God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

by Gerald Posner

89 Norwich, Absolute Monarchs, Kindle edition, location 7314 of 8891.

  90 “The Catholic Church and Modern Civilization,” The Nation, September 19, 1867, 229–30; Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 175–77; Wills, Papal Sin, 239–44.

  91 For a copy of Pius IX’s 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors, see http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm and http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm. Before he issued the Syllabus, Pius had consulted with his bishops about the contents. Ninety-six refused to give an opinion, and of the 159 who did reply, a third were opposed.

  92 Wills, Papal Sin, 244.

  93 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 176–78.

  94 Ibid., 195–98.

  95 It is impossible to obtain an accurate vote since there was no public tally. An early report had the bishops in favor 451 to 88. But some historians believe 62 of those preferred an amended version with a more limited power of infallibility.

  96 Hales, Pio Nono, 244.

  97 Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, Kindle edition, location 2792 of 15319.

  98 Frank J. Coppa, The Italian Wars of Independence (New York: Longman, 1992), 139–41.

  99 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 216.

  100 Riccards, Vicars of Christ, 28.

  101 Carlo F. Passaglia (trans. by Ernest Filalete). De l’obligation pour le Pape Eveque de Rome de rester dans cette ville quoque elle devienne la capitale du Royame Italien (Paris: Molini, 1861), 77–82.

  102 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 51; Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 226.

  103 Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli and Papal Politics in European Affairs, 165.

  104 Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 30; Cameron, “Papal Finance,” 137.

  105 Carlo Crocella, Augusta miseria: aspetti delle finanze pontificie nell’età del capitalismo (Milan: Nuovo 1st ed. Italia, 1982), 66.

  106 Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 169.

  107 Corrado Pallenberg, Inside the Vatican (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1960).

  108 Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 30.

  109 Segreteria di Stato (SdS), Spoglio di Pio X, b. 4, fasc. 16, Pensioni, undated, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City, cited in Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.

  110 Obolo dil San Pietro [Peter’s Pence]: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/obolo_spietro/documents/index_it.htm; see also Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 145. Until the eighteenth century, church historians referred to it only by its Latin name, Denarius Sancti Petri.

  111 Ralph Della Cava, “Financing the Faith: The Case of Roman Catholicism,” Church and State 35 (1993): 37–61. Through the 1990s, Peter’s Pence was all cash. Many times, Catholics granted an audience with the Pope passed large gifts of cash (which the Pope in turn handed to someone in his entourage). In the twenty-first century, the Vatican has adapted Peter’s Pence to the digital age, allowing the faithful to use credit cards or bank wire transfers for their contributions. On the Vatican’s website, Peter’s Pence is described as “an ancient custom still alive today” and is “the financial support offered by the faithful to the Holy Father as a sign of the sharing in the concern of the Successor of Peter for the many different needs of the Universal Church and for the relief of those most in need.” See http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/obolo_spietro/documents/index_en.htm.

  112 Thomas J. Reese, SJ, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 225; Benny Lai, Finanze Vaticane: Da Pio XI a Benedetto XVI (Rome: Rubbettino Editore, 2012), 9.

  113 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 24. There were also sales of coupons that could be cashed in once the buyer arrived in Heaven. It is not clear if that was done with the church’s blessing. Nino Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire (New York: Trident, 1968), 57–58.

  114 Crocella, Augusta Miseria, 108.

  115 Ambasciata d’Italia agli Stati Uniti, Pacco 33, 1903–07, April 17, 1903, Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Archive of the Italian Foreign Ministry (Rome), cited in Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.

  116 Sachs, L’Italie, ses finances, 456; see also Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 54–56.

  117 Cameron, “Papal Finance,” 137.

  118 James Gollin, Worldly Goods: The Wealth and Power of the American Catholic Church, the Vatican, and the Men Who Control the Money (New York: Random House, 1971), 63–70.

  119 On November 1, 1745, Pope Benedict XIV issued Vix Pervenit: On Usury and Other Dishonest Profits. It is available in its entirety at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Ben14/b14vixpe.htm; see also Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 210, n. 1. Earning interest is still a contentious issue in Muslim countries, because the Koran bans it. But Muslims have largely skirted the prohibition since Islamic banks and investment companies deem the interest paid as “profits” from the money deposited, a financial transaction not prohibited by the Koran.

  120 Joseph Clifford Fenton, “Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism,” CatholicCulture.org. See www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-x_motu-proprio_19100901_sacorum-antistitum_it.html/.

  121 Guido Mazzoni, Papa Pio IX, 1849, pamphlet collection at Duke University Libraries, E.331.VI.

  122 Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 38.

  123 Ibid., 211; see also Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews; and see also Wills, Papal Sin, 37–38.

  124 David Chidester, Christianity, A Global History (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 479-480.

  125 Donald A. Nielsen, “Sects, Churches and Economic Transformations in Russia and Western Europe,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, vol. 2, no. 4 (summer 1989), 496–97, 503–04, 517. The symbol of Protestant encouragement that workers get involved in free enterprise is the 1904 book—The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism—written by German sociologist Max Weber.

  126 Chidester, Christianity, 480.

  127 Samuel Gregg, “Did the Protestant Work Ethic Create Capitalism,” The Public Discourse, January 21, 2014. See generally Chidester, Christianity, 487.

  128 The law passed 185 to 106, with 217 abstentions.

  129 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 228–29.

  130 Falconi, Il Cardinale, 488; see also Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 118. Pius prayed that Jesus might show mercy to the “perverted and adulterous” lawmakers who had passed the legislation.

  131 The encyclical, Ubi Nos, is available in English at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9ubinos.htm.

  132 Ibid.

  133 The only thing to which Pius did not protest was the portion that converted the Church’s large debt into an obligation assumed by the government: Cameron, “Papal Finance,” 139.

  134 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 231–34.

  135 Ibid., 271–72; see also John Thavis, The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church (New York: Viking, 2013), 7.

  136 Collections in Segreteria di Stato, Archivo Nunziatura Napoli, scatole 125–27, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City (ASV), cited in Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican.

  Chapter 3: Enter the Black Nobles

  1 Reese, Inside the Vatican, 96.

  2 Chivot, Vatican, 49.

  3 Norwich, Absolute Monarchs, Kindle edition, location 7538 of 8891.

  4 Carlo Fiorentino, La questione romana intorno al 1870: studi e documenti (Rome: Archivo Guido Izzi, 1997), as relates to footnote f, 215.

  5 Cameron, “Papal Finance,” 13; Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 35.

  6 Phillipe Levillain and François-Charles Uginet, Il Vaticano e le frontiere della Grazia (Milan, 1985), 100–101.

  7 R. de Cesare, The Last Days of Papal Rome (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), 259. A full digital copy of The Last Days of Papal Rome is made available by the Sage Endowment Fu
nd at http://archive.org/stream/lastdaysofpapalr00dece#page/n7/mode/2up. See also Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 3, 80; Michael Walsh, The Cardinals: Thirteen Centuries of the Men Behind the Papal Throne (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2011), 188.

  8 The Black Nobles reached their peak of power in the late nineteenth century. Benedict XIV slashed their numbers in the early twentieth century. In 1968, Pope Paul VI eliminated most of the titles still in use.

  9 Falconi, Il Cardinale, 494–95.

  10 Crocella, Augusta miseria, 177–78.

  11 Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 181.

  12 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 93–94; Coppa, Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, 181. The sensational court case brought by Lambertini captivated the public. The judges thought it likely she might be Antonelli’s daughter but said the evidence fell short of certainty. As a result, they let his original will stand.

  13 Benny Lai, Finanze e finanzieri vaticani tra l’ottocento e il novecento da Pio IX a Benedetto XV (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1979), 87, 89 n. 2 (this book was updated in 2012 to Finanze Vaticane: Da Pio XI a Benedetto XVI, both are cited separately in these notes).

  14 Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove, 1990), 285; iBooks edition, 513.

  15 Freemasonry was founded in England in the sixteenth century and before long it counted as members prominent rationalists and secularists throughout Europe. In Austria and France, in particular, Freemasons worked to destabilize the church and promote atheism. Since 1738 Catholics have been threatened with excommunication if they became Freemasons. See generally Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 304–7 and John J. Robinson, Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry (New York: M. Evans, 1989), 307–12, 344–59.

  16 Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 63.

  17 Alberto Caracciolo, Roma capitale. Dal Risorgimento all crisi dello stato liberale (Rome, 1956), 162–64.

  18 Richard A. Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, 1908–1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 154–55.

  19 Malachi Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), 175–76; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 58.

  20 The fascists had a small network of agents inside the city-state, all run by Arturo Bocchini, Rome’s police chief. Through World War II, a midlevel cleric, Monsignor Enrico Pucci, directed three others: a Secretary of State employee, Stanislao Caterina; Virgilio Scattolini, a journalist at L’Osservatore Romano; and Giovanni Fazio, a Vatican policeman. Eric Frattini, The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 265, 460. See generally Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 53–55.

  21 Levillain, and Uginet, Il Vaticano e le frontiere della Grazia, 104.

  22 The Irish Catholic Directory and Almanac for 1900 with Complete Directory in English (Dublin: James Duffy and Co., 1900).

  23 Mocenni quoted in Lai, Finanze e finanzieri vaticani, 178.

  24 Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 67, n. 66.

  25 Pius had an antiquated view even of the appropriate music to be played in the church. In addition to ending the practice of using castrati, he also banned women from choirs. Orchestras were abolished, as were pianos. Pius preferred only organs and Gregorian chants.

  26 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 280.

  27 Michael Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 138–39; see full encyclical at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html; see also Berry, Render Unto Rome, 51. For a fuller discussion of the encyclical and its impact on Catholic trade unions in the political context of that era, see Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 312–20.

  28 Historians seem perplexed at the apparent contradiction. See generally Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 76–77.

  29 Giovanni Grilli, La finanza vaticana in Italia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1961), 26.

  30 John F. Pollard, “Conservative Catholics and Italian Fascism: The Clerico-Fascists” and “Religion and the Formation of the Italian Working Class,” in Martin Blinkhorn, ed., Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Routledge, 2003), 45, 171.

  31 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 281–84; 32030; 516–17.

  32 Riccards, Vicars of Christ, 38–39.

  33 Leo XIII condemned Americanism in January 1899. He addressed the issue of Christian democracy in Italy in January 1901 (Graves de Communi). Leo feared that “an era of liberty” meant that “spiritual direction . . . was less necessary.” See also Allen, All the Pope’s Men, 315; “Religion: America in Rome,” Time, February 25, 1946.

  34 Thomas T. McAvoy, “Leo XIII and America,” in Leo XIII and the Modern World, ed. Edward T. Gargan (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1961); see also John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Vol. 2 (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1952); John C. Fenton, “The Teachings of the Testem Benevolentiae,” American Ecclesiastical Review 129 (1953): 124–33.

  35 Diuturnum, an encyclical on Civil Power, issued June 29, 1881. A digital copy is at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_29061881_diuturnum_en.html.

  Chapter 4: “Merely a Palace, Not a State”

  1 Reese, Inside the Vatican, 88; The longest conclave was in the thirteenth century in which eighteen deadlocked cardinals argued for three years before settling on Gregory X.

  2 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 59–60.

  3 Francis X. Seppelt and Klemens Löffler, A Short History of the Popes (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1932), 498; Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 332–41.

  4 Kelly, Dictionary of Popes, 313.

  5 Riccards, Vicars of Christ, 58.

  6 Katherine Burton, The Great Mantle: The Life of Giuseppe Melchiore Sarto, Pope Pius X (New York: Longmans, Green, 1950), 157–58; Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 345.

  7 For a detailed discussion of the history of the Curia, see Reese, Inside the Vatican, 106–39, 158–72; Norwich, Absolute Monarchs, Kindle edition, location 1736 of 8891; Allen, All the Pope’s Men, 28–44, 68.

  8 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 367.

  9 Norwich, Absolute Monarchs, Kindle edition, location 7544 of 8891.

  10 Francis Xavier Murphy, “A Look at the Earth’s Tiniest State,” Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1982, 11.

  11 In Sapienti Consilio (Wise Counsel) Pius wanted to eliminate eighteen dicasteries (departments of the Roman Curia). He managed to close ten and created two new ones. But the number of Curial workers stayed virtually the same. See a digital English translation at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-x_apc_19080629_ordo-servandus-normae-1_lt.html.

  12 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 73–74.

  13 Anthony Rhodes, The Power of Rome in the Twentieth Century (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983), 195.

  14 Lamintabili Sane (Lamentable Certainly—Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists), July 3, 1907. A digital copy is at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius10/p10lamen.htm.

  15 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 36–39.

  16 Norwich, Absolute Monarchs, Kindle edition, location 7544 of 8891.

  17 It was the Oath Against Modernism (Motu Proprio Secrorum Antistium). Fewer than fifty priests refused to take it, most of them German. See generally Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 355–59; see also Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 39–40.

  18 Historian John Cornwell theorized that the decree from Pius to lower the confessional age to seven inadvertently “prompted sex complexes” and that pedophile clerics used it to target their victims. John Cornwell, The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

  19 M. De Bujanda and Marcella Richter, ed., Index librorum prohibitorum: 1600–1966, Vol. XI (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2002).

  20 Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 356. />
  21 In a 1907 decree, Pius branded the burgeoning “modernist movement”—represented in part by the works of Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Friedrich Nietzsche—as heresy. Intellectuals universally castigated Pius’s thinking as a giant backward step for the church.

  22 Archivo Segreto Vaticano, SdS, Spoglio di Pio X, fasc. 1, letter of April 2, 1905; fasc. 10, three receipts for a total of 500,000 lire, dated August 14, 1907, and September 28, 1914; see Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.

  23 Riccards, Vicars of Christ, 67.

  24 Pius concentrated on Catholics in Poland, then under Russian control. The tsar considered it to be Papal interference in Russia’s westernmost province.

  25 Lai, Finanze e finanzieri vaticani, 262; see also Burton, The Great Mantle, 157, 205–6.

  26 Lai, Finanze e finanzieri vaticani, 210–13. It is quoted slightly different in Spadolini, ed., Il Cardinale Gasparri e la questione romana: Con brani delle memorie inedite (Florence: 1971), 234: “The Vatican is merely a palace with a garden on the edge of Rome.”

  27 Lai, Finanze e finanzieri vaticani, 207.

  28 Ibid., 259–60; Author interview with Benny Lai, September 20, 2006.

  29 SdS, Spoglio de Pio X, fasc. 1, letter from Pius of September 28, 1912, ASV; see Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.

  30 Christopher Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870–1925 (Oxford: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 323.

  31 Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 323; Lai, Finanze e finanzieri vaticani, 262–63.

  32 Daniel A. Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), 157–58. Seemingly everyone in the church noted that Karl Marx was Jewish. Although he was a secular Jew, most prelates incorrectly thought that his faith was instrumental to his political treatises that fueled socialism. The 1848 The Communist Manifesto—which Marx co-wrote with Friedrich Engels—was the anti-bible to the Vatican. It reinforced the widespread prejudice that Jews were inherently revolutionary, seeking by design the destabilization of established monarchies and the church. Anti-Semites pointed to Marx’s celebration of the assassination of Paris’s archbishop in 1871 by members of a revolutionary worker’s commune. “The Jew is behind it all,” wrote the hugely successful Catholic populist Edouard Drumont. See Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 426–38.