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

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.

This is another book that deals with the hypocrites in the Vatican. People seems surprised when their hear of crimes in the Vatican, but this is an organization that supports and promotes priest who molest little boys. The latest example of the lies and hypocrisy of the Vatican can be found with this week's tsunami. The official newspaper of the Vatican had a spurious and misleading report that falsely claimed the Israeli government had denied emergency relief for tsunami victims in Sri Lanka. The official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano singled out Israeli leaders for declining the country's request for emergency help, when in fact the Israeli government's offer to provide a team of medical and security personnel was rejected by the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry. However, Israel is providing an airlift of food and medical supplies to Sri Lanka. Can you believe that? The Vatican defends priest who are child molesters yet has the gall to falsely criticize Israel.

The strength of John Follain's book, based on his four-year investigation, is that we end up with a firm understanding of why Tornay did it. City of Secrets is both superb journalism and an outstanding example of forensic psychology.Secondhand investigations of sensational crimes are often nothing more than instant books. However, Follain not only took the time to contribute something of worth to the canon of crime journalism but also exposed weaknesses in the Vatican that need addressing. In this case it is the fact that the Swiss Guard, supposedly responsible for protecting the Pope, are nothing more than toy soldiers -- Dennis Chute, The Edmonton Journal

John Follain investigates the deaths of three people in the heart of the Vatican, including a young soldier and the commander of the pope's famous Swiss Guards. The evidence he finds is neither surprising nor inconsistent with the original statement about the circumstances of the death as presented the Vatican. What's interesting is how he finds his evidence and how what was not said in the original inquiry led to the pursuit of a better explanation. In the process, Follain's story reads more like Robert Ludlum mystery or a Nelson DeMille travelogue, as he tracks down people, asks first innocent then probing questions, and effectively if incompletely re-constructs the story behind the deaths.The Catholic Church and no less the Vatican has been severely damaged by its own secrecy and secrets. While some stories are not worth taking public, an obsession with secrecy produces more distrust than does the hard, candid side of the story. Homosexuality and Opus Dei, two sometimes tawdry secrets of the church, get an airing here, and the most saddening point is the self-illusion of secrecy the church seems intent on maintaining.Follain also finds that the storied Swiss Guards are much more ceremonial window-dressing than an effective security or intelligence force. The members of this small cadre, the ones Follain contacts, most of them disillusioned or discontented, make a pretty strong case that some men join the Guards for the wrong reasons and the Guard itself seems to be used for the wrong reasons. Tradition seem more important than a clear mission.It is the misunderstanding and misapplication that lie behind the story of the three deaths. Although the conclusion is not dramatic, neither is it melodramatic. And it is candid and honest, not a Hollywood screenplay, not a sanitized version, and not what the mother of one of the victim's might want. And, in the telling, there is something worth reading.