin many more times that people believe. It wasn’t just from the 13^th of May of 1917 until October. She appeared regularly throughout sister Lucia’s life. What secrets did She tell her? Only she and the Church know… and a few others. Perhaps I’ll write a book in the future about this.

The CIA and the Italian Mafia both play roles in the intrigue surrounding your protagonists, Rafael and Sarah.  Are they as central to Vatican politics today as this novel suggests they were in 1978?

No. Today it’s completely different. You need a unique confluence of factors for a non-religious entity to manage to control the Holy See. That happened from 1971 until 1981, more or less. And only in the financial department, not in the religious. Today it wouldn’t be possible. However there are religious organizations with more power than the one of P2 today in the Vatican.

What has been the reaction to this novel since it’s been published?   Did you find that people took your ideas as fact—as some have done with Dan Brown’s DA VINCI CODE—or have readers mainly recognized it as only a work of fiction?

I receive tons of emails from all over the world. I have yet to receive a bad review from a reader. They love the story, the characters; they ask if it’s going to be a movie, they think it would be a great one. They want to know more about the case, especially Italian readers. Mainly they take everything for a fact, even the adventure of Sarah and Rafael. That’s a little odd.

I received a curious request last year of 2 copies of the book in Portuguese by a journalist who works in the Vatican. Apparently, the copies were for someone important that sees the Pope every day. That person confided to the journalist, off the record, that everything that is in the book is true. It’s good to know. I can’t say who it was, because I only have suspicions, and I don’t know for a fact to whom the journalist delivered the 2 copies in Portuguese, perhaps a Cardinal, a bishop, who knows. There’s not a lot of Portuguese people in the Vatican. But it’s overwhelming to know that they respect the work and that’s the main reason the Church hasn’t reacted or reacts with silence.