In its May 18, 1998, issue, Newsweek presented an account of life in the Swiss Guards by Jacques-Antoine Fierz. A member from 1992 to 1995, he had returned “to Rome to join annual ceremonies known as the Swearing In, in which the Swiss Guards…renew their allegiances. Instead, he attended a funeral.”
“We are, it has been said, the pope’s calling cards, the Vatican ’s finest,” he said, “And here were three dead among us, all three absurd deaths-a loss that has profoundly wounded us all. It is only invidious bad-mouthers who speak ill of the Swiss Guard, and among those I count the ones who are floating these provocative theories that Cedric Tornay and Estermann were homosexuals. It is impossible, inconceivable. We live and work in such close quarters that we would surely have known if anything like that went on. It didn’t. Those who say otherwise are jealous of the prestige the Swiss Guard has gained throughout its history…
“The Swiss who become the pope’s soldiers are simply young men with high enough ideals to take on huge responsibilities, those who want to dedicate their lives to the service of one man and all that he represents.
“I don’t know a single Guard who really minded the hours or the duties,” he said. “The great majority of us feel a very strong affinity for the church, the pontiff and the military life, and the discipline and the adventure it represents. And it’s not bad to improve your language skills, or to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Also, I can’t deny the fascination of being part of the oldest continually serving army in the world. And I admit that it’s something else to be able to dress up in those elegantly colored uniforms, however out of fashion they may now seem. If I sound enthusiastic, it’s because I remember my time at the Vatican very positively, especially the spirit of camaraderie. That’s what makes this tragedy so sadly incomprehensible. I talked to a lot of the Guards after the murders, and they all said the same thing-it was so senseless, so impossible to imagine. I agree. Estermann had been my lieutenant colonel. He had wonderful human qualities, was an exemplary believer and a very correct officer. His wife, Gladys, was pleasant and well educated. I remember Cedric Tornay as very kindly… This was an act of a madman, not of Tornay the Guard.”
“After a nine-month internal inquiry, the text of which remained secret, the Vatican repeated the claim that Tornay acted in a fit of madness, saying traces of cannabis were found in Tornay’s urine, and a cyst ‘the size of a pigeon’s egg’ in his head, helped explain the ‘madness.’”
A year after the killings, a group of disaffected priests within the Vatican claimed that Estermann was the victim of a Vatican power struggle. Calling themselves “the disciples of truth,” they claimed that evidence had been tampered with in order to fit the hypothesis that the killing was the result of a moment of madness on the part of Tornay. In a book titled Blood Lies in the Vatican, they said that the struggle was between the secretive, traditionalist Catholic movement Opus Dei and a Masonic power faction among the Curia for control of the Swiss Guard.
“‘In the Vatican, there are those who maintain that Vice Corporal Tornay was attacked after coming off duty and dragged into a cellar,’ the book said. Tornay was then ‘suicided’ with a silenced 7mm pistol, and his duty revolver used to kill the Estermanns in their Vatican apartment. His body was dumped in the Estermann’s flat so that the triple killing would appear to be a murder-suicide.”
The book alleged that “Estermann and his wife…were actively engaged in secret international financial deals for the benefit of Opus Dei.”
Those who discerned a conspiracy asserted that a Vatican inquiry had been rigged, as was the case in the assassination of John Paul I twenty years earlier, and in the murder of Roberto Calvi. It was alleged that a “veritable piece of stagecraft was orchestrated at midnight, [in which] an ambulance from the Vatican’s Health Assistance Fund…pretended to transport ‘three bodies’ to the Gemelli Polyclinic Hospital, when…the three victims were actually placed on stretchers which halberdiers transported to the Vatican morgue next to Saint Anne’s Church. It was imperative to prevent an autopsy taking place outside the Vatican or on the premises of the Health Assistance Fund. The three corpses were therefore taken away without any of the precautions routinely used in criminal investigations…and placed in the corridor of the morgue, then covered with sheets.”
The conspiracy theorists said “the inquiry was entrusted to the only judge in the Vatican State, Gianluigi Marrone. He decided that the autopsy would be carried out the following day, within the Vatican, by forensic pathologists Pietro Fucci and Giovanni Arcudi, who could be trusted to do what was necessary.”
In 2003, Anglo-French writer John Follain drew several startling conclusions in his book, City of Secrets: The Startling Truth Behind the Vatican Murders. Author of books on the Mafia and Carlos the Jackal, Follain asserted that the official explanation for the deaths of Estermann, his wife, and Tornay was a “hastily cobbled cover-up” concerning a papal protective force in which “homosexuality was common, with as many as one quarter of the Swiss Guards gay, morale low, and fundamental reform desperately needed.” Follain agreed that “Tornay was the murderer, but he said he discovered a morass of abuse, discrimination and misery behind the young guard’s desperate act. ‘The decision not to award Tornay the medal was the trigger,’ he said. ‘But it was not an act of madness: it was premeditated.’
“Other grievances had been simmering in Swiss-French Tornay. He suffered prejudice and discrimination by the majority Swiss-Germans in the force. He believed the Swiss Guard was amateurish and not up to the duty of protecting the Pope, and had urged reform of the body. Nobody was listening. He had also had a homosexual affair with Estermann, who had hurt him by moving on to other lovers.”
Tornay’s mother stated that his letter to her was a forgery by someone who knew him well. She noted that it was addressed to the name “Chamorel,” but her son always used her maiden name, Baudat. Graphologists from Switzerland attested that Tornay had not written the letter. She also said “an independent autopsy in Lausanne established that a 7mm bullet killed her son-not a 9.4mm caliber bullet from a Stig 75 gun, as claimed in the Vatican ’s investigation. She claims the autopsy suggested her son was drugged, then shot and his body positioned in Estermann’s flat to make it seem that he killed the couple before shooting himself.”
In 2005, “high-profile French lawyer Jacques Vergès and his colleague, Luc Brossollet, acting for Tornay’s mother, said that they would file a murder claim” in Switzerland because Tornay was Swiss. They said they had “faced years of stubborn deafness from the Vatican.”
On May 7, 2006, “Benedict XVI thanked the Swiss Guards for 500 years of service and invited them to continue their mission with ‘courage and fidelity.’” The Pope said this during a Mass commemorating the 500th anniversary of the arrival in Rome “of the first 150 Swiss Guards, requested by Pope Julius II. Also remembered were the 147 Swiss Guards killed while defending Pope Clement VII during the sacking of Rome on May 6, 1527. In his homily delivered in Italian, French and German,…The Holy Father said that his purpose for the meeting was to render honor to the Swiss Guard corps.
“‘For all, to be a Swiss Guard means to adhere without reservations to Christ and his Church, to be ready to give his life,’ he said. ‘The effective service may finish, but within one is always a Swiss Guard.’”
He said the Swiss Guard had always been constant, even in 1970 when Paul VI dissolved all the other military corps of the Vatican but the Guard.