Regardless, on returning to Rome, John Paul II defrocked dozens of priests and nuns who had supported the revolutionaries. Although his visit brought a temporary lull to the revolution, within a year the people woke up and the revolution began to take hold once more.
Yet, communism had already taken hold in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had come to power. Reagan and Bush, terrified it would spread to other countries and bring an end to poverty in Central America, took drastic measures to fund their Contra war. In 1985, in a CIA covert operation, they secretly sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to the Contras—the Iran-Contra Affair.
Promoters of the Contras’ reign of terror in Central America:
When and where the $1.3 billion went
‘Offshore banks’ Nordeurop and Manic were themselves ghost companies operating within Europe. Conversely, the Panamanian banks involved in the scheme were innocent bystanders which later cooperated with Italian courts. That most of the money was drawn in cash or wired to other Central American banks and then drawn down in cash the courts were unable to determine what happened to it.
At the risk of redundancy, there are some dates one must consider when one determines what happened to the $1.3 billion.
April 1979, Sandinistas begin to take hold and Somoza flees Nicaragua – Contras emerge to maintain a rich and poor society. Carter refuses to support the Contras.
May 9, 1979, the 1st scandal transaction - $3million ‘loan’ to Bellatrix in Panama.
October 11, 1979, Sandinistas seize Ambrosiano branch in Nicaragua which up to this point has deposited $378 million in the APSA/IOR which, in turn, had been transferred to Panama banks as ‘loans’ to Panamanian ghost companies—Contras.
October 17, 1979, the new Lima branch’s 1st transaction. It deposits $134 million in APSA/IOR which loans it to United Trading Company of Panama—Contras.
September 1, 1980, up to this point the Vatican had loaned $1.192 billion of the $1.285 billion to ghost companies in Panama and Europe.
September 1980, Polish Solidarity is first conceived, operational by end of 1981.
January 1981, Reagan becomes president. Congress begins to finance the Contras.
March 17, 1981, Licio Gelli’s villa is raided and Roberto Calvi is brought to trial.
June 10, 1981, the last bank scandal transaction takes place.
June 1981, the USA airbase in Honduras supporting the Contras is operational
During the lengthy Calvi trial, directors of the Nicaraguan and Lima branches holding unsecured notes became uneasy. The IOR issued a letter of comfort claiming it owned the ghost companies.
Peru September 1, 1981
Banco Ambrosiano Andino, Lima,
Ambrosiano Group Banco Comercial, Managua, Nicaragua
We directly or indirectly control:
Manic S.A. Luxembourg, Astolfine S.A. Panama, Nordeurop Liechtenstein,
United Trading Corporation, Panama, Erin S. A. Panama, Bellatrix S.A. Panama,
Belrose S.A. Panama, Starfield S.A. Panama
We acknowledge the indebtedness of these companies to you as of June 10, 1981.
Luigi Mennini Pellegrino De Stroebel Institute of Religious Works
That the letter was signed by officers Mennini and De Stroebel, and not by Marcinkus, demonstrates the conspiracy—the end use of the money—was known only to those at the very top of the Vatican Empire: John Paul II, Casaroli, Caprio and Marcinkus.
Had Mennini and De Stroebel known of the plot, they would have never signed the letter. Marcinkus eventually denied its terms.
Because those within the Vatican were never brought to trial, the courts had to reconstruct the money flow by working backwards from the banks the APSA/IOR had transferred the money to.8
In the end investors recovered sixty percent of their investments. $215 million was recovered from ghost companies mostly Manic and Nordeurop, $241 million from the Vatican and the balance from liquidation of unrelated Ambrosiano assets. 12
Because the accounts were brought down in cash, the courts were unable to determine what happened to it. Yet, the most logical conclusion one can come to is that which disappeared in Central America went directly to the Contras and that which disappeared in Europe went to buy arms for the Contras from European sources. Had all the money gone to Panamanian banks it would have been subject to the same central banking restrictions placed on all money flowing out of the region—the reason why a part of the money was ‘loaned’ to European ‘ghosts.’ It is reasonable to believe a few dollars in the late stages may have been funneled to Solidarity.
The Great Vatican Bank Scandal began as The Vatican-Contra Affair in the fall of 1978—a plot to suppress the revolution of the poor in Central America. The closer one is to the ground, the more vulnerable one is to vendors of the supernatural. The closer one is to death, the more vulnerable one is to vendors of the supernatural. The Roman Catholic Church is the Wal-Mart of the Supernatural World.
Why John Paul ordered the audit of the Vatican bank?
Albino Luciani had a strong background in finance and banking. Like Marcinkus, he knew you can’t run the Church on Hail Marys.
At Belluno, as vicar general, he had been responsible for finance and administration of the diocese. He had for those years worked as chief financial officer of the diocese interfacing with its banks.
When he inherited the bankrupt diocese of Vittorio Veneto, he took control of its banking bringing the diocese to solvency and in time to prosperity. During his tenure there, he chaired each of the parish banks, often riding to them on bicycles.
Likewise, in Venice, he took over Banca Cattolica del Veneto.
When elected to the papacy, he took over APSA/IOR. In taking over a bank the first thing one does is order an audit. Benelli headed up the audit not only because of his skilled banking background but because, in the near term, he would become secretary of state—the position to which all Vatican banking activities reported at the time.
Had John Paul not ordered an audit of the Vatican bank it would have been out of character for him, so I don’t really have to answer the question: Why John Paul ordered the audit of the Vatican bank?
Yet, I will give you the results of the audit he ordered.
The Vagnozzi Report disclosed the IOR was operating at a $40 million deficit and had been guaranteeing Ambrosiano contracts and clearing Ambrosiano funds into international markets bypassing the Bank of Italy for rich commissions—operations legal at the time.
The Vagnozzi dossier, the courts and all that history has recorded clearly established the bank scandal—the swindling of investors out of $1.3 billion—began and ended under the reign of John Paul II.
The only deal guaranteed by IOR tried by the courts in the Ambrosiano collapse was its ‘guarantee’ of the $1.3 billion swindled from investors. The $241 million went entirely to these investors.
No other obligation of the Vatican was proved by courts which investigated the Ambrosiano downfall. A few guarantees the IOR had made under Paul VI which failed had already surfaced and been satisfied by the Vatican by the time Luciani was elected.
To the extent the sale of shares of the Catholic Bank of Italy at low prices to Ambrosiano in the seventies overvalued Ambrosiano shares, it would have been a part of the overall $3.5 billion ‘black hole’ in Ambrosiano. But, again, it had nothing to do with The Vatican Bank Scandal—the swindling of $1.3 billion from investors.
Yet, even in this case, the audit did not tell Luciani anything he did not already know. His signature executing the contract of the Ambrosiano acquisition of the Banca Cattolica del Veneto in 1971—the largest of these transactions—attests he sanctioned the deal—the bank was owned by the Venice archdiocese and not by the Vatican.
One could say the providential coincidence of a democrat in the Vatican and a democrat in the White House—the powers of money and influence required to enact a redistribution of wealth society in Central America—may have cost John Paul his life.<
br />
Yet, one is smoking funny cigarettes when one says John Paul was murdered because the audit he ordered threatened to uncover a bank scandal which had not yet occurred.
I say the proceeds of The Great Vatican Bank Scandal went to the Contras. The timing of Carter’s presidency and the timing of the transactions match the rising of the Contras to a tee—1978-1981.
Is it mere coincidence all these champions of a redistribution of wealth society—Aldo Moro, Paul VI, John Paul and scores of others we have talked of—died of natural causes at the only moment in world history communism happened to have been taking hold in Europe and Latin America as the will of the people? I don’t think so.
I have said this with much more than mere supposition.
All of the known facts point to this conclusion. One does not have to be an expert in international banking and finance to know this. One has only to use the intelligence one has been gifted with and apply a bit of common sense. “One does not run one’s money through war ravaged regions of the world unless one intends it remain there.” Paul Marcinkus first said it. We have proved it.
What’s more, in my case, I know because I was there.
I woke up in my hotel room to the shouting in the streets in Guatemala City on the morning Jimmy Carter became President of the United States. I was standing in the boss’s office on Shippan Point on Long Island Sound being charged with the task to figure out a way to get my company’s money out of Central American banks on the day John Paul I lay on a catafalque in St. Clementine Chapel. I was enjoying lunch in San Jose when word came Oscar Romero’s blood had been splattered on the altar in neighboring El Salvador. I was sound asleep in my bed in Panama City the night four nuns of the Maryknoll order were raped and murdered in Nicaragua. I was there in the lamplight of the evening in San Salvador when a dozen half-naked, half-limbed, starving children scrambled at the rice and beans mixed with the mud of the street.
Where was the rest of the world when all this horror I have spoken of here was tucked stealthily into the inner pages of papers? On their terraces sipping coffee and reading the comics and sports sections of the morning edition? In church listening to their emissary from Rome campaign for Reagan and Bush?
Yes, dropping their five-dollar bills into the poor box to support heartless men of a Vatican regime with their bellies filled and nestled comfy in their feather beds with pillows of down each night. While, on the other side of the world, a thousand miniature caskets waited silently in the dark for the coming of the dawn.
Yet, we have come to the end of the day. What do we have?
The Great Vatican Bank Scandal was just one more tug-of-war between those on the left who think Christ is what the good bishop of Vittorio Veneto once told me He is “What is in this for others” and those on the right who are convinced Christ is nothing more than ‘A piece of bread in a cup.’
1 TIME-Europe 82-84
2 NY Times 10 Jun 86
3 Washington Post 22 Jul 80
4 New York Times 4 Dec 86 Iran-Contra Affair
5 Washington Post 27 Mar 86 Wikipedia Michele Sindona
6 TIME 26 Apr 76 What if Communists Win a Role?
7 La Osservatore Romano 2 Jan 69 Liberation Theology
8 TIME-Europe 82-83 Wall Street Journal 27 Apr 87 La Stampa 6 Sep 85 La Repubblica 2 Jan 84 Ansbacher vs. Ambrosiano Irish Supreme Court 1987, Latour vs. Ambrosiano Paris 1985,etc.
Chapter 36
The Ides of March
1978 Poverty Summit, Vittorio Veneto
It was the middle of March nineteen hundred seventy-eight.
Halfway up the mountainside the ancient castle loomed out over the sprawling village of Vittorio Veneto.
Ghostly clouds swirled about its surviving towers forming a silent marquis, hinting of the shrouded happenings going on beneath them. Yet, they could not foretell the horror of what was about to come.
Thirty-three men surrounded by thirty-three angels. Each one in Byzantine fashion, each one in individual color, each one bearing a shield with coat-of-arms, each one armed with a weapon of medieval times, each one topped off with a golden halo, each one standing in a carved mahogany panel. Each one watching, each one listening…
The enormous clock ticked so loudly it bellowed each passing moment in time. So much so, each of the room’s occupants answered in unison with a twitch each time it marked a spot in time.
The Poverty Summit
Here in the foothills of the great Dolomite Mountains, for three days and three nights, had been clustered together the leaders of the Marxist movement in the western world.
There were those whose congregations were starving to death in the wake of the rich and poor society imposed upon them and there were others who just wanted to help.
A bit of what had happened in the Russia Revolution.
In 1918, Lenin’s Bolshevik Party was defeated by the Peasant Party in a free election—the will of the people. Unfortunately, it was the will of uneducated people. His objective was to achieve a more equitable society in an organized manner by progressively increased taxation of the rich; he would force the rich to give the poor equal opportunity, not only in food and shelter, but in education, to enable each of them to make his or her utmost contribution back to society.
However, the opposition Peasant Party offered a much better deal to the poverty stricken masses: a turnkey Marxist society in which the government seized all property and divided it among the poor—a free ride. Thus, motion pictures of war-torn Russia like Doctor Zhivago depict mansions being divided into apartments for the poor. Lenin, losing the election, took control via military force; we all know what happened after that.
Yet, we are speaking here of another kind of communism. One which had already captured the vote in Italy and was poking its nose into the impoverished nations of Central America and other parts of the world as the clouds swirled about the towers of Vittorio Veneto.
One is speaking of a free democratic communist society driven by the will of the people—one that forces the rich to help the poor.
One is not speaking here of a society which foregoes a free enterprise system and simply divides up the pie equally. One is speaking of a society which affords each child an equal opportunity to make his or her maximum contribution back to society.
The primates of world poverty
There were thirty-three in all scattered about the immense room.
There was Valerian Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay and Primate of India. Gracias, or the ‘Reincarnation of Gandhi’ as he was often called, was determined to succeed where his namesake had failed.
In recent years, Gracias had risen as an enemy of the capitalistic world imposed upon him. Although he had reservations concerning contraception, he was the great ally of Luciani concerning the pill.
“It would be a godsend to the teeming masses of our country”1 he once reasoned with Mother Teresa who was rigidly opposed to any form of contraception—she didn’t care how much poverty and starvation overpopulation wrought despite she spent her life trying to minimize the damage it brought.
Cardinal Yu Pin, Primate of China, protectorate of five hundred million peasants who were starving to death sat in front of a huge fireplace trying to keep warm.
He peered up at an aging oil painting of Christ throwing the money makers out of the Temple—golden coins splashing down out of its ornate frame. Its artist, centuries removed from this room, depicting the goings on within it to a tee—rid the world of greed.
Chatting with him was Cardinal Delargey.
As archbishop of the stately province of Wellington he oversaw the impoverished islands of the South Pacific. It was no surprise the two were together here at Vittorio Veneto as they were often seen together in the public eye. They were the best of friends.
With them was Cardinal Trinh Nhu Khue, Primate of Eastern Asia—overseer of Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and other mainland countries which had borne the brunt of the Vatican’s war against atheism. Buddhist countri
es cast into decades of suffering and death by Pius XII and just now emerging from the horrors of war.
Off to one side, Cardinal Boleshaw Filipiak of Gniezno, Poland sat pensively gazing out of the only window in the room. He peered across the seemingly endless span of Vittorio Veneto and wondered how it had come about.
During the World War, it had been two villages—the site of the bloodiest struggle of all. Near the Austrian border, the village to the north was in the German ranks, the one to the south in the Allied ranks. Brother fought against brother. When all was said and done, one in ten was alive. To symbolize peace, the villages were united as a single municipality—Vittorio Veneto—Veneto Victory.
Though he had no official title to say so, the primate of poverty in Eastern Europe thought back three-and-a-half decades before.
During the war Filipiak had been leader of the Polish resistance. When Karol Wojtyla had risen in the Nazi ranks to quartermaster of the Solvay Chemical plant at Krakow, he approached Wojtyla that he might divert supplies to the resistance. Wojtyla refused. A few days later, Filipiak was arrested and spent the rest of the war in a Nazi prison camp, lucky to have escaped with his life. Although he had no proof, it remained his conviction Wojtyla had turned him in.2
After the war, he rose up as the leader of the movement against Wojtyla’s effort to retain the fragments of fascism the allies had not yet taken from him—segregation. Wojtyla tabbed him a communist. The nametag froze Filipiak in his tracks. As a result, Poland was the last European country to admit blacks into its population. He had lost that one; but he was determined he would not lose this one.
In the eastern bloc of European nations, millions of born-out-of-wedlock children remained confined to streets and sewers. Filipiak would bring about a society that affords each of them an equal opportunity to earn his or her fair share of the pie—communism.
Murder in the Vatican Page 47
