Not even Dan Browne could deliver a Vatican mystery that involves the delayed canonisation of a universally loved and revered Pope because a close woman friend, a sex psychiatrist, published their intimate correspondence spanning half-a-century. But this unlikely yarn is now playing out for real.
The dead Pope is John Paul II.
The woman is Dr Wanda Poltawska.
She is a Polish mother of four children whose husband Andrei, a doctor, was also an intimate friend of a dynamic priest-chaplain called Karol Wojtyla who rose to become Cardinal in their native Cracow and, in 1978, took the world stage as the most charismatic, virile and globe-trotting Pope of modern times.
In the sad spring of 2005, after 27 years as Pope, John Paul II died in his papal apartment. A vast throng of admirers stood vigil in St Peter's Square -- along the Mussolini-constructed concourse of the Via della Conciliazione and into the surrounding Borgo district -- and called out spontaneously, again and again, for him to be made a saint straight away.
Santo subito, they chanted in unison. Instant canonisation. It was sainthood by public proclamation. This resounding message was relayed live worldwide by television and the internet. It inspired his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, to fast-track the elaborate saint-making process on his former boss's behalf. It looked to be a matter of only a few years until the Polish Pope would be officially proclaimed St John Paul the Great.
Contrast this imminent prospect of beatific immortality with the sudden panic in the Vatican last week at the sensational serialisation of the first batch of letters between the Pope and he sex psychiatrist in an Italian newspaper. The canonisation process has been temporarily derailed.
The prelate presiding over the Congregation for the Cause of Saints has requested Dr Poltawska to send him photocopies of her entire documentation in a move that will delay the official declaration of sainthood by at least a year.
Nothing of a sexual impropriety has appeared, nor is expected to exist, in the massive correspondence between Karol Wojtyla and Dr Poltawska from 1956 to 2005.
So what lies behind the Vatican's alarm? Why, too, has the cardinal of Cracow and former private secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz, so stridently criticised Dr Poltawska's decision to publish, saying she did not have a special link to the Pope, a claim that is contradicted by Monsignor Adam Boniecki, who edited the Polish edition of the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano.
In a revealing interview in La Stampa, Boniecki described the late Pope's relationship with the psychiatrist as something very special. This is much more than just 50 years of letter writing. Wojtyla believed that she had suffered for him in a Nazi concentration camp (Ravensbruck) and he always felt a certain responsibility for her. She feels that she is the only person to know the inner truth of the complexity and grandeur of John Paul II.
We are dealing with soulmates, not cheap tittle-tattle. The evidence clearly supports the view that Wojtyla was a regular visitor to the Poltawska home and was affectionately called Uncle Karol by their children. Later, as Pope, Andrei and Wanda were his annual guests at the summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.
This 'special relationship' interpretation is further supported by John Paul's biographers, including the staunchly deferential George Weigel, who writes of how, in 1962 when Bishop Wojtyla was in Rome for the Second Vatican Council, he received a letter from Andrei relaying the dreadful news that Wanda had been diagnosed with cancer and her chance of recovery was minimal.
A distressed Wojtyla sent a letter of petition to the saintly Padre Pio. The stigmatic friar sought divine intervention. Wanda was cured. In 1999, John Paul beatified Padre Pio and canonised him a saint in 2002.
This literary treasure trove of letters also contains material which will cast light on John Paul's staunch opposition to artificial methods of birth control.
His book, Love and Responsibility, was greatly influenced by Wanda's equal antipathy to the use of condoms and the pill in marital love-making.
A further twist to this spiritual relationship is given by papal biographer Jonathan Kwitny, who writes that Wanda's beliefs that contraception led to neurosis were not backed up by scientifically verifiable data, and that she was involved with extreme right-wing Catholic groups that propagated the view that contraception was as intrinsically evil as abortion.
These views were shared by John Paul, whom she regarded as an absolutely pure person who had mastered his sex drive through self-discipline and self-denial.
Little wonder, therefore, that the Vatican wants to scrutinise the correspondence which will shed light not only on John Paul's spirituality but also his sexuality.
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