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

by Gerald Posner

  74 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 163–65.

  75 Riccards, Vicars of Christ, 122.

  76 “The Holy Office’s First Proposed Condemnation of National Socialism 1935,” ACDF, R.V. 1934, 29; Prot. 3375/34, Vol. 1, fasc. 3b (May 1, 1935), 16–26; “The Holy Office’s Revised Condemnation 1936,” ACDF, R.V., 1934; Prot. 3375/34, Vol. 4, fasc. 13 (October 1936); “The Holy Office’s Comparison Between Its Draft Condemnations and Mit brennender Sorge 1937,” ACDF, R.V., 1934; Prot. 3375/34, Vol. 4, fasc. 18 (April 1937); see also description of early drafts at Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 141–49.

  77 See the English translation of the encyclical at the Vatican’s archival online website: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html.

  78 Allen, All the Pope’s Men, 201–2. Paul Beecher Blanshard, an editor of The Nation, said about Mit Brennender: “It is this encyclical that is used in American Catholic propaganda to prove that the Pope was anti-Fascist. Actually, the Pope rebuked Mussolini not as a Fascist but as an anti-clerical.” “The Roman Catholic Church and Fascism,” The Nation, April 10, 1948, 393.

  79 Ludwig Volk, “Die Enzyklika Mit brennender Sorge,” in Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, ed. Dieter Albrecht (Ostfildern: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1987), 34–55.

  80 Martin Rhonheimer, “The Holocaust: What Was Not Said,” First Things, November 2003, 18–28.

  81 Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 167.

  82 Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 93–94; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 182–83.

  83 Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 157–58.

  84 In July 1941, Hitler publicly expressed what he had told others privately. “Christianity is the hardest blow that ever hit humanity. Bolshevism is the bastard son of Christianity; both are the monstrous issue of the Jews.” A few months later he warned, “The war will come to an end, and I shall see my last task as cleaning up the Church problem.” Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 261; John S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–45 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), 236–39; 243–44; 254–61; Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 178.

  85 Bergen to Berlin, July 23, 1937, Documents of German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D, Vol. 1, 990–92.

  86 Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 94; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 183.

  87 Wills, Papal Sin, 29.

  88 Robert G. Weisbord and Wallace P. Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust: An Era in Vatican–Jewish Relations (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992), 36. Pacelli did not show any sign that he was reconsidering the issue of anti-Semitism and the church. That May, he was the Papal Delegate at the International Eucharistic Conference in Budapest. More than 100,000 of the faithful attended, including 330 bishops and fifteen cardinals. That conference coincided with the Hungarian legislature passing the country’s first slew of anti-Semitic laws. Pacelli made a reference that some interpreted as a slight toward Jews when he castigated those people “whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today.” See “Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust.” Online at www.general-books.net/sw2.cfm?q=Pope_Pius_XII_and_the_Holocaust.

  89 Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 166; see Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 35.

  90 Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism (New York: Picador 2003), 70.

  91 Peter C. Kent, “A Tale of Two Popes: Pius XI, Pius XII and the Rome-Berlin Axis,” Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988): 600.

  92 Osborne sent a coded cable to London describing Pius’s transformation over a couple of years from “a Fascist Pope” to “an old and probably dying man, for whatever reasons he is following a policy in international affairs which on the major issues of principle corresponds very closely indeed with our own.” Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 25–26. Osborne’s official title was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See.

  93 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 190; see also Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 160; and Berry, Render Unto Rome, 66.

  94 John LaFarge, Interracial Justice as a Principle of Order (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1937); see also Wills, Papal Sin, 30.

  95 One was a German, Gustav Gundlach, who had worked on Pius’s 1931 Quadragesimo Anno, in which he presented nonsocialist alternatives to equality and workers’ rights under capitalism. The other Jesuit, Gustave Desbuqois, was French, and had worked on the same 1931 encyclical, as well as an anticommunist encyclical, the 1937 Divini Redemptoris.

  96 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 167. The source, who provided among other things the confidential minutes of the annual meeting of the German bishops, remains unidentified. It is one of the war’s great unsolved espionage mysteries.

  97 J.C.H. to A.W.D. (Allen Dulles), OSS, September 10, 1942, RG 226, E217, Box 20, Location 00687RWN26535, NARA; see Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 36; and Wills, Papal Sin, 31. German intelligence managed to place an agent in Ledochowski’s inner circle; see Report of Interrogation of Walter Schellenberg, June 27 to July 12, 1945, Top Secret, RG 226, E119A, Folder 2051, NARA.

  98 Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, translated from the French by Steven Rendall, with an introduction by Garry Wills (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997), 124–35; see also Wills, Papal Sin, 38.

  99 Some historians believe Pius was afflicted since childhood with epilepsy. A few anecdotal accounts support this conclusion, but there are no verified reports of seizures associated with the condition. Instead, there are many instances during his tenure marked by a fierce and uncontrollable temper as well as assaultive verbal explosions filled with invective and cruelness. Whatever their cause, those outbursts and fits became his feared trademark as Pope. Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 133, 143; Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War, 43, 56.

  100 Wills, Papal Sin, 39; Lo Bello, The Vatican Papers, 23.

  101 Maura Hametz, “Zionism, Emigration, and Anti-Semitism in Trieste: Central Europe’s ‘Gateway to Zion,’ 1896–1943,” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Indiana University Press 13, no. 3 (Spring–Summer, 2007): 121–24. Michele Sarfatti, The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality to Persecution, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 103–5, 130.

  102 “Italy’s ‘Race Laws Take 15,000 Jobs: Jews to Be Restricted to Labor and Small Trade—Police Warn ‘Aryan’ Servants,” The New York Times, November 20, 1938, 33.

  103 Germania 1938, Pos. 742, fasc. 354, 40ff, ASV, AES; see also Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 185.

  104 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 16, n. 90.

  105 Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 103.

  106 The day before Chamberlain met Pius, the Prime Minister met Mussolini. In that meeting, Il Duce told Chamberlain, “Another European war would mean the destruction of civilization.” Chamberlain was joined by his Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and Mussolini by his Secretary of State, Count Galeazzo Ciano. They also talked about “the Jewish refugee problem,” and Mussolini pushed the British representatives to consider a “sovereign Jewish state” in some country that had a lot of spare land. Il Duce suggested Brazil, Russia, or the United States. Chamberlain asked Mussolini if he might intercede with Hitler to see if he would not only let German Jews leave Germany, but also take some of their money with them. Mussolini said, “It would not be of much use to ask for a great deal as the Germans had suffered great hardships and had become very poor in consequence of the actions of Jews.” The persecution of the Jews, said Mussolini, was “an internal policy in Germany,” “The Visit to Rome of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from January 11 to January 14, 1939,” Foreign Office, War Cabinet, January 11, 1939, 24/282/8, 81–82, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK. Chamberla
in returned to London “very favorably” impressed with Mussolini. Cabinet 1 (39), January 18, 1939, 23/97/1, 4, Cabinet papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.

  107 “The Visit to Rome of the Prime Minister,” 86.

  108 On the morning that Pius XI died, Massimo Spada later recounted that Pacelli had found money left behind by the Pope: “Monsignor Angelo Pomato and I took all the money that Camerlengo Pacelli found in the study of the deceased Pope. Wrapped inside a handkerchief were Italian bank notes for 1,650,000 lire and also $1,200. That lire was deposited into the bank account number 1617 made payable to the Secretary of State, and the dollars to the current account 51170, with the same header as the other. It all went to pay homage to the mortal remains of the deceased.” Lai, Finanze Vaticane, 111, citing an interview by Lai with Massimo Spada, March 7, 1979. As for Pius’s desire to personally deliver a speech to the cardinals on February 11, see Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini, Kindle edition, location 274, 295 of 10577.

  109 Jean Charles-Roux, “How the Rumors Began that Pius XI was Murdered,” The Catholic Herald, July 7, 1972; Peter Eisner, “Pope Pius XI’s Last Crusade,” Huffington Post, April 15, 2013.

  110 Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 36; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 192.

  111 Jim Castelli, “Unpublished Encyclical Attacked Anti-Semitism,” National Catholic Reporter, December 15, 1972, 1.

  112 Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, “The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI,” available at washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/hiddenencyclicalofpiusxi.htm; Wills, Papal Sin, 32.

  113 Archivo della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede, S.O., 125/28 [R.V. 1928 n. 2], Vol. 1.

  114 Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, translated by Steven Rendall (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997), 247–49; “Humanis Generis Unitas,” paragraphs 133–36; Wills, Papal Sin, 36.

  115 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 191.

  116 Passelecq and Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical, 251–53; “Humanis Generis Unitas,” paragraphs 141–42; Lo Bello, The Vatican Papers, 22–23.

  117 “Humanis Generis Unitas,” 88. A copy of the encyclical is available at the Father Edward Stanton papers at Boston College (Burns Library).

  118 The writer and editor Conor Cruise O’Brien thinks the failure to release the encyclical was “one of the most tragic missed opportunities in history.” He argues that millions of Jewish lives would have been saved. Father Walter Abbot, an editorial writer at the Jesuits’ America, believes that Hitler would have cracked down even harder in the wake of the release of such an encyclical. This time the victims would not only be Jewish but also bishops and lay Catholic. Conor Cruise O’Brien, “A Lost Chance to Save the Jews?,” The New York Review of Books, April 27, 1989, 35. And see generally Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holcaust, 38.

  Chapter 8: A Policy of Silence

  1 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 205–8.

  2 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 170–71.

  3 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 40–42.

  4 Pius was a master linguist. He was fluent in German, Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. He also had given short speeches in Swedish, Dutch, and Danish. Before his death he studied Russian, hoping to address the Russian people.

  5 Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 184.

  6 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 168–70.

  7 See generally, Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 32–38.

  8 John P. McKnight, The Papacy: A New Appraisal (New York: Rinehart, 1952), 218.

  9 Frederic Sondern Jr., “The Pope: A Great Man and Great Statesman Works for the Peace of the World,” Life, December 4, 1939, 88.

  10 Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 2–3.

  11 La Conciliazione Ufficiosa: Diario del barone Carlo Monti “incaricato d’affari” del governo italiano presso la Santa Sede (1914-1922), (Vatican City: Antonio Scotta, 1997), 51; see also Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 62. Defenders of Pius try to discredit Monti since he bore Pacelli a personal grudge. Moreover, they claim the Pope could not have been that upset since he did not rebuke Pacelli. See Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 293.

  12 Sondern “The Pope,” 86–95.

  13 Ibid., 91; Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 20.

  14 Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 107–8.

  15 Pius XII had telephones installed in his study by International Telephone & Telegraph. His private phone had a solid gold receiver on which was engraved the Papal coat of arms. He used it over the Vatican’s internal switchboard to call Curia officials, usually for short, all-business monologues. See Paul L. Williams, The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (New York: Prometheus, 2003), 59; see also Sondern, “The Pope,” 91; and Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 19.

  16 Murphy, La Popessa, 60, 88.

  17 Ibid., 66. Some Italian priests working in the Curia did live at home with their parents for years while tending to duties inside Vatican City, but Pacelli bypassed living quarters offered to him by the Vatican in order to stay at home.

  18 Carl Steinhouse, Improbable Heroes: The True Story of How Clergy and Ordinary Citizens Risked Their Lives to Save Jews in Italy (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005), 30.

  19 Murphy, La Popessa, 54. She was born Josefine Lehnert and took the name Pascalina when she took her vows as a nun. And although she was never a mother superior of a convent, it became part of her widely accepted title. Canon code 133, set forth by Pope Benedict XV, ordered that the women who took care of the households of ranking clerics be beyond “canonical age,” lest it might give rise to suspicion of “something evil.” Canon Law encouraged that priests use their mothers, aunts, or elderly women for overseeing their households. Canonical age was the church’s oblique way of referring to menopause. See generally Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 134.

  20 After Pius had become Pope, the U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles met with him at the Vatican. During that meeting, Mother Pascalina entered unannounced and leaned over to Pius and spoke to him sternly in German. His soup was on the table. The Pope excused himself. Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 22; “Pope Takes Orders from Housekeeper,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, UPI, April 25, 1954, 32.

  21 Pius appointed Pascalina as the head of Vatican housekeeping. But she was much more than that, serving as a trusted confidante. Paul Hoffman covered the Vatican for The New York Times during the 1970s and later penned a book about the church (Anatomy of the Vatican). Hoffman wrote that while only a few women ever wielded “influence in the papal entourage”—such as the fourteenth-century mystic Catherine of Siena, and the seventeenth-century Swedish Queen Christina—that Pascalina was the “one woman alone in modern times [who] has exercised considerable, if unofficial, power in the Vatican.” See generally “Pope Takes Orders from Housekeeper,” 32. Also, Pascalina wrote a hagiographic account of her service for Pius after his death. An English language edition was not published until 2014. Pascalina Lehnert and Susan Johnson, His Humble Servant: Sister M. Pascalina Lehnert’s Memoirs of Her Years of Service to Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2014).

  22 Peter C. Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943–1950 (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2002), 64.

  23 “Religion: America in Rome,” Time, February 25, 1946.

  24 Murphy, La Popessa, 54–55, 57, 59. Two dozen reporters had camped out at Rome’s main rail station to capture Pacelli’s and Spellman’s return. They got past the reporters unnoticed, with Pacelli dressed as an ordinary priest and hiding behind large sunglasses, and Spellman disguised as a layman. A visiting New York priest remarked to friends back home that Spellman was utterly entranced by Pacelli, and jokingly said that Spellman seemed to be like a poodle being shown off and walked on Fifth Avenue by his owner. As for Spellman, he wrote to his mother about Pacelli: “He is very kind and pleasant a
nd confidential with me.” And Spellman wrote home somewhat facetiously that the Pope (Pius XI) called him “Monsignor Precious.” One of Pacelli’s first acts as Pope was to appoint Spellman the Archbishop of New York in 1939—that caused a ruckus among senior clerics who knew that Pius XI had intended to appoint Cincinnati’s Archbishop John McNicholas, but the Pope had died before he signed the papers. Seven years later, when the war ended, Pacelli made Spellman a cardinal (see generally, Francis Beauchesne Thornton, Our American Princes: The Story of the Seventeen American Cardinals [New York: Putnam, 1963], 200–202). John Cooney, Spellman’s biographer, recounted several secondhand stories that Spellman—an exacting public moralist—was in fact gay: John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York: Crown, 1984). The allegation caused an uproar when it was published. Spellman’s longtime clerical personal assistant dismissed it as “utterly ridiculous.” New York journalist Michelangelo Signorile followed up the leads in Cooney’s book and concluded in 2002 that Spellman was “one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church’s history,” a closeted gay man who was “known as ‘Franny’ to assorted chorus boys and others.” Michelangelo Signorile, “Cardinal Spellman’s Dark Legacy,” New York Press, May 7, 2002. The information provided about Spellman by author Paul Murphy in La Popessa is based in part on Murphy’s exclusive access to personal papers, diaries, and letters of Cardinal Spellman, provided by the cardinal’s brother, Dr. Martin Spellman.

  25 Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, 9; see also Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 2–3.

  26 Domenico Cardinal Tardini, Memories of Pius XII, trans. Rosemary Goldie (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1961), 73. Many thought Pacelli was too influenced by his cautious and accommodating predecessor, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri. Gasparri was also an energetic Secretary of State, but few of his colleagues thought him capable of administering the church. See Frank J. Coppa, The Policies and Politics of Pope Pius XII: Between Diplomacy and Morality (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 57.