Claire Sterling; Author of Book About Attempt to Kill the Pope

Claire Sterling, 76, a journalist whose five books included “Time of the Assassins,” which explored the various conspiracy theories behind the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. She also wrote “The Terror Network,” a primer on the Mafia that was translated into 22 languages and used by the FBI to help train agents. She came to Italy in 1946 as one of only a few female foreign correspondents and became a specialist in terrorism. She wrote for several U.S. publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest and the Washington Post. In 1986 she was charged with but acquitted of revealing state secrets in an article that she wrote for the New York Times about the plot to kill Pope John Paul II. At her death June 17 in Arezzo, Italy, of cancer, she was working on “Thieves’ World,” a book about international crime.