This can pretty much be posted without the need to make commment:

Telegraph | News | Rumours sweep Vatican of plot to hide Friday death:
By Bruce Johnston and Jonathan Petre
(Filed: 05/04/2005)

The politics of electing of the next pope moved into bizarre territory yesterday with rumours sweeping Rome of a conservative plot to secure the papacy.

In a conspiracy theory worthy of a Dan Brown novel, liberals suggested that Pope John Paul II had died a day earlier than was officially declared but the news was withheld to give the conservatives an advantage.”