The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (27 page)

On January 21, 1981, a group of Milanese shareholders in Banco
Ambrosiano, fearing that the balloon would burst and that their
shares would be worthless, wrote a long letter to Pope John Paul II,
pleading with him to investigate the unholy alliance between
Marcinkus, Calvi, Umberto Ortani, and Gelli and the huge flow of
money into the corporations under the "patronage" of the Vatican.
The letter, which was written in Polish so that the pope could read it
in his native language, stated the following: "The IOR [the Vatican
Bank] is not only a shareholder in the Banco Ambrosiano. It is also
an associate and partner of Roberto Calvi. It is revealed by a growing
number of court cases that Calvi stands today astride one of the main
crossroads of the most degenerate Freemasonry (P-2) and of Mafia
circles, as a result of inheriting Sindona's mantle. This has been done
once again with the involvement of people generously nurtured and
cared for by the Vatican, such as Orlani, who move between the Vatican and powerful groups in the international underworld.""

John Paul II never graced the Milanese shareholders with a
response.

Instead, he decided-almost as an act of defiance-to reward
Bishop Marcinkus for his service to the Holy See by elevating him to
the position of president of the Pontifical Commission for the State
of Vatican City. This position made him, in actuality, the governor of
Vatican City, in addition to his position as head of the Vatican Bank.
The elevation granted Marcinkus the status of archbishop. The
effrontery of the promotion was evidenced by the fact that it had
been made on September 28, 1981, the third anniversary of the
death of John Paul I-the pope who had sought to remove
Marcinkus and his colleagues from office.

But even with his new status as archbishop, Marcinkus could not
prevent Calvi's house of cards from falling. Roberto Rosone, the general manager and deputy chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, began to
make demands at bank meetings for Calvi to step down as director
and for a "call" on all loans that had been made to the Vatican. Calvi expressed his concerns about the troublesome behavior of Rosone to
Flavio Carboni. Carboni responded by securing the services of Danilo
Abbruciati, a Sicilian mafioso within Rome's underworld (malavtita
Romana). Rosone was gunned down as soon as he emerged from
Banco Ambrosiano on the morning of April 27, 1982.17

On May 31, 1982, the Bank of Italy wrote to Calvi and his board
of directors in Milan for a full accounting of the lending to the eight
corporations. The board, under increased pressure, voted 11 to 3 to
comply, despite Calvi's frantic protests.

The only way out for Calvi was to plug up the $1.3 billion hole with
a loan from the Vatican Bank. The loan, Calvi insisted, was perfectly justifiable since the Vatican was the principal beneficiary of the missing millions and the real owner of the dummy corporations. "The Vatican
should honor its commitments," he maintained, "by selling part of the
wealth controlled by the IOR [the Vatican Bank]. It is an enormous patrimony. I estimate it to be ten billion dollars. To help the Ambrosiano,
the IOR could start to sell it in chunks of a billion at a time." 18

Calvi's statement was telling. If any layman in the world of 1982
knew the worth of the Vatican it was Roberto Calvi, the man who
had been its partner in hundreds of deals and schemes. The fact that
this conservative banker estimated the patrimony of the Vatican Bank
at $10 billion in 1982 is telling, since the estimate did not include the
Vatican's holdings in other financial departments, including the
Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA), the Vatican
City State, and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

Despite Calvi's urgent pleas, the Vatican refused to provide the
funds. Moreover, when questioned by Italian treasury agents,
Marcinkus flatly denied any participation in the sordid affair or any
knowledge of the dummy corporations. The Vatican Bank,
Marcinkus explained, was only a depository where religious bodies
placed their money in trust. He even asserted that the bank was a
poor concern with a fund of a few million and could not be compared
to any "secular" financial institution.

Calvi decided to flee the country to escape arrest. While packing
his bags, he told a member of his family: "I shall reveal things, which
once known, will rock the Vatican. The pope will have to resign." 9

The day Calvi vanished with a black briefcase filled with documents, Graziella Corrocher, the banker's fifty-five-year-old personal
secretary, fell or was hurled from the fifth floor of Banco Ambrosiano
in Milan. The body landed with a thump on the ramp leading down
to Ambrosiano's underground garage. No arrests were made and the
cause of her death remained undetermined.

On June 17, 1982, the body of Roberto Calvi was found hanging
from an orange noose under Blackfriar's Bridge in London, his feet
dangling in the swirling waters of the Thames. He was wearing a
lightweight gray suit; an expensive Patek Phillipe watch remained on
his wrist; and $20,000 was stuffed in his wallet. The watch and the
money suggested that he was not the victim of a robbery. In his
pockets were four pair of eyeglasses and a bogus Italian passport; five
bricks had been stuffed in his pants.20

The site of Calvi's demise immediately aroused suspicion. Members of various Masonic lodges in Italy wear black robes and address
each other as "friar." "Black friars" fratelli neri-is an Italian nickname for Freemasons. The fact that masonry in the form of bricks
was found on the body was deemed significant, as well as the Masonic
oath stipulating that traitors should be "roped down" in the proximity of the rising tide.

Three weeks later a coroner's jury ruled that Calvi had committed
suicide. But the verdict was quashed, and a second jury declared it
was unable to decide between murder and suicide. Sixteen years later,
in 1998, Calvi's body was exhumed, and a coroner determined that
the man who had become known as "God's banker," indeed, had
been murdered.

In the wake of this decision, Francesco "Frank the Strangler"
DiCarlo, the heroin traffic manager for the Sicilian Mafia, confessed
to the crime, stating that he had been ordered to commit the murder
by Pippi Calo of the Corleone crime family. The murder had been
commissioned because of Calvi's attempt to embezzle millions from
the mob. Licio Gelli, according to Di Carlo, had handed a large sum
of money to Calvi for deposit in a "laundry" account. Instead of
making the deposit, Calvi used the funds to plug up the huge hole he
had created within Banco Ambrosiano. Upon learning that Calvi had used the funds to pay off investors, Gelli met with Corleone family
members and helped to locate Calvi in London. Gelli also helped to
plan the hit. With Gelli at the planning session, investigators later
learned, was a "Vatican financial figure."21

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who
were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables
of the money changers and the benches of those selling
doves. "It is written," he said to them, "My house will
be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a
`den of robbers. "'

Matt. 21:12-13

alvi was dead. But most of the $1.3 billion remained missing.
Ambrosiano's creditor banks, in search of repayment, claimed
that the Vatican was a principal participant in the scheme, citing the
"letter of patronage" in which the Holy See acknowledged its control of the eight dummy corporations as proof. In May of 1982, one
month after Calvi's death, commissioners from the Bank of Italy
appeared at the Vatican to confront Archbishop Paul Marcinkus for
his part in the crime. In response to the accusations of complicity,
Marcinkus produced the letter from Calvi, stating that the admission of patronage "would entail no liability" for the Vatican Bank. The
counterletter, as signed by Calvi in his capacity of chief executive
officer of Banco Ambrosiano, ended with a paragraph confirming
that, whatever happened to Banco Ambrosiano and its shareholders
in relation to the eight corporations mentioned in the statement of
patronage, the Vatican would "suffer no future damage or loss."
Having produced this document, Marcinkus showed the commissioners to the door, reminding them that the Bank of Italy possessed
no jurisdiction within the sanctified walls of Vatican City.1

But the Italian government maintained pressure on the Vatican
for full disclosure of its involvement in the affair. "The government,"
said treasury minister Beniamino Andreatta after the meeting with
Marcinkus, "is waiting for a clear assumption of responsibility by the
IOR [the Vatican Bank]."2 While the waiting continued, the Italian
press ran daily articles about the Vatican and its relationship with the
Sicilian Mafia and P-2. Rome's daily newspaper La Repubblica began
to publish a cartoon strip entitled "The Adventures of Paul
Marcinkus."

To quiet matters, Pope John Paul II's new secretary of state,
Agostino Casaroli, proposed to the Italian government the creation
of a six-man commission to make an investigation of the affair: three
were to be named by the Vatican and three by the Italian Ministry of
the Treasury. The government complied. The results, as expected,
were inconclusive. The Vatican officials said that the Holy Mother
Church had no interest in the dummy corporations and assumed no
part in the plot; the treasury officials ruled otherwise.3

Dissatisfied with these findings, Ambrosiano's creditors continued to mount pressure for a settlement. The Italian government
initiated a criminal investigation into the affair and set out in search
of positive proof that the Vatican owned the companies in question.

Finally, documents were unearthed that established the Vatican's
ownership of the dummy corporations in the records of the Banca del
Gottarda in Switzerland. One document, dated November 21, 1974,
and duly signed by Vatican Bank officials, was a request for the Swiss
bank to arrange on behalf of the Holy See a company called the
United Trading Corporation of Panama.4

Other documents were discovered that revealed more acts of fraud
by the Holy See. One document showed that the Vatican Bank had
received two deposits from Banco Andino of Peru on October 16,
1979. The first deposit was for $69 million; the second also for $69
million. When the deposits matured in 1982, Banco Andino asked for
its money back. But the Vatican Bank refused, saying that the Union
Trading Company of Panama now owed the money and the Vatican
Bank had no control over it.5 Since evidence had been produced to
show that the Vatican owned all the shares of United Trading, the
Holy See now was forced to own up to the debt and release the funds.

In the light of such findings, Holy Mother Church no longer
could hide behind a mask of deceit. For this reason John Paul II
offered a "good-will payment" of $250 million to Ambrosiano creditors.6 On May 24, 1984, the creditors formally accepted this offer at
the headquarters of the European Trade Association in Geneva.