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Gossipy book ordered off shelves by Vatican is a hot seller

By Frances D'Emilio, Associated Press, 06/27/99 17:53
ROME (AP) Eager for juicy stories, the public has done what a court order from the Holy See failed to do: cleared store bookshelves of a gossipy, insider look at cardinals and other top Vatican officials.

A decree, issued by a Holy See tribunal, orders one of the alleged authors, an Italian monsignor who retired two years ago after 45 years at the Vatican, to ensure that ''Gone with the Wind in the Vatican'' is taken off store shelves.

The book appeared a few months ago to little fanfare, but after the retired cleric, Monsignor Luigi Marinelli, said Saturday he had been told to appear with a lawyer at a Vatican court hearing July 16, the book rushed off store shelves.

The 288-page volume paints some prelates as greedy for power and lacking in virtue, with vignettes ranging from a prelate being stopped at the border with Switzerland carrying a suitcase stuffed with cash to a bishop denounced in court by a youth for alleged sexual abuse. The identities are disguised more or less.

At Feltrinelli, a large chain bookstore, customers were told that the book had sold out in all three central Rome stores.

''We're calling the publisher Monday to find out if they have more copies,'' said employee Luigi D'Amico.

The daily, largely secret, workings of the world behind the Vatican's fortified walls were intriguing even Milan, where stylists and financiers, not clergy and bureaucrats, usually make news.

At Feltrinelli's branch on Milan's central Via Manzoni, clerk Giovanni Mazza said 30 customers had requested the book Sunday morning and all had left the store empty-handed.

''They did a great service for the publisher,'' Marinelli, in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press, said dryly of the Vatican court, the Roman Rota, which is more known for its decisions on marriage annulments.

''The court made a nasty joke,'' Marinelli said. ''The index of banned books doesn't exist any more.''

He was referring to the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books, a now discontinued list of works Catholics were forbidden to read.

The monsignor claimed that the work was a collaboration of many people interested in reforming the Roman Curia, the Vatican's bureaucratic machine.

''We all don't even know each other,'' Marinelli said, adding, ''I'm just the spokesman.''

Marinelli used a pseudonym, which scrambled the letters of his last name. He noted that the pseudonym I Millenari means ''the millenarians.''

''Every millennium you expect a reform,'' he said.

One of the judges who signed the order, Monsignor Maurice Monier, declined to talk about the report.

A new manual, which was approved by Pope John Paul II this spring, warns Vatican employees that disclosing pontifical secrets is punishable by firing.

Marinelli, 72, worked for many years at the Vatican's Congregation for Eastern Churches.

That congregation is headed by Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, who, according to Sunday's edition of Corriere della Sera, is one of several top Vatican officials described by the book in thinly veiled detail.

The Boston Globe's Home site (boston.com)



ISSUE 1509 Tuesday 13 July 1999