KIDNAPPING THE POPE - Softcover

Vatican Secretary of State, Domenico delgli Alfieri, a liberal, has organized a plot, in alliance with a Russian and a Latino, to kidnap the Pope while on a skiiing trip, and replace him with a look-alike Swill Guard, Luciano. The idea is for this bogus pope to begin to move the Church in a more liberal direction. The current real pope is a conservative. However, Carlo Maestoso, a priest at the Vatican, friendly with the real pope, “smells a rat”. He manages to find out where the real pope has been hidden, and unites him with the sympathetic police. Delgli Alfieri is prepared to march his bogus pope out into St. Peter’s Square to make a definitive speech. At the same time, Maestoso and his forces are ready to stop them and to be sure that the real pope gets into the square. Meanwhile, a mentally deranged Bulgarian woman, Maria Penkova, is in the square with the intentions to assassinate the pope using a stun gun which she had hidden in her back pack. A fight ensues between the two groups in the Courtyard of Damascus just outside the square, and it is not clear until the very end who wins, and who gets killed by Maria. Author Bio: Msgr. Leonard F. Badia, Ph.D., holds a doctor’s degree in Religious Education from New York University. As a noted Vatican Affairs Consultant, he is a recognized scholar in Catholic, Jewish and Muslim affairs. Dr. Michael F. Copobianco, world known author, lecturer and professor of Mathematics, teaches at St. John’s University, New York. He has been writing and translating for over thirty years.