Odd this day
It was, if the spirit of Iain Banks will forgive me, the day the pope exploded.
And it was, if everyone else will forgive me, in actual fact the day Pius XII died, having said he wanted to be buried “as God had made him”, which led to a botched embalming which saw his rotting torso break open later while he was lying in state.
Yes, this is one of the more disgusting ones. Sorry. (Well, kind of.)
Remarkably, it’s not the only scandal attached to the death of this particular pope. There were several, all of which seem to be connected to his personal doctor, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi. To begin with, he took pictures of the dying pontiff which he sold to Paris Match. And, according to a 2004 book, Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession, Galeazzi-Lisi’s “infamy for incompetence” was such that
the assembled dignitaries did not credit his pronouncement that the pontiff had breathed his last. Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani stepped forward and took the stethoscope from the physician. Having verified for himself that the end had come, the irascible head of the Holy Office then communicated the confirmation with a nod to the other prelates present.
Not only that, the not-very-good doctor was also partly (if inadvertently) responsible for Pius’ death being announced a day early. An Italian news agency had paid him to tell them first, and he agreed a signal:
the physician, after ascertaining his patient’s death, would open a certain window in the papal summer palace of Catsel Gandolfo while the prelates present were distracted by paying their last homage to the deceased pontiff and offering prayers of commendation for him. By coincidence, one of the prelates waiting around for the pope’s death grew hot and threw the window in question, which was usually shut, open. As a result, three Italian newspapers, taking their cue from what they thought was the prearranged signal, ran black-edged special editions proclaiming the death of Pius XII on October 8, a full day before he actually died … the editions had to be recalled.
John-Peter Pham, author of Heirs of the Fisherman, says Galeazzi-Lisi was “an oculist with rather limited training as a medical internist”, and — clearly not a fan — adds that the man had:
an extensive history of medical incompetence and outright quackery that would be a malpractice attorney’s dream
He was nonetheless favoured by Pius, and entrusted with the task of preserving his former holiness so the old feller could lie in an open coffin and have people process past and pay their respects. So, naturally, Galeazzi-Lisi hit upon the brilliant plan to use a process he had worked out with another doctor, Oreste Nuzzi, called, according to the New York Times
aromatic osmosis … one of the advantages of their method was that the body being embalmed did not have to be denuded.
A 1998 book, Modern Mummies — The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century, by Christine Quigley, says:
During the treatment, which took three and a half hours, pungent fluids were sprinkled on the Pope’s clothing and volatile resins were absorbed through the skin
It had, as a bonus, supposedly been used on “early Christians, including Charlemagne”, and was completed by the highly authentic AD.33 technique of wrapping a cellophane sheet round him. It did not, in other words, involve removing the internal organs or injecting beastly stuff like formaldehyde into the corpse. Of course, the thing about those awful new-fangled substances is that they are proven. If, by contrast, you leave the innards in and don’t treat them… unpleasantness ensues.
The first stage is autolysis, also known by the delightful term self-digestion.
Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down.
We are, of course, full of and covered with bacteria, not least in our gastrointestinal tracts. After death, these escape, and begin to feed, breaking down our soft tissues in the process known as putrefaction, which is as lovely as it sounds.
Putrefaction is associated with a marked shift from aerobic bacterial species, which require oxygen to grow, to anaerobic ones, which do not. These then feed on the body’s tissues, fermenting the sugars in them to produce gaseous by-products such as methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, which accumulate within the body, inflating (or ‘bloating’) the abdomen and sometimes other body parts.
Yes, this is a lot of detail, isn’t it? I’m afraid I like detail, especially when it’s disgusting. Anyway, all this was taking place inside the mortal remains of Pius XII, even as his immortal soul was being received in heaven. Or something.
Basically, however pungent the fluids which had been sprinkled on the old boy, they were as nothing to the acrid substances being generated inside what was left of him. As he was carried in a procession to the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, Pope Pius XII burst open. The two ‘doctors’ re-embalmed him overnight, but when he went on display the next day, he was
emerald green
…and the Pontifical Swiss Guards standing sentry had to be rotated every 15 minutes to stop them fainting or being ‘taken ill’. What is perhaps most remarkable is that Pope Paul VI was
only lightly embalmed
after his death in 1978, and fans had to be installed to waft away the odours which emanated forth. Matters have changed since.
Still, one of the most popular questions about Pius XII is not about any of this, but runs as follows: was he a Nazi? He was, certainly, the man about whom John Cornwell wrote a book with the uncompromising title Hitler’s Pope, but his defenders refute this, saying he
worked quietly behind the scenes to save lives
…although a 2022 book, David Kertzer’s The Pope at War, does qualify this somewhat by suggesting that
the lives the Vatican worked hardest to save were Jews who had converted to Catholicism or were children of Catholic-Jewish “mixed marriages”
The words that stand out most in that article are ‘timid’ and ‘cautious’, suggesting a man sticking to neutrality out of fear, rather than any strong conviction.
Anyway, back to the main point. After final absolution, Pius went into a triple coffin (oak, lead and cypress), which, one assumes, would by that stage have been simply necessary, rather than ceremonial. Then, he went under the floor of St Peter’s (and not a moment too soon).
And that’s about it for today, which is probably — perhaps appropriately, given the subject matter — a blessing. It only remains for me to add that it’s a good thing the rest of the Catholic church’s history is so unblemished, isn’t it…?
