Death
John Paul I was found dead sitting up in his bed shortly before dawn on 29 September 1978, just 33 days into his papacy. The Vatican reported that the 65-year-old pope most likely died the previous night of a heart attack. It has been claimed that the Vatican altered some of the details of the discovery of the death to avoid possible unseemliness in that he was discovered by Sister Vincenza, a nun. Yet this, along with inconsistent statements made following the Pope's death, led to a number of conspiracy theories concerning it. These statements relate to who found the Pope's body, the time when he was found, and what papers were in his hand. The Vatican has yet to investigate any of these claims.
Read more about this topic: Pope John Paul I
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“We like the chase better than the quarry.... And those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)