Vatican Says Anger Drove Guard to Kill

VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II was 100 yards away in his quarters and had not yet gone to sleep when the gunshots rang out in the Vatican. In a shocking act of violence that officials here blamed Tuesday on the anger and frustrated ambitions of a disgruntled subordinate, Col. Alois Estermann, 43, newly appointed as commander of the pope’s Swiss Guards, and his Venezuelan wife were slain.

The alleged killer, Vice Cpl. Cedrich Tornay, 23, one of Estermann’s subordinates, then turned the weapon, a Swiss-made 9-millimeter pistol, on himself, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

The apparent double murder and suicide in the commander’s quarters, the first spilling of blood inside the walls of the Holy See since the pontiff himself was shot and seriously wounded 17 years ago, stunned the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the rank and file of the Swiss Guards. They are the nearly 500-year-old corps of bodyguards whose mission is to protect the pope and his dwellings.

It was a calling that the lanky Estermann, a former Swiss army officer, had shown himself ready to risk life and limb for: When Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca fired at the pontiff in front of thousands of people on St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, Estermann, on plainclothes duty, jumped onto the moving popemobile and shielded the wounded John Paul with his own body as the vehicle sped away to an ambulance.

In a message of condolence to Estermann’s family, a bereaved John Paul called the murder of his devoted protector, whom he knew well, “incredible” and “incomprehensible” and offered his personal blessings.

Swiss Guards placed candles on their window ledges after their commander met his violent end Monday evening. They lowered the yellow-and-white Vatican flag to half-staff over their block-long barracks by St. Anne’s Gate north of St. Peter’s Square.

Estermann and his wife were to be honored with a funeral today in St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in Christendom, conducted by the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

“The most probable hypothesis, and already more than a hypothesis, is that of a gesture of madness born in the mind of a person who was convinced of not being sufficiently considered in the guards,” Navarro told a news conference.

In a sad irony, the slayings occurred only 10 hours after John Paul had elevated Estermann to be the 31st “captain commander” of the 120-man force often known as “the world’s smallest army.”

“It’s an honor,” the happy native of Lucerne in German-speaking central Switzerland had told the Rome correspondent of the Swiss newspaper Le Matin on Monday. “These are big responsibilities. But behind this choice, I see the will of God, who will help me accomplish my service well.

“My wife is happier than I am because she doesn’t have to do the work,” added Estermann, who joined the Swiss Guards in 1980.

Navarro said John Paul, 77, whose official apartments are in a building about 100 yards from the living quarters being occupied by the Estermanns, was awake when the shootings occurred and was informed almost immediately. “You could see that he was touched, he was visibly sad,” the spokesman said. “The Holy Father loved him particularly. He remembered the famous 13th of May 1981.”

The Vatican official said Tornay, who had been on the force three years, was bitter about a Feb. 12 written reprimand from Estermann for not having returned to barracks by midnight curfew. The vice corporal also broke up recently with his Italian girlfriend and complained Monday of not being among the guardsmen who were to be honored by the pope in a ceremony originally scheduled for today, Navarro said.

The bodies were discovered shortly after 9 p.m. Monday by a neighbor who had just heard gunfire. Tornay’s pistol, from which five shots had been fired, was found under his body, Navarro said.

Beloved by camera-toting visitors to Rome because of their photogenic red-yellow-and-blue tunics, plumed conquistador-style helmets and gleaming 7-foot medieval halberds--a combined spear and battle-ax--the Swiss Guards were founded by Pope Julius II in 1506. They are responsible for the personal safety of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, spiritual leader of the world’s 986 million Catholics. To join the guards, one must be a Swiss national and a Catholic, younger than 30, have finished military training and be 5-foot-9 or taller. When inducted to serve two-year renewable hitches, recruits swear to “lay down their life, if necessary, in defense of the supreme pontiff.”

On May 6, 1527, when Rome was sacked by the troops of Emperor Charles V, 147 Swiss Guards were massacred as they defended Pope Clement VII, who made good his escape.

It is the ceremony to mark that anniversary, the red-letter day on the guards’ ceremonial calendar, that has been canceled today. Instead, 400 Swiss nationals who came to Rome to see 40 new recruits sworn in will attend Estermann’s funeral.

The Swiss Guards constitute the only armed corps at the Vatican since Pope Paul VI dissolved the Papal Gendarmes, the Pontifical Noble Guard and the Palatine Guard of Honor in 1970. They are the sole remnant of the military corps the popes had at their disposal when, from the Middle Ages until the mid-19th century, they controlled a large swath of central Italy.

Today, a pope’s temporal authority extends over just the 108-acre enclave of Vatican City, an independent ministate barely an eighth the size of New York’s Central Park that is encircled by Rome. The Swiss Guards now perform ceremonial functions but also stand duty outside the papal apartments and at the Vatican’s four main entrances.

Guards in plain clothes accompany the pope on his travels--Estermann, a familiar face to Vatican-based journalists, made more than 30 such trips--and cooperate with other church security forces and police in countries being visited to ensure the pope’s protection.

These days, the guards carry tear gas for crowd control and train weekly with machine pistols and handguns at an Italian army firing range.

The death of Estermann, who had served as deputy leader of the Swiss Guards since 1989, stunned his men and Italians who knew him. Four Swiss Guards sat silent Tuesday afternoon at a table in a trattoria opposite St. Anne’s Gate as a persistent spring rain drummed on the awnings outside. They waved away a journalist who tried to talk to them.

“The consternation is gigantic within the Swiss Guards,” Nicolas Betticher, spokesman of the Conference of Swiss Bishops, told Reuters news agency in Fribourg. “The chaplain who called from Rome was totally shaken up. Nobody can understand the situation. It is as if there has been a sudden death in a big family, a real catastrophe.”

But this personal army, spawned by the wars that laid waste to much of the Italian peninsula during the Renaissance, has shown signs of being uncomfortably susceptible to the mores of the late 20th century.

Several years ago, some young guards who were sunbathing under the papal windows were given severe reprimands. Two guardsmen were court-martialed two years ago after Rome police charged them with engaging in disorderly conduct while watching a televised soccer game in a bar.

Since October, the guards had been without a full-fledged commander after the retirement of Roland Buchs. Mario Biasetti, a Boston-bred journalist who filmed a television documentary on the force and had known Estermann for years, said low pay was one reason. “A commander makes only $30,000 to $35,000 a year--that’s what a secretary earns,” Biasetti explained in an interview. “Who comes here makes a big sacrifice.”

Estermann was only the fourth non-aristocrat chosen to lead the guards in their nearly five centuries of existence. Biasetti said church officials might have taken months in a fruitless search to find a blueblood.

Some Rome journalists were openly skeptical of the motive given for the slaying of Estermann and his wife, Gladys Meza Romero, 49, an employee of the Venezuelan mission to the Vatican. Church officials denied that there was a love triangle or that Tornay, who hailed from French-speaking Switzerland, was a jilted lover.

Navarro said Tornay handed fellow guardsmen a letter Monday at 7:30 p.m., about an hour and a half before the shootings, and asked that they deliver it to his family. No further details were available.

Church observers say the slayings were the first on Vatican soil since 1848, when Count Pellegrino Rossi, Pope Pius IX’s prime minister, was assassinated in the political turmoil that surrounded the mass movement for Italian unification. In 1959, Vatican sources say, another Swiss guard wounded his commander, a man notorious for his severity.

As a sovereign state, the Vatican has its own police, and the investigation into Monday’s deaths was being conducted by Gian Luigi Marrone, the Holy See’s only judge, who ordered autopsies performed by Renato Buzzonetti, the pope’s own physician. Buchs, the former commander of the Swiss Guards, agreed to come out of retirement to fill in at his old job.