Much of GF III is based on the financial troubles the Church was having. A Cardinal named Marchinkus (thats a misspelling) was in charge of the Vatican Bank, which in turn was doing business with honest to God crooks, and which was in fact heavily in debt. When the scandal first broke one of the bad guys hanged himself from a bridge in London, where he was found with a wad of cash in his pockets and floating on the water ---very much like the scene in GF III. It has long been rumored that John Paul I was poisoned by some insider who feared he was going to really clean house. At some point around 1990, the he Vatican commissioned a book which was published under the title "A Thief In The Night." The book concludes that he was not poisoned, but that all the inconsistencies in the explanations of his cause of death immediately thereafter were the result of that his body was discovered by a nun, and they didn't want to infer a woman was in his bedroom, etc etc. The books goes into great detail refuting the theory that John Paul I was assassinated, and it is a valuable historical document, however you still have to consider the source of the book, and the identity of who commissioned it.