Tuesday, August 26, 2025

It is the 26th of August 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

There will never not be a fascination with the Pope- regardless of your own theological proclivities, if the largest church body on earth wants to vest all of its power in one human person, we are going to scrutinize everything about this person. Like the name they chose, any suspicious activities and supposed connections. It’s usually a lot of smoke with no fire, but last century the world was abuzz with a new pope, one unlike the previous popes, and at the center of one of the biggest modern Vatican conspiracy theories.

For context, we start with Vatican II- the Roman Catholic Council that brought the church into the modern world and all that entails. For every outsider Protestant like myself looking in and saying ‘alright… worshipping in the vernacular was one of the things we were telling you about,” there are and were fierce critics. The Papacy of both John XXXIII and Paul VI would be marked by that monumental event.

And perhaps, in the wake of such change, the church decided to select a Pope who was perhaps a little more connected to the people.  More pastor, less theologian.

Enter Albino Luciani- the son of poor migrants in the north of Italy. Having been inspired as a young man to enter the ministry, he began his seminary training in 1923.

Making his way up through the church, eventually he became Cardinal Luciani and was present at Vatican II. When Paul VI  died in 1978, Luciani was among those invited to the conclave to select the next Pope.

He is said to have told an aide that if he were selected as Pope, he would turn it down. But then it happened, on the 26th of August in 1978, on the fourth vote, Albino Luciani was named the 260th Pope. He would break ground in a number of ways.

He was the first Pope to take a double name- those of his two predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI- he would be John Paul- and there had never been a John Paul, and so he called himself John Paul I (usually if you’re the first of your name you don’t take the number).

John Paul I- the last Italian Pope (there was an Italian Pope continually for almost 500 years- but none since) was known for his simplicity- he’s also the first modern Pope who refused to be crowned. He was known for his toothy grin- the “smiling Pope” would unfortunately become the shortest reigning modern Pope. It was on the 29th of September of that steam year- 33 days into his Papacy that he was found dead in his bed at the Vatican. The 65-year-old seems to have had a massive heart attack. BUT, there was no autopsy. The initial stories didn’t add up. Was it a woman who found him first?

The conspiracies about what happened are as legion as they seem to be untrue. It was said he was killed by other Cardinals who were angry that he was elected Pope. It was the conservatives, or the progressives, who, in the wake of Vatican II, were at each other's throats more than usual.

But there was another story making the rounds- Pope John Paul, as Albino Luciani was the Patriarch of Venice, and while serving there he had. Dug into some irregularities with the Vatican Bank. And so the story became that the church killed him because he was about to uncover fraud, or the Mafia killed him as he was going to upset their grift, OR that it was the Masons… back in the day, that was a go-to.  

In the past few years, a few definitive studies have come out that highlight the irregularities that lead to the conspiracies, but reveal that John Paul had been having chest pain, and everything in the initial reports pointed in the same direction: he had a heart attack.

And so 1978 would need a third Pope- Paul VI, followed by John Paul I, and thus begins the remarkable story of Karol Józef Wojtyła, who would honor the 33-day Pope with a double name by taking his name, now properly affixed with a number- he would be Pope John Paul II.

Today we remember “the September Pope,” whose death brought about the wildest of conspiracies on the first of his only 33 days as Pope- on this the 26th of August in 1978.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and the benediction to the church at Philadelphia in Revelation 3: 

11 I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. 12 The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name. 13 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of August 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by someone who once knew an Albino- not a drop of pigment… He is Christopher Gillespie. 

The show is written and read by a man who thinks Roman numerals are only good for Popes, Superbowls, and Wrestlemania… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.