Earlier this week, two top Vatican officials made a secret visit to see Pope Francis in the hospital. At first, the Vatican said it had no information about the meeting but then confirmed it, explaining the two prelates had come to secure the pope’s signature to move forward on assembling cardinals to approve new saints.

Veterans of decades of Vatican intrigues weren’t buying it.

“Very, very strange,” said Andreas Englisch, a German journalist and author who has covered the Vatican for nearly 40 years, and who said the meeting immediately set off alarm bells because neither of the two officials worked on canonization issues. Stranger still, he said, was that Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, announced his resignation at the same meeting of cardinals, called a consistory, that was also discussing the canonization of saints a dozen years ago.