Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

by H. Paul Jeffers

  The loot included “gold, silver, jewels, and currency worth tens of millions,” said Levy. “Other Ustashe reached Italy where help from the Franciscan Order was waiting in the form of safe houses, forged papers, and money.” Croatian leader Ante Pavelic “struck a deal with the British, money changed hands, and a killer of 700,000 Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies became an honored guest at the Vatican, was chauffeured around Rome in a car with Vatican diplomatic license plates, and lived safely in his own compound with Ustashe guards attending to his personal security.

  “The Ustashe were masters of smuggling, secret codes, and financial dealings…. Almost immediately, the Ustashe with the help of their Franciscan and Vatican sponsors,…formulated a bold plan…to fuel a mass migration of war criminals.” Some historians have written that the purpose in aiding the Nazis in escaping was rooted in the desire of men such as Draganovic eventually to organize a force to resist a Soviet takeover of the Balkans.

  In opposing the lawsuit, the Vatican asserted that American courts had no jurisdiction to take on the case. Agreeing to that claim, the federal district court in San Francisco dismissed the suit, but the ruling was reversed in 2005 by a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In December 2007, “the district court dismissed the Vatican Bank, this time on grounds of sovereign immunity,” based on the recognition of the Holy See as an independent state under the Lateran Treaty with Italy. While the plaintiffs again appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case against the Franciscans proceeded in the district court.

  Although the Franciscan Order had always denied having wartime ties to the Ustashe regime in Croatia, the Order had been accused of acting as the “facilitators and middlemen in moving the contents of the Ustashe Treasury from Croatia to Austria, Italy and finally South America after the war. During the Nazi occupation of Bosnia, the Franciscans were closely involved with the Ustashe regime at a location not far from Medjugorje in Bosnia,” site of a shrine where the Virgin Mary was said to appear.

  In a step that dismayed victims of the Ustashe, Pope John Paul II visited Croatia in October 1998 “to announce the beatification of Cardinal Stepinac, elevating him to the last step before a declaration of sainthood. Serbs and others who recalled that Stepinac had given his blessing to Ustashe winced as 400,000 of the faithful gathered at Croatia’s main shrine to the Virgin Mary to hear John Paul II hail Stepinac “as a hero” for his “resistance to Communism and his refusal to separate the Croatian church from the Vatican.”

  Never charged with war crimes or formally accused of funneling the purloined treasure into the Vatican bank, Father Kunoslav Draganovic, who came to be known as “the Golden Priest,” spent several years after the war engaged in activities in the Balkans that ranged from dubious to nefarious and returned to Yugoslavia, where he died in 1983.

  CHAPTER 11

  A Fit of Madness

  In a mystery with three people dead, a supposedly fake suicide note, conflicts over the crime scene and autopsies, disputed bullets, whispers about connections to Opus Dei, and charges of drug use in the Vatican that was worthy of a best-selling mystery novel or Hollywood thriller, the commander of Pope John Paul II’s personal security force, the Swiss Guards, and his wife were shot to death on May 4, 1998, by a dashingly handsome young officer, who then turned the gun on himself.

  The Holy See insisted that the killer was bitter at having been passed over for a medal. Another explanation was that the commander and the officer had been gay lovers. A third theory posited that the commander was killed after Vatican officials discovered that he had been a spy for the East German Stasi secret police in the 1980s. Conspiracy theorists and believers that The Da Vinci Code rang true, invoked the specter of a sinister plot by Opus Dei. Never in the 500-year history of the Swiss Guards had their been a whiff of scandal.

  Clad in “red-yellow-and-blue tunics, plumed conquistador-style helmets, and gleaming 7-foot medieval halberds—a combined spear and battle-ax—the Swiss Guards were founded by Pope Julius II in 1506.” To join the guards, a man must be a Swiss national, unmarried, a Catholic, of legitimate birth, under the age of thirty, have military training, at least five feet nine or taller, healthy, and with no bodily disfigurements. “Whoever is not eligible for military service in Switzerland is likewise refused admission into the Guards.” He must present “a certificate from his home,…baptismal certificate, and testimonial as to character, all signed by the authorities of his parish. After a year of good conduct, the cost of the journey to Rome is refunded…. Those who wish to retire from the Guards may do so after giving three months’ notice. After eighteen years’ service each member of the Guards is entitled to a pension for life amounting to one half of his pay, after twenty years to a pension amounting to two thirds of his pay, after twenty-five years to five sixths of his pay, and after thirty years to his full pay.”

  Inducted to serve two-year renewable enlistments, recruits swear to lay down their life, if necessary, in defense of the supreme pontiff. They declared, “I swear I will faithfully, loyally and honorably serve the supreme pontiff [name of Pope] and his legitimate successors and also dedicate myself to them with all my strength, sacrificing if necessary also my life to defend them. I assume this same commitment with regard to the Sacred College of Cardinals whenever the See is vacant. Furthermore, I promise to the commanding captain and my other superiors, respect, fidelity and obedience. This I swear! May God and our holy patrons assist me!”

  The one hundred Swiss Guards have been the only armed corps at the Vatican since Pope Paul VI dissolved three other units: the Papal Gendarmes, the Pontifical Noble Guard, and the Palatine Guard of Honor in 1970. The Swiss Guard is the remnant of the military corps that popes had at their disposal from the Middle Ages until the mid-nineteenth century, when they controlled a large part of central Italy. Swiss Guards officially assumed papal defense duties “when Pope Julius II, known as the warrior pope, recognized that he needed special protection. [H]e turned to well-known and tactically well-trained forces from Switzerland” and asked for a contingent of Swiss soldiers who would protect him and his palace. In December of that year, 150 Swiss soldiers began their march to Rome. They entered the eternal city on January 21, 1506, and set up quarters in the pope’s stables. The next day, they were blessed by Julius. He bestowed on them the title “Defenders of the Church’s Freedom.”

  Twenty-one years later, on May 6, 1527, 147 out of 189 guardsmen were killed in a defensive stance that allowed Pope Clement VII to escape attacking Spanish forces. The only blemish on the guards’ record occurred in 1798. When Napoleon occupied Rome, he captured and deported Pope Pius VI, then disbanded the papal guard. Other nonpapal Swiss Guard units noted for their combat prowess were kept and integrated within the ranks of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. After Hitler’s troops entered Rome in World War II, Swiss Guardsmen donned gray uniforms and took up positions behind machine guns and mortars. Vastly outnumbered, they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for Pius XII, but by Hitler’s order, the Germans did not move against the Vatican.

  “Today a pope’s temporal authority extends over just the 108-acre enclave of Vatican City…. The Swiss Guards now perform ceremonial functions but also stand guard duty outside the papal apartments and at the Vatican’s four main entrances. Guards in plain clothes accompany the pope on his travels…and cooperate with other church security forces and police…to ensure the pope’s protection. These days, the guards carry tear gas for crowd control and train weekly with machine pistols and handguns at an Italian army firing range.” The force usually consists of four officers, twenty-three noncommissioned officers, seventy halberdiers (lance carriers), two drummers, and a chaplain, all with an equivalent Italian army rank. Although they are fully trained and equipped in modern weaponry and tactics, they also receive instructions in using the sword and halberd.

  “Their official dress uniform was altered in 1915. It is a jumpsuit which has a distinctly Renaissance appearance. A popular misconcepti
on is that these dress uniforms were designed by Michelangelo. The working uniform is more functional, consisting of blue coveralls and black beret. Both dress and working uniforms are worn by the Guardsmen when on duty in Vatican City.”

  “All the officers carry out guard duties every day as well as on occasions such as Masses, audiences, and receptions…. The officers and the Sergeant Major generally wear civilian clothes when on duty…. The chaplain has the equivalent title of an army lieutenant colonel.” “The Guard quarters consist of two narrow parallel buildings which with the Sistine Palace and the Torrione di Niccolò V form two courts. The inner court is adjacent to the palace, in the other is a gate leading directly to the city.” “The corps has its own chapel, SS Martino e Sebastiano, built by Pius V in 1568.”

  A member of the Swiss Guard on May 4, 1989, Jacques-Antoine Fierz, wrote in Newsweek magazine, “It takes a special sort of man to leave behind the tranquil life of the Swiss cantons for a barracks in a foreign land. After all, it’s not a job full of material rewards. The hours are long—sixty or seventy a week when there are no extraordinary duties. The pay is merely 1.8 million lire ($1,000) a month—far less than an Italian soldier would earn. It’s not easy to stand like a statue for many hours holding a heavy pike. And we’re all normal guys who carry on like all other young men our age. We go out with friends in the neighborhood, have a few drinks at a pub with our comrades and swap work stories. Some of us even have girlfriends. To be a soldier of the pope does not imply a vow of celibacy, and it’s not rare for a Guardsman to come home with a wife he met in Rome. But there is very little free time, and bed check is at midnight every day.”

  At age forty-three, Colonel Alois Estermann was “an 18-year veteran of the Swiss Guard Corps, who distinguished himself by shielding the pope’s body with his own during the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.”

  Only inches away from John Paul II when Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to assassinate him, Estermann had become close to the pontiff and accompanied him on more than thirty foreign trips and on John Paul’s annual mountain-climbing retreats. “Described by his men as a straight-arrow professional soldier, Estermann had just achieved his life’s ambition at noon” on May 4, 1998, when John Paul II consecrated him in the post of commander of the Swiss Guard detachment. His forty-nine-year-old wife, Gladys Meza Romero, “was a striking ex-model from Venezuela who worked in the library of Venezuela’s embassy. Married since 1983, they had no children.” Everyone in the Swiss Guard and the Vatican hierarchy considered them to be a model couple.

  Since the retirement of his predecessor, Roland Buchs, “Estermann had waited six months for the appointment as commander of the Guard…. The post traditionally goes to a Swiss nobleman, and Estermann was a commoner. But the tradition had become difficult to maintain, especially for a job that paid about $30,000 a year.” Estermann was only the fourth nonaristocrat chosen to lead the guards in their nearly five centuries of existence.”

  “Finishing his second two-year enlistment in the Guard,” twenty-three-year-old Vice Corporal Cedric Tornay, “who was on his second Italian fiancée, had been cited five times for failing to make bed check at midnight and was criticized for drinking too much and swearing…. Estermann had given Tornay a written reprimand. He passed him over for awards that were to be distributed…in an annual ceremony at which [Alois Estermann] was to be publicly installed as commander.

  Sometime on May 4, 1989, Tornay wrote a letter to his mother that read, “Mama, I hope you will forgive me, for it is they who made me to do what I have done. This year I should have received the decoration (la “Benemerenti”) but the Lieutenant-Colonel refused to give it to me. After 3 years, 6 months and 6 days spent here putting up with all kinds of injustices, he refused to give me the only thing I wanted. I owe this duty to all the guards as well as to the Catholic Church. I took an oath to give my life for the Pope and that is what I am doing. Forgive me for leaving you all alone but my duty calls me. Tell Sarah, Melissa and Papa that I love you. Cedrich.”

  Around 7:20 P.M. the letter was entrusted to a colleague.

  An hour later, Tornay called a Swiss priest he had known since childhood. He got the priest’s voice mail. “Padre Ivano, please call me back,” Tornay said with an urgent tone. “It’s an emergency.”

  Wearing jeans and black leather jacket, he walked in the rain across a courtyard, passed under the lighted apartment of Pope John Paul II, and reached the barracks of the Swiss Guard next to the Palace.

  A nun heard him going hurriedly up the stairs, looked, but saw nothing.

  Tornay entered Estermann’s apartment building at about nine o’clock. “Estermann was speaking to a priest friend by telephone when shots rang out.

  “By 9:05 P.M., all three people [in the apartment] were dead.”

  Within minutes of being urgently summoned to the scene by a neighbor, the papal spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, sealed the Estermanns’ apartment. No one was allowed to enter it, including the Italian police. Within three hours, Navarro-Valls issued this statement on behalf of the Vatican: “The Captain Commander of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, Colonel Alois Estermann, was found dead in his home together with his wife, Gladys Meza Romero, and Vice Corporal Cedric Tornay. The bodies were discovered shortly after 9 p.m. by a neighbor from the apartment next door who was attracted by loud noises. From a first investigation it is possible to affirm that all three were killed by a firearm. Under the body of the vice corporal his regulation weapon was found. The information which has emerged up to this point allows for the theory of a ‘fit of madness’ by Vice Corporal Tornay.”

  Noting that Holy See officials said it was the first murder in the Vatican in 150 years, Newsweek magazine reported the Vatican’s explanation, but cited doubts. For a case that was supposed to be open and shut, it said, “the Vatican could not convince everyone that it had told the whole tragic story.

  “The Vatican will not give us the full truth about my brother’s death,” said Tornay’s sister, Melinda.

  The soldier’s mother, Mugette Baudet, said she spoke to her son by telephone the afternoon before the killings. “He was not angry or bitter,” she said. “If he had been upset, it was not enough to kill anyone.”

  A Berlin tabloid quoted anonymous sources who claimed that Estermann once supplemented his meager salary by selling Vatican secrets to the Stasi, the notorious East German secret police. Italian columnists speculated about a love triangle gone sour. “The relationship could not be other than one of a homosexual nature,” Ida Magli, a prominent anthropologist, told the Roman daily Il Messaggero.

  Frank Grillini, head of Arcigay, Italy’s leading gay organization, claimed, “The Holy See wanted to close a case in a hurry, perhaps out of a need to hide a sad, worrisome truth. It’s been known for years that many of the Swiss Guards are homosexuals. These men are isolated and shut away, which is why we see these gay tendencies in the Swiss Guard and in all Vatican institutions.”

  The Vatican dismissed the espionage charge as beneath contempt and took pains to deny rumors of a sexual motive for the killings.

  “The barracks is a ghetto,” said Hugues de Wurstemberg, a former Guard who lived in Belgium. “It’s like a stew in a pressure cooker. Lots of alcohol, stories of theft, rumors of homosexuality, desertions, rancor.”

  “It’s a hard life, and these are young guys,” said Mario Biasetti, an American filmmaker who spent two years with the Guards to produce a documentary called Soldiers of the Pope. “But they’re also very serious about their duties, and they’re all volunteers. If they don’t like it, they only have two years to go.”

  “The triple homicide was the latest in a disturbing series of violent episodes connected to St. Peter’s,” Newsweek recorded. “[In] January, the body of Enrico Sini Luzi, a nobleman who served as a Gentleman of the Pope, was found in his elegant apartment near the Vatican. He was bludgeoned to death with an antique chandelier. Until his death, Luzi had served as a papal us
her, even though he had been arrested years before for having sex in a public bathroom, allegedly with a priest. A male prostitute was charged with Luzi’s murder. Shortly afterward, a gay man from Sicily set himself on fire in St. Peter’s Square to protest the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality.

  “In the [previous] year, three plots had been uncovered to put bombs in the pope’s path…. When CIA Director George Tenet visited Rome late[in 1997], Western diplomatic sources said, it was to pay a call on the Vatican’s secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, to warn of terrorists who might be targeting the pontiff….

  “Moving quickly to try to repair any damage to morale” in the Guards after the Estermann murders, “the Vatican brought back the popular Buchs as commander. But from outside the walls of the papal state, there were suggestions that the Swiss Guard should be disarmed again, or even replaced by a modern police force.” Countering this idea, Swiss Cardinal Amedee Grab said, ‘Without the Swiss Guard, or with a disarmed Swiss Guard, it would be impossible to ensure the security of the pope.’

  “Estermann and his wife were given a funeral in St. Peter’s Basilica that was concelebrated by 16 cardinals and 30 bishops. All available Guardsmen turned out, standing composed and impassive through the mass. Before the service, Pope John Paul II prayed at all three caskets, which were displayed, side by side, for viewing. Vatican officials gave Tornay a proper funeral, despite the Church’s condemnation of suicide. A crowd of his Roman friends gathered at the parish church of Santa Ana, within Vatican walls. The Swiss Guards also turned out, with many of them weeping openly, as they had not done for Estermann. The Guardsmen’s band played ‘I Had a Good Comrade.’”