Gone with the Wind in the Vatican is a controversial book that was published in 1999

1999 in literature

The year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...

, about nepotism

Nepotism

Nepotism is favoritism granted to relatives regardless of merit. The word nepotism is from the Latin word nepos, nepotis , from which modern Romanian nepot and Italian nipote, "nephew" or "grandchild" are also descended....

, homosexual scandals, corruption, and "clientism" within Vatican City

Vatican City

Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...

, written under the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 I Millenari ("The Millenarians"), a possible anagram of "Marinelli".

The book, published by Kaos Edizione of Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, sold 100,000 copies in its first three weeks alone and went out of print within the year, before foreign-language editions became available.

Authors

Monsignor

Monsignor

Monsignor, pl. monsignori, is the form of address for those members of the clergy of the Catholic Church holding certain ecclesiastical honorific titles. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian monsignore, from the French mon seigneur, meaning "my lord"...

 Luigi Marinelli, a 72-year-old retired priest and former member of the Vatican's Congregation for Eastern Churches, admitted to his involvement in the 288-page book in 1999, and other curial priests are suspected to be his co-authors. Marinelli says that he had "nine or ten co-authors". According to Marinelli, "The book does not question the sanctity of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist or the Catholic Church. It just points out that the Vatican is made up of men, who, like me, are flawed."

Contents

The main characters in the book are given pseudonyms from Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...

's Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind

The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...

(1936). However, some of them have been identified, among them Cardinal Achille Silvestrini

Achille Silvestrini

Achille Silvestrini was one of the most prominent Vatican diplomats during the long reign of John Paul II...

, Martinelli's former supervisor.

One anecdote in the book details a bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

 being blackmailed by an illegitimate daughter. The book also raises questions about the death of Pope John Paul I

Pope John Paul I

John Paul I , born Albino Luciani, , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and as Sovereign of Vatican City from 26 August 1978 until his death 33 days later. His reign is among the shortest in papal history, resulting in the most recent Year of Three Popes...

. Another anecdote details an affair between a young priest at the nunciature

Apostolic Nunciature

An Apostolic Nunciature is a top-level diplomatic mission of the Holy See, equivalent to an embassy.The head of the Apostolic Nunciature is called nuncio. A nuncio is an ecclesiastical diplomatic title, derived from the ancient Latin nuntius, meaning messenger...

 in Berne

Berne

The city of Bern or Berne is the Bundesstadt of Switzerland, and, with a population of , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 43 municipalities, has a population of 349,000. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

and a nun, who are both reassigned – the nun significantly less gainfully – with the help of the priest's influential Vatican patron.

Reception

Some critics regard the work as little more than "another recent catalogue of papal sin" and consider the majority of its details dubious. Others have a more favorable view of the work, considering it a "kiss-and-tell classic".