The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (14 page)

Shortly before the vote Catholics were invited to St. Peter's
Square to receive a special blessing from the pope. Church historian
Alden Hatch described the gathering as follows: "The crowd filled
the broad square and extended back along the Via Conciliazione to
the bridges across the Tiber and even along its farther banks and up
the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. The Holy Father, in the white and
gold vestments of the sacred office, spoke to them in the tradition of
the Crusades and his passionate words lifted the hearts and pierced
the spirits of all who heard him." 13

The tactics worked. The Christian Democrats came to power in
June 1948 with 48.5 percent of the votes in a 90 percent voter
turnout. The Popular Front of Communists and the Socialists managed to secure only 31 percent of the final tally. The party would retain
control over affairs in Italy for the next twenty years. The new Italian
Republic became a respectable centralist part of the New Europe. It
entered NATO, joined the Council of Europe and the European Coal
and Steel Community, and participated in the Marshall Plan.

With the victory over the Communists, Pius XII witnessed blue
skies breaking through the postwar haze. The newly elected President Dc Gasperi, in grateful appreciation of Vatican support, extended to
the Church the terms of the concordat with Mussolini. All Vatican
enterprises within Italy remained tax-exempt and, as sanctioned operations of a sovereign state, free from public scrutiny. Nothing from
the Church's vast holdings would be rendered unto Caesar.

As U.S. aid poured into Italy, the Vatican received millions for the
revitalization of industries such as Italgas and Immobiliare. In addition, the Truman administration, through the intercession of Cardinal Spellman, began to divert large sums of "black currency"
(money for which there is no public accounting) to the Vatican for
the "consolidation of Anti Soviet activities in Western Europe."14 In
one of his reports to Rome, Spellman emphasized the need for strict
confidentiality regarding the millions of U.S. dollars being dumped
into the coffers of the Roman Catholic Church. "Subversive groups
in the U.S.," he wrote, "would grasp this as a very effective pretense
for attacking the U.S. government for having released money to the
Vatican, even though indirectly conveyed."is

With such foreign and domestic support, the Vatican became the
primary beneficiary of "il miracolo economico"-Italy's "economic
miracle." Between 1953 and 1958 Italy's Gross National Product
(GNP) increased 150 percent, swelling to a sum of $70 billion. Of the
country's 180 credit, banking, and insurance institutions, the Vatican
controlled more than 90. One of the largest of these concerns was La
Centrale, a company that provided medium- and long-term credit for
projects in agriculture, hydroelectricity, engineering, and mining. By
1968, when the Christian Democrats lost their control of the Italian
government, La Centrale stock included 8,235 shares in one power
company valued at $24.5 million and 1,417 shares in a second valued
at $25.2 million. By this time La Centrale possessed $107 million in
capital and $277 million in assets. It displayed industrial loans in
excess of $60 million and medium-ranged loans in excess of $155 million. La Centrale's net profits were in the range of $16 million.16

Italcementi, another Vatican-controlled company, supplied over
30 percent of the cement in Italy and owned a financial house called
Italmobiliare. Italmobiliare, in turn, owned eight banks with cumulative assets of $512 million and capital reserves of $22 million. In addition, the financial house held control of the Banca Provinciale
Lombarda and the Credito Commerciale di Cremona whose combined deposits exceeded $1.2 billion. In 1968, the year when the
good times came to a screeching halt, Italcementi had $51.2 million
in capital with net profits of $5 million.I7

During this same period, the Vatican became the largest shareholder in three large banks-Banco di Roma, Banca Commerciale
Italiana, and Credito Italiano-and seventy-six other banks
throughout Italy. One of the most prestigious of these banks was
Banco Ambrosiano in Milan. The Vatican also acquired two major
insurance companies with combined capital of $30 million and nine
smaller insurance companies with combined capital of $10.7 million.18

In industry, the Vatican retained control of Italgas, which provided natural gas to thirty-five Italian cities. By 1968 Italgas produced
over 680 million cubic meters of gas annually and displayed capital of
$59 million. It also came to own a giant telecommunications firm
called Societa Finanziavia Telefonia, a major supplier of telephone and
telegraph service with annual profits in excess of $20 million.'9

One of the Vatican's first postwar acquisitions was Finsader, a
steel combine that counted among its subsidiaries Alfa Romeo, the
automobile company; Finmeccanica, a holding company for thirtyfive firms that specialized in every phase of engineering (including the
production of nuclear weapons); Finmare that operated passenger
shipping lines; the Terni Company that produced steel products; and
Italsider that manufactured pig iron, steel ingots, and piping.
Another acquisition was Montedison that specialized in mining and
metallurgical manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, electric power, and
textiles. In 1968 Montedison displayed sales of $854 million and a
net profit of $67 million.20

One of the Church's most lucrative new holdings was SNIA-Viscosa, a leading producer of textiles that possessed capital of $90 million in 1968 and displayed an annual profit of $15 million.21

The vast Vatican empire included thousands of other companies-large and small-throughout Italy, specializing in such things
as silk, yarn, publishing, furs, spaghetti, tourism, salt, electronics,
ready-to-wear clothing, children's toys, and department stores.

Some of these holdings would pose an embarrassment for the
Vatican. In 1968, when Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, his
famous encyclical on birth control, the Vatican owned a string of
pharmaceutical companies-including Sereno-that produced oral
contraceptive pills called Lutteolas.22

But the major Vatican concern remained Societa Generale Immobiliare, the giant conglomerate and Italy's largest construction company. Through Immobiliare the Vatican came to own major hotels in
Italy, including the Rome Hilton, Italo Americana Nuovi Alberghi,
Alberghi Ambrosiani, Compagnia Italiana Alberghi Cavalieri, and
Societa Italiani Alberghi Moderni. The company also enabled the
Vatican to stretch its tentacles throughout the Western world. In
France Immobiliare built blocks of offices and shops at 90 Avenue
des Champs Elysees, at 61 Rue de Ponthieu, and at 6 Rue de Berry.
In Canada, it owned the Stock Exchange Tower in Montreal, one of
the world's tallest skyscrapers; the Port Royal Tower; a 224-apartment block; and a large residential complex in Greensdale (outside
Montreal). In Mexico it acquired an entire satellite city of Mexico
City called Lomas Verdes. In the United States it came to own five
large apartment complexes in Washington, D.C., including the
Watergate Hotel; several hotels and office buildings in New York
City; and a residential complex of 277 acres at Oyster Bay, New
York.23 A full listing of the Vatican's real estate holdings would
require a separate volume.

In addition to property, the Vatican by 1968 became a major
stockholder in such U.S. companies as Shell Oil, Gulf Oil, General
Motors, General Electric, Bethlehem Steel, IBM, and TWA. When
these shares moved upward or downward on the stock exchange,
men such as Nogara and Pius XII initiated the movement.24

Such "foreign" investments were highly lucrative but the Church's
fortune remained in Italy, sheltered by the government, where its
profits were free and clear and where the elected officials of the Christian Democracy Party remained at the Holy Father's beck and call.

As his Church acquired worldly wealth beyond measure, Pius XII
assumed the otherworldly role of a saint. According to his beatification records, the Holy Father slept no more than four hours a night, denied himself simple pleasures (such as coffee), and spent countless
hours communicating with the Lord "as if on a mountaintop." In his
later years Pius XII claimed to have received a special visitation from
Jesus Christ in the privacy of his bedchambers.

To substantiate his holiness, Pius XII commissioned a documentary to be made for distribution to movie theaters throughout the
world. Entitled Pastor Angelicus, the film depicted "the daily life of
the pope" and how he fulfilled the prophecy of the Irish monk
Malachi that "the 262nd successor to St. Peter" would be an
"angelic shepherd." At the start of the movie, Pius XII is seen carrying a lamb on his shoulders. It proceeds to show the pope gliding
through the marble corridors of the Vatican in a white gown-quite
like a holy ghost-while monsignori and cardinals, resplendent in
robes, genuflect and bow before him. The film goes on to show the
actual royal family of Italy, the king and the princesses, falling on
their knees to kiss his ring in an obvious acknowledgement of his
superiority over all worldly kings and rulers. In another segment the
Holy Father receives a group of First Communion girls, clutching
rosaries and lilies, to bestow a blessing upon them. The image of
Pius XII in his brilliant white soutane amidst the white communion
dresses proclaims the message that the "pastor angelicus" is the
fount of purity.25

The pope's aura of sanctity was heightened by his peculiar scent.
Writer John Guest, upon meeting the Holy Father, expressed his
wonder at the pope's supernatural fragrance. He described the odor
as follows: "Not a scent in the worldly sense, not sweet or exciting in
any way but a cool, very clean, smell. A sort of delicious early
morning dewy smell that could almost be described as the sudden
absence of all other smells. Possibly it is imagination; possibly sympathetic nervous affliction of the nose when one's other senses are
highly stimulated; possibly, even, it is the genuine and original odor
of sanctity." Guest apparently was unaware that Mother Pasqualina,
the pope's protector and housekeeper, regularly doused the Holy
Father's hands and handkerchief with an antiseptic solution to prevent him from catching germs from human contact.26

To display his supernatural knowledge that bordered on omnis cience, Pius XII lectured visiting groups in a wide variety of subjects:
dental care and procedures, gymnastics, aeronautics, cinematography,
psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, agriculture, medicine, techniques
of newscasting, and even gynecology. When poet and literary critic
T. S. Eliot appeared for a private audience, the pope gave him a lecture on the trends in modern literature.27

Wanting to appear multilingual, the pope memorized elegant little
speeches in English, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Spanish, and
Portuguese that he recited parrotlike in the presence of visiting dignitaries, although he was conversant only in Italian, French, and (to a
limited extent) German. Throughout the years the speeches remained
unaltered even when the same guests appeared for a second audience.28

On October 9, 1958, Pius XII gave up the ghost and passed on
to his eternal reward. His funeral was described in L'Osservatore
Romano as "The greatest in the long history of Rome, surpassing
even that of Julius Caesar. During the lying in state in St. Peter's, his
corpse began to rot in the autumn heat. The dead pope's face turned
gray-green and then purple. To make matters worse, his intestines
began to dissolve and ferment and his body began to emit a series of
dreadful farts and belches. The stench was so overpowering that one
guard fell into a swoon. As a final indignity, the pope's nose turned
black and fell off several hours before interment.29 To some this
seemed a message from heaven: the body of Christ (as represented by
his Vicar) had become corrupt.

As a denouement to the papal drama, Bernardino Nogara died in
Rome several weeks later. The passing of the great Vatican financier
received little notice in the press. Many reporters were uncertain of
his position within the Vatican and his ecclesiastical status. Some
spoke of him as a distinguished monsignor. Few were aware that he
was a layman who had been trained as an architect and that his
greatest design was neither a building nor a bridge but a vast financial complex commonly known as "Vatican, Inc."