Authors Say Vatican Pressured Publisher
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
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.
