City of Secrets: The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican

City of Secrets: The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican
by John Follain

City of Secrets: The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican
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Book Summary Information

Author: John Follain
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-01
ISBN: 0066209544
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: William Morrow

Book Reviews of City of Secrets: The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican

Book Review: Wake Up Call for Catholics
Summary: 5 Stars

It's so easy being a Catholic in the United States: priests who are your buddies, who stop over for Thanksgiving meals, know your kids by name, offer wholesome, practical advice for marriage and high school football, and who will have a Bud Light with you in the early autumn afternoon.

Not so easy when you're a young member of the Swiss Guards in the Vatican: priests are not your buddies, priests refuse to counsel you, your fellow Swiss guards insult your use of French and give you punishments when you don't deserve them. If you were a Swiss/French Guard, you might never come of age. You might be dead.

As we have found in some public schools throughout the USA, bullying can lead to mass murder when those being bullied see no other way out. Such is the situation in John Follain's CITY OF SECRETS. We Catholic readers have our eyes opened to the reality of the closed-society that is the Vatican.

If you want to keep your eyes closed to the severe problems within our beloved church, don't read this book.

If you think having a secret society, OPUS DEI, propagandizing side-by-side with the true mission of the church, then you absolutely must read the book. You have been sleeping as have I.

Be prepared to be shocked. Or, have the politicizing and manipulations found in the American church's pedophile scandal already opened your eyes wide?

by Larry Rochelle, author of HOME SCHOOLED.

Summary of City of Secrets: The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican

On the heels of one of the greatest public scandals to rock the Catholic Church comes an explosive exposé of murder and corruption in the highest reaches of the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world.

On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, in Vatican territory, the bodies of the commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife, and a young lance corporal were found in the barracks of the picturesque force historically entrusted with protecting the pope. It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Roman Catholics. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old Cédric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in "a fit of madness" brought on by frutstration with the unit's discipline -- a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry.

But as John Follain's hard-hitting exposé shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation -- the first independent attempt to establish the truth -- City of Secrets reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice and hide the scandals it dares not confess. Echoing the pace and plotting of a highstakes thriller, Follain's true-life tale of intrigue moves from the guards' barracks and the pope's palace in Vatican City to Paris, Berlin, and the Swiss Alps, and features a fascinating cast: an old, suffering John Paul II; his chief bodyguard, formerly accused of spying for the Soviet bloc; a mysterious priest punished by the Vatican; and the powerful Opus Dei sect.

Timely and explosive, City of Secrets is the story of a still-unsolved crime committed on holy territory, and of a systematic attempt to hide the fatal failings of a security force charged with protecting one of the world's most influential leaders.

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