![]() The victims were Cedric Tornay, a guard who apparently killed himself after shooting his commander Alois Estermann, and the commander's wife. The motive for the Swiss Guard murders in 1998, when three people were found shot dead inside the Vatican, remains obscure. There are interesting details about the work and recruitment of the Pope's ceremonial Swiss Guard, and what some of the guards have said about the job. This is a well-written investigation into a sensational unexplained crime, and it provides an engaging insight into some aspects of the Vatican and the people who work there. If you want to be ‘startled’, I recommend it. There is good reason to think John Paul II, who features in Follain’s book, was complicit in the murder by Opus Dei of his predecessor, John Paul. If you want a good book on Opus Dei, try Robert Hutchison’s Their Kingdom Come. (If that phrase is allowable these days!) To some degree he managed to explain Tornay’s desperate measures and in other ways he painted him a darker shade of grey. Quick explanations of drastic events are usually fabricated, and definitely worth investigating. However, Follain was right to be suspicious about how cut and dried the whole matter was – according to the Vatican – within hours of the bodies being found. It painted the young man as a bit of a psycho and didn’t credit the reasons he had for doing what he did – none of which showed the Vatican or the Swiss Guards in a good light – but what else would one expect from the Catholic Church? Or indeed from any large organisation with a vested interest? What the Vatican came out with just after the three deaths was substantially true: two murders and a suicide. An article would have been appropriate, a hyped book, no. ![]() I suppose Follain did a fair amount of research, spent time and money, energy and thought, and did his best, so wanted to publish. I began to suspect about 2/3rds through that Follain wouldn’t find out anything which could be described as ‘The Startling Truth Behind the Vatican Murders’ as stated on the cover. I was surprised to see Opus Dei mentioned in connection with a book published in 2003 which I hadn’t come across, so I bought it and read it. Some time ago I did some research on Opus Dei to use in one of my Spanish crime series. Poor management, yes, bullying in the Guards, and homosexuality, possibly. It is also the story of shameful efforts by men of the cloth, including a would-be successor to John Paul II and one of his most trusted servants, to obstruct the course of justice, vilify the character of Tornay who had fallen victim to barrack mobbing, stifle a potential scandal over homosexual affairs within the Guard, and hide fatal failings that make the force unfit to protect the pope.Well, if the Vatican had any secrets, they still have them, because they ain’t in this book. Powerful and suspenseful, it is the product of a three-year investigation, and a chilling portrait of actions unworthy of the Catholic Church in the twilight of John Paul II's papacy.This is not only the story of a gruesome crime on holy territory. City Of Secrets contains some of the most dramatic and sensational revelations ever published about the internal affairs of the Vatican. Timely and explosive, City Of Secrets is the story of a still-unsolved crime on holy territory- the infamous Swiss Guard murders on 5/4/98-and of a systematic attempt to hide the fatal failings of a security force charged with protecting the Pope.
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