Authors Say Vatican Pressured Publisher

ROME — Two bestselling authors have accused the Vatican of blacklisting them in Italy after they discovered secret documents that suggest that a pope had funded William of Orange, a Protestant hero. Rita Monaldi and her husband Francesco Sorti have sold more than a million copies of their historical novel, "Imprimatur," across Europe. the novel was dropped by Mondadori, its Italian publisher, after the first print run of 15,000 copies, despite reaching number four on the bestseller list in 2002.