For twenty years as a bishop, he was a rampaging locomotive running about the courts and Parliament of Italy demanding equal rights for oppressed peoples. In 1967, faced by an orphan population of two million in Italy, it was his lobbying in Italian Parliament that made it legal for single persons to adopt children.  An opposition member challenged, “That would make it legal for homosexuals to adopt children,” Bishop Luciani, responded, “Until the day comes that we can guarantee equal human rights and dignity to the tiniest minority, we cannot truthfully call ourselves a democracy.”

His intentions concerning bastards, women, homosexuals, etc. was quite evident in his acceptance speech, “. . . we must rise up the courage within us to set aside the convictions of our forefathers and together we will muster the strength to lift those restraints that have been unfairly placed by doctrine upon the everyday lives of many innocent people  . . .  for God-given human life is infinitely more precious than is man-made doctrine . . .”

On the evening of September 26, 1978, he called together the Vatican cardinals. He told them “The Church’s ban on contraception is the driving force behind disease, poverty and starvation in third world countries and abortions in first world countries.” . . .He told them one thing more. “Mother Church is about to cease to be the cause of many of the world’s problems and rather will begin to be the answer to them.”  

George Lucien Gregoire was born in New England and completed his undergraduate and graduate work in Massachusetts schools. A war veteran, he spent most of his professional life as an officer of corporations in the United States and Europe. For a time, he was an international figure in cooperative education and has served on the boards of universities and secondary schools. He is the founding trustee of a score of charitable organizations, some providing education to mentally and physically impaired children.

Gregoire first met John Paul in 1968 when the Pope was a little known bishop of a remote mountain province in Northern Italy.  For the last fifteen years of John Paul's life the author was the closest friend of one of the Pope's closest confidants, one whose death was coincidental to the death of the 33 day Pope - the author's friend was killed by a hit-run driver outside the Vatican walls the day after the Pope's sudden and unwitnessed death. 

Chapter 1

The icicles poured like waterfalls from the roof tops all the way down to the walkways beneath them. In the summertime, each house had its own identity - its own personality - red - green - blue - orange. Each had been a tiny splinter in a giant rainbow. But, now, in the wintertime, each was just one of an endless row of crystal figures in an enormous glass menagerie.

The parade of weather-beaten wooden carts moved through the streets of Canale d’Agordo in the Italian Alps as they had every other morning. The snow was heaped so high on each side of the road that for the most part they passed unseen.

Still, the shouts of the barkers broke the stillness of the morning air: “milk - milk - milk,” “cheese - cheese - cheese,” “lamb - lamb - lamb,” “bread - bread - bread,” “eggs - eggs - eggs.” Their voices echoing through the white capped rocky mountain gorge which engulfed the desolate town. Yet, one had made its way before them - no wares - no barker - no echo. A silent one - a ghostly one.

The cart rumbled along the darkened snow-covered cobblestones in the wee hours of the morning; its chauffeurs, pausing here and there, picking up their ghoulish haul - those of Italy’s two million orphans who hadn’t survived the wintry night. Only the creaking of the wheels and an occasional thud of a frozen tot broke the quiet of the dawn.

They were orphans because they were the worst of children - BASTARDS. They called them BASTARDS because they were children who had been born out of wedlock. Nobody wanted them. That is, nobody in their right mind wanted them. Everyone hated them. That is, everyone who went to church. And in those days everyone went to church. Every priest, every nun, every monk, every devout parent, every brain-washed child, despised them. That is, everyone except the little boy Albino Luciani, he thought it was wrong. He thought it was wrong because his revolutionary anti-clerical atheist father had told him it was wrong. . . etc. For complete  Chapter 1 email vatican@att.net or go to www.JohnPaulI.org That is, JohnPaul (Roman numeral) I