'Plot to kill pope' sparks Italian media stormLetter published in Italian newspaper claims cardinal predicted Pope Benedict XVI would die within a year...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/10/plot-kill-pope-italian-media Claims of a bizarre plot to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI are reverberating through Italy in what observers say signals the latest twist in an increasingly cutthroat internal Vatican power dispute.
The Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano published the sensational "mordkomplott" letter detailing an alleged plot against the pope on its front page on Friday. Despite a Vatican spokesman's claiming it was "nonsense not to be taken seriously", the content of the anonymous warning letter, dated 30 December 2011, was reported widely in Italian and German media.
The letter was delivered in early January to the Vatican secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, and the pope's private secretary, Georg Gänswein, by Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos of Colombia, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano. The paper suggested it had been written in German to avoid attracting the attention of certain Vatican officials while communicating clearly and directly with close advisers to the pope, who is German. (Continued on link above)