of the Mafia up to the spectacular killing of judges Falcone and Borsellino, from the end of the First Republic to the Berlusconi era. He claims he still does not understand much, though … He has met five popes and travelled with them, getting to know most of them rather well. Talking about his book( now in paperback), The Promise of Francis: The Man, the Pope and the Challenge of Change( Gallery Books), he explained that the modernisers in the Roman Catholic Church didn’ t succeed in electing Francis after the long‘ reign’ of John Paul II, thus giving Benedict XVI a difficult mandate. Pope Ratzinger knew all the secrets and was involved in many controversial issues, including the covering up of uncomfortable truths. He was a fragile compromise between the conservative theology of the South and the money of the Liberal North. Now Francis might decide to disavow his own rule of introducing a retirement age of 80 for cardinals in order to build a large enough majority of Cardinals chosen by himself in the Curia that they will be able to deliver another reformer in his own image. He has been said to have more enemies inside his Church than outside, but this is not new for such a big institution, only partly modernised and divided into so many factions and vested interests. Still, David is not keen on feeding conspiracy theories, with which Italy is absolutely saturated: for instance, he does not believe that Pope John Paul I, who died suddenly a few weeks after his election in 1978, was poisoned. He thinks it was the unfortunate‘ Roman Summer holidays’ when everything, but everything, shuts, hospitals and doctors included. Pope Luciani went to bed reading the financial reports and was found dead the next morning. A heart attack following a shocking read?
It was good to see so many friends including some very young ones!
From Newark to Torre Pellice
David Willey at Wesley’ s Chapel, London.
In October 2015 I received an email from a certain Peter Winter, who wanted some advice about how to donate a set of prints belonging to his late mother, the granddaughter of pastor Barthelemy Gardiol, originally from Luserna S. Giovanni. He thought the church of Torre Pellice would be the right place to relocate them, but after several messages and telephone calls the Archivist, Gabriella Ballesio, suggested that the right place would be the Archive in the Centro Culturale Valdese. In April 2016 we took the opportunity of a confer-
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