The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (31 page)

The sexual scandal is wreaking havoc among the 194 American
dioceses, especially the poorest ones. By 1999 the Santa Rosa diocese
had been forced to curtail its ministerial programs, to halt its building
projects, and to borrow $6 million from other dioceses. "The ultimate impact of the lawsuits is that the people who are not responsible
for the abuse end up paying for it," R. Scott Appleby, director of the
Cushwa Center for Catholic Studies at the University of Notre
Dame, told the New York Times. "Programs get cut and the poor get
hurt the Most. 1115

In 1995 the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was forced to
sell a retreat house operated by Dominican nuns and other properties
to pay the settlement costs not covered by insurance policies. This
cost was estimated to be in excess of $30 million. In 1997 the Diocese of Dallas was obliged to mortgage the chancery building, several
vacant lots, and a property that once housed an elementary school in
order to pay its share of a $30 million sexual abuse case. The alternative, as Dallas church official Bronson Havard, said, was bankruptcy.I" In 2002 Cardinal Francis E. George of the Archdiocese of Chicago said that he might be forced to sell his $15 million mansion
in order to meet the cost of present abuse settlements.

Insurance companies have responded to the scandal by increasing
premiums, excluding coverage of sexual abuse by priests, or by canceling policies. "There is no coverage for pedophilia," said Michael
Sean Quinn, a lawyer in Austin, Texas, who defended churches in sex
abuse cases and who teaches insurance law at the University of
Texas." By 2002 six insurance companies refused to pay claims over
incidents that arose within a parish in Stockton, California, under the
"intentional acts" (illegal or improper acts committed by policyholders with awareness that such acts could result in litigation) exclusion of the policies. The companies claimed that the leaders of the
Church ignored documentation that the priests in question were possible threats to altar boys.

The scandal has resulted in a precipitous decrease in donations not
only by blue-collar Catholic families but also by major philanthropists
and Catholic foundations. "The Church should open its books," said
Erica P. John, heiress to the Miller brewery fortune and president of a
private foundation that contributes $5 million a year to Catholic
causes in Milwaukee. "The Church is not a secret society. We're the
people of God and we want transparency." 18 By referring to the
Church as the "People of God," Ms. John was upholding the teachings of Paul VI and bringing to mind the internal conflict he must
have endured between his socialistic tendencies and his desire to safeguard the vast wealth of the Holy See, a conflict that had resulted in
the Ambrosiano affair and the long pontificate of John Paul II.

The sex abuse scandal, according to Fr. Andrew Greeley, a prominent sociologist and author, "may be the greatest scandal in the history of religion in America and, perhaps, the most serious crisis
Catholicism has faced since the Reformation." 19 The crisis has
resulted in a sharp decrease in giving, a curtailment of services to the
poor and needy, an abandonment of Catholic missions, and the bankruptcy of dioceses. And yet the Vatican appears remote and unconcerned with such developments. Its holdings are secure and safe from
all threats of litigation. It functions primarily not as a religious or
charitable institution, but as a massive corporation. For this reason the Holy See, as numerous critics have observed, manifests insensitivity to the plight of the victims and the cries of the faithful. It has
gained the whole world and, perhaps, in so doing, it has lost its soul.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look
beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of
dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same
way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous
but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Matt. 23:27-28

ince the ascendancy of Pope John Paul II to the throne of St.
Peter in 1978, the Sicilian Mafia has been very active in Poland.
At times they have joined hands with the Russian Mafia-most
notably their counterparts in Chechnya-to expand their global
activities.

By 2002 Poland, a country in which drug addition and distribution was virtually nonexistent, became a major distribution point for the narcotics trade. More than fifteen tons of heroin flow into Poland
each year from the seaport city of Sofia in Turkey, where it is sold by
the babas (Turkish drug dealers) to agents for the Sicilian Mafia. The
heroin is not the low-grade Number Three product, good only for
smoking, that comes from the places in the Far East. This product is
high-grade Number Four, ideal for injecting, that has been grown
and refined in the Golden Crescent of Iran, Pakistan, and
Afghanistan.' From Sophia the heroin is shipped across the Black Sea
to the Ukraine, and from the Ukraine to Poland. This route is ideal,
not simply because of Poland's central location between eastern and
western Europe, but also because the eastern border of Poland is so
poorly patrolled.

Other aspects of the drug trade are prospering in Poland. Over
40 percent of the amphetamines sold in Europe and the United
States come from Poland. It has become a major base for drug lords
from South America (thanks to the connections of Licio Gelli and P2) to process and define cocaine.2

The trafficking has had an impact on the population. In 1978
there were fewer than 5,000 heroin and cocaine users in Poland.
Twenty-four years later, 200,000 heroin and cocaine users were identified and half of them were addicts.3

The eastern European country has also become a center for the
sale of arms and ammunition to strong-arm governments and terrorists groups. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), for
example, purchases almost all of its weaponry from Poland. In the
bazaars within the major cities of Warsaw and Krakow, a visitor can
purchase a wide array of sophisticated weaponry: land mines,
grenades, infrared night sights, 105-millimeter cannons, ground-toair missiles, Cobra helicopter ships, and Leopard tanks.

Another business booming in Poland, thanks to the presence of
the Sicilian Mafia, is white slavery. Women and children are regularly
abducted from Poland and transported to Milan and other destinations in Italy, where they are sold to wealthy Arab businessmen.

But far and away the most prosperous activity for the Mafia in
Poland is waste disposal. Within Poland, it is possible to spill, unload,
or bury material that cannot be dumped anywhere else in the world: red-bag medical waste, toxic substances from chemical plants, hazardous materials from construction sites, and the residue from nuclear
power plants. Waste and waste disposal in recent years have become
the major concern of the Sicilian Mafia in Europe and the United
States. The Mafia-from the Genovese, Gambino, and Lucchese families in New York to the Inzerillo, Buscetta, and Greco families in
Sicily-has become sophisticated. It has turned from guns to garbage.
In 2002 the FBI estimated that the Camorra Crime Syndicate (a secret
criminal society in Naples, older even than the Mafia), had amassed
between $3.5 and $8.5 billion from the illegal dumping of toxic waste
in Poland.4 Small wonder that dump sites are sought by mafiosi and
businessmen with the right connections throughout the world.

In the fall of 1996, Mitch Grochowski and I-two reporters for
the Metro, an award-winning weekly newspaper in northeastern Pennsylvania-met with Renato Mariam, the owner and operator of the
Empire Landfill, one of the largest garbage dumps in America. Mariani later became a convicted felon as a result of the channeling of
garbage money into the presidential campaign of 1996. During our
meeting Mariani discussed the Empire facility and the plans of his
organization to open a landfill outside of Krakow, Poland. Mariani
boasted of making the right connections in Poland through a prominent businessman, who, according to informed sources, has ties to
organized crime families in New York and New Jersey. The businessman, with a base of operations in Poland, served as an "unofficial"
ambassador to the Vatican with full and immediate access to the pope.

Mariani said that he didn't want to deal with any elected officials
in Poland, neither the Democrats nor the Communists. His contacts
had assured him that the only way to set up an operation of any kind
in Poland was through the intercession of the Holy Father of the
Roman Catholic Church. "You can't get anything or do anything in
Poland," Mariani said, "unless you go through the pope."

And so it goes.

The relationship between the Sicilian Mafia and Vatican, Inc.
remains intact. The pontificate of John Paul II has resulted neither in
the progressive reforms of John XXIII and Paul VI nor a return to
traditional Catholic worship and teaching. It rather has resulted in the stabilization of Vatican, Inc. as a financial and political institution.
The primary goal of this institution is not the quest and dissemination of spiritual truths in an age of uncertainty, but rather the perpetuation of its own corporate interests through intrigue, mendacity,
theft, and, when the situation demands, bloodshed.

Certainly, John Paul II is neither a card-carrying member of a La
Cosa Nostra family nor an active member of P-2. But he has allowed
members of Gelli's society to remain in Vatican positions and he has
failed to sever the Church's ties to the Mafia. Indeed, he has
strengthened such ties and refused to inaugurate any reforms within
the Vatican Bank. Moreover, for some mysterious reason the pope
has sheltered Archbishop Marcinkus from justice and even attempted
to elevate the disgraced Vatican banker to the college of cardinals.

It is true to John Paul II's credit that he spoke against the Mafia
during a trip to Sicily in 1993. The pope said in a homily: "Do not
kill. No man, no human association, no Mafia can change or trample
the right to life. This most holy right belongs to God."5 It is also true
that John Paul II decried the Mafia's assassination of Fr. Giuseppi
Puglisi, an active opponent of organized crime in Sicily.

But the pope's words ring hollow in the midst of persistent illicit
financial transactions between the organized crime families and the
Vatican. On October 3, 1999, three years after John Paul II pressed
for the beatification of Father Puglisi, twenty-one members of the
Sicilian Mafia were arrested in Palermo for conducting an elaborate
online banking scam with the cooperation of the Vatican Bank.
Antonio Orlando, the capo who masterminded the operation, succeeded in siphoning off 264 billion lire (about $115 million) from
banks throughout Europe. The money was sent to the Emilia
Romagna in the northern region of Italy. From this location it was
channeled into numbered accounts at the Vatican Bank.6 Just before
the arrests, Orlando and his crew had set in motion a plan to net 2 trillion lire (around $1 billion) from the Bank of Sicilia. Giuseppe Limia,
head of Italy's anti-Mafia commission, said that the arrests showed
how dangerous the mob had become in using the Internet for illicit
purposes.' Despite the arrests and subsequent convictions, Italian
investigators were prevented from probing into the Vatican Bank's part in the scheme because of the sovereign status of Vatican City.