Sex and scandal bedevil Pope's comic opera guard

The men protecting Pope John Paul II are carelessly recruited and poorly trained, more like a comic-opera troupe than a modern security force, an author alleges.

The Anglo-French writer John Follain draws several startling conclusions in his book on the Vatican Swiss Guard murders, City of Secrets, which has just been published in the United States.

Follain says the official explanation for the deaths of Colonel Alois Estermann, his wife, Gladys and their murderer, Cédric Tornay, was a hastily cobbled cover-up. How and why the young guard murdered his senior officer before shooting himself is wrapped up in a force where homosexuality is common ("one quarter of the Swiss Guards is gay", Follain was told), morale low, and fundamental reform desperately needed.

At nine on a rainy May night in 1998, Vice-Corporal Tornay went to the married quarters of Colonel Estermann, below the Papal apartments. Inside, the Swiss-German officer with 18 years' service was on the phone, being congratulated by a friend on his new promotion to command the force.

But despite three years' service, Tornay had not been honoured by the benerementi medal, a normal formality. That, the Vatican says, is why he had his service weapon, a 9mm Swiss SIG pistol, in his black leather jacket. The colonel's friend heard distant voices, then what he called "sharp blows". Assuming Colonel Estermann had a visitor and had dropped the receiver, he hung up. The Vatican says Tornay had brushed past Mme Estermann, strode down the passage to the living room, then fired twice, severing the older man's spinal cord and killing him outright. With another shot he killed the colonel's wife, sank to his knees, put the barrel in his mouth and fired again.

It was the most sensational crime the Vatican had seen since the attempt to assassinate the Pope in 1981. Within hours the Pope's press secretary, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, stated Tornay had committed the crime "in a fit of madness". After a nine-month internal inquiry, the text of which remains secret, the Vatican repeated that, saying traces of cannabis found in Tornay's urine, and a cyst "the size of a pigeon's egg" in his head, helped explain the "madness".

Follain, author of books on the Mafia and Carlos the Jackal, agrees Tornay was the murderer, but he says he has 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. That evening he [had written] a letter to his mother in which he said, 'I hope you will forgive me for what I have done', and gave it to a colleague to deliver." 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 protecting the Pope, and had urged reform of the body. Nobody was listening.

He had also had a homosexual affair with Colonel Estermann, who had hurt him by moving on to other lovers. Since the murders, Follain says: "Mild reforms of the Guard have been implemented: curfew rules have been relaxed, promotion is more often based on merit and they have asked a psychologist to advise on recruitment. But the Swiss Guard is still not up to its job of protecting the Pope."