by David Yallop
The theory of Humanae Vitae might well look like an ideal moral viewpoint when proclaimed from within the all-male preserve of the Vatican. The reality Luciani had observed in northern Italy and abroad clearly demonstrated the inhumanity of the edict. In that decade world population had increased by over three-quarters of a billion people.
When Villot demurred to point out that Pope Paul had stressed the virtues of the natural method of contraception Luciani merely smiled at him, not the full beaming smile that the public knew; it was more of a sad smile. ‘Eminence, what can we old celibates really know of the sexual desires of the married?’
This conversation, the first of a number the Pope had with his Secretary of State on the subject, took place in the Pope’s study in the Papal Apartments on Tuesday, September 19th. They discussed the subject for nearly forty-five minutes. When the meeting ended and Villot was about to leave, Luciani walked to the door with him and said:
Eminence. We have been discussing birth control for about forty-five minutes. If the information I have been given, the various statistics, if that information is accurate, then during the period of time we have been talking over one thousand children under the age of five have died of malnutrition. During the next forty-five minutes while you and I look forward with anticipation to our next meal a further thousand children will die of malnutrition. By this time tomorrow thirty thousand children who at this moment are alive, will be dead – of malnutrition. God does not always provide.
The Secretary of State for the Vatican was apparently unable to find an adequate exit line.
All details of the possible audience with a United States delegation, on the subject of population, were kept a carefully guarded secret both by the Vatican and the State Department. Such a meeting coming so early in Luciani’s Papacy would rightly be seen as highly significant if it became known publicly.
Even greater significance would have been attached to this by world opinion if it had become known that this was one reason why Pope John Paul I was not going to attend the Puebla Conference in Mexico. This Conference was to be the follow-up to a most important conference that had taken place in Medellin, Colombia in 1968.
At Medellin, the cardinals, bishops and priests of Latin America had injected new life into the Roman Catholic Church in the South American continent. Their declaration contained within the ‘Medellin Manifesto’ included the statement that the central thrust of their Church in the future would be to reach out and relate to the poor, the neglected and impoverished. It was a revolutionary change in a Church that had previously been identified with the rich and powerful. The ‘Theology of Liberation’ which came out of Medellin put the various juntas and oppressive regimes in South America on clear notice that the Church intended to work towards an end of financial exploitation and social injustice. It had, in effect, been a call to arms . . . Inevitably, resistance to this liberal philosophy came not only from the various regimes but also from the reactionary element within the Church. The Puebla meeting, a decade later, promised to be crucial. Would the Church continue farther down the same path or would there be a retrenchment to the old invidious position? For the new Pope to decline the invitation to attend the conference underlies just what importance he placed on his meeting with Scheuer’s Committee. He certainly knew the implications of the Puebla meeting,
In the Conclave, less than an hour after he had been elected Pope, Cardinals Baggio and Lorscheider, two key figures in the projected series of meetings in Mexico, had approached Luciani. Puebla had been postponed as a result of the death of Pope Paul VI. The Cardinals were anxious to know if the new Pope was prepared to sanction a new date for the Mexico meeting.
Luciani discussed the issues which would be raised at Puebla, in depth, less than an hour after his election. He agreed that the Conference should take place and the dates of October 12th to 28th were decided upon. During his discussion with Baggio and Lorscheider he astonished both Cardinals with his knowledge and grasp of the central issues which would be explored at Puebla. With regard to his own attendance, he declined to committ himself so early in his Papacy. When Villot advised him that Scheuer’s Committee would like an audience on October 24th he told Baggio and Lorscheider that he would not he attending Puebla. He also told Villot to confirm the meeting with the US delegation. It had been for Luciani the final confirmation that for the next few weeks his place was in the Vatican. There were other very cogent reasons for the decision to stay in Rome. Pope John Paul I had concluded by mid-September that his first priority should be to put his own house in order. The problem of the Vatican Bank and its entire operating philosophy had become of paramount importance to him.
Luciani moved with an urgency that had been noticeably lacking in his immediate predecessor’s last years. The new broom was not minded to sweep right through the Vatican in his first 100 days but he was anxious that within that time the Church should begin to change direction, particularly with regard to Vatican Incorporated.
Within his first week the new Pope had given an indication of the shape of things to come. He ‘assented’ to the desire of Cardinal Villot to be relieved of one of his many posts, the Office of President of the Pontifical Council, ‘Cor Unum’. The job went to Cardinal Bernard Gantin. Cor Unum is one of the great funnels through which pass monies collected from all over the world to be distributed to the poorest nations.
To Luciani, Cor Unum was a vital element in his philosophy that Vatican finance, like every other factor, should be inspired by the Gospel. Villot was gently replaced, but replaced nonetheless, by Gantin, a man of great spirituality and transparent honesty.
The Vatican village buzzed with speculation. Some proclaimed that they had never met Sindona or Calvi or any of the Milan Mafia who had infested the Vatican during Pope Paul’s reign. Others in their individual bids for survival began to filter information to the Papal Apartment.
A few days after the Gantin appointment the new Pope found a copy of an Italian Office of Exchange Control (UIC) circular on his desk. There was no doubt that the circular was a direct response to Il Mondo’s long, open letter to the Pope outlining an untenable situation for a man committed to personal poverty and a poor Church.
The circular, signed by the Minister of Foreign Trade Rinaldo Ossola, had been sent to all Italian banks. It reminded them that the IOR, the Vatican Bank, is ‘to all effects a non-residential banking institute’, in other words foreign. As such, relationships between the Vatican Bank and Italian credit institutes were governed by precisely the same rules that applied to all other foreign banks.
The Minister was particularly concerned with currency abuses involving the illegal flight of money from Italy. His circular was a clear Ministerial admission that these abuses were a reality. It was seen in Italian financial circles as an attempt to curb at least one of the Vatican Bank’s many dubious activities. In the Vatican City it was generally regarded as further confirmation that the death knell for Bishop Paul Marcinkus’s presidency of the Bank was ringing loudly.
A story which I believe to be apocryphal, but which many within the Vatican and within the Italian media have assured me is true, began to circulate around the Vatican village in early September 1978. It concerned the sale of Banca Cattolica del Veneto and Albino Luciani’s trip to the Vatican seeking to stop the sale of the bank to Roberto Calvi. In reality Luciani had the meeting with Benelli recorded earlier in this book. The version that buzzed through the village introduced elegant Italian variations. Luciani had confronted Paul VI who had responded: ‘Even you must make this sacrifice for the Church. Our finances have still not recovered from the damage caused by Sindona. But do explain your problem to Monsignor Marcinkus.’
A short while later Luciani presented himself in Marcinkus’s office and repeated the list of diocensan complaints concerning the bank sale. Marcinkus heard him out then said, ‘Your Eminence, have you nothing better to do today? You do your job and I’ll do mine.’ At which point Marcinkus showed Luciani t
he door.
Any who have seen Marcinkus in action will know that his manners match his nickname of The Gorilla. To the bishops, monsignors, priests and nuns in the Vatican City the general feeling was that the confrontation had happened. Now out of the blue, the small quiet man from Belluno could remove Marcinkus at a moment’s notice.
Members of the Curia organized a lottery. The object was to guess on which day Marcinkus would be formally removed from the Bank. Apart from the investigation being conducted on the Pope’s behalf by Cardinal Villot, the smiling Pope, with typical mountain shrewdness, opened up other lines of enquiry. He began to talk to Cardinal Felici about the Vatican Bank. He also telephoned Cardinal Benelli in Florence.
It was from Giovanni Benelli that the Pope learned of the Bank of Italy investigation into Banco Ambrosiano. It was typical of the way the Roman Catholic Church operated. The Cardinal in Florence told the Pope in Rome what was happening in Milan.
The former number two in the Secretary of State’s Department had built a strong network of contacts throughout the country. Licio Gelli of P2 would have been suitably impressed at the range and the quality of information to which Benelli had access. It included very well placed sources within the Bank of Italy. These were the sources which had informed the Cardinal of the investigation taking place within Roberto Calvi’s empire, an enquiry which was moving to its climax in September 1978. What particularly concerned Benelli, and subsequently Luciani, was the part of the investigation that was probing Calvi’s links with the Vatican. The Bank of Italy contact was certain that the investigation would be followed by serious criminal charges against Roberto Calvi and possibly against some of his fellow directors. Equally certain was the fact that the Vatican Bank was deeply implicated in a considerable number of deals that broke a variety of Italian laws. The men at the top of the investigating team’s list of potential criminals inside the Vatican Bank were Paul Marcinkus, Luigi Mennelli and Pellegrino De Strobel.
Benelli had learned over nearly a decade that one did not influence Luciani by strenuously urging a particular course of action. He told me:
With Pope Luciani, you laid out the facts, made your own recommendation, then gave him time and space to consider. Having absorbed all the available information, he would decide and when Pope Luciani decided, nothing, and understand me on this, nothing would move or shift him. Gentle, yes. Humble, yes. But when committed to a course of action, like a rock.
Benelli was not alone in having access to the thoughts of senior Bank of Italy officials. Members of P2 were feeding precisely the same information to Licio Gelli in Buenos Aires. He in turn was keeping his travelling companions Roberto Calvi and Umberto Ortolani fully briefed.
Other P2 members planted inside Milan’s magistrates’ offices advised Gelli that upon completion of the investigation into Banco Ambrosiano the papers would be passed to Judge Emilio Alessandrini. A few days after this information became available to Gelli a left-wing terrorist group based in Milan, Prima Linea, received word from their contact within the magistrates’ offices about the man whom the contact recommended as their next potential victim. The terrorist leader pinned a photograph of the target on his apartment wall: Judge Emilio Alessandrini. P2 moved in many directions, including the Vatican.
In early September Albino Luciani found that in some mysterious way he had been added to the exclusive distribution list of an unusual news agency called L’Osservatore Politico (OP). It was run by journalist Mino Pecorelli and invariably carried scandalous stories that subsequently transpired to be highly accurate. Now, along with top politicians, journalists, pundits and others with a need to know first, the Pope read about what OP called ‘The Great Vatican Lodge’. The article gave the names of 121 people who were alleged to be members of Masonic Lodges. A number of laymen were included in the list but it largely comprised cardinals, bishops, and high-ranking prelates. Pecorelli’s motives for publishing the list were simple. He was involved in a struggle with his former Grand Master, Licio Gelli. Pecorelli was a member of P2: a disenchanted member.
He believed that the publication of lists of Vatican Masons would cause the Grand Master of P2 maximum embarrassment, particularly as a considerable number of them were good friends of Gelli and Ortolani.
If the information was authentic then it meant Luciani was virtually surrounded by Masons and to be a Mason meant automatic excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. Before the Conclave there had been various murmurings that several of the leading papabili were Masons. Now on September 12th, the new Pope was presented with the entire list. With regard to the issue of Freemasonry, Luciani held the view that it was unthinkable for a priest to become a member. He was aware that a number of the lay Catholics he knew were members of various Lodges – in much the same way that he had friends who were Communists. He had learned to live with that situation but for a man of the cloth there was in Luciani’s view a different criterion. The Roman Catholic Church had decreed long ago that it was implacably opposed to Freemasonry. The new Pope was open to discussion on the issue, but a list of 121 men who were confirmed members hardly constituted discussion.
Secretary of State Cardinal Villot, Masonic name Jeanni, Lodge number 041/3, enrolled in a Zürich Lodge on August 6th, 1966. Foreign Minister Monsignor Agostini Casaroli. Cardinal Vicar of Rome Ugo Poletti. Cardinal Baggio. Bishop Paul Marcinkus and Monsignor Donato de Bonis of the Vatican Bank. The disconcerted Pope read a list that seemed like a Who’s Who of Vatican City. Noting with relief that neither Benelli nor Cardinal Felici appeared on the list, which even included Pope Paul’s secretary, Monsignor Pasquale Macchi, Albino Luciani promptly telephoned Felici and invited him over for coffee.
Felici advised the Pope that a very similar list of names had been passed quietly around the Vatican over two years earlier in May 1976. The reason for its re-emergence now was obviously an attempt to influence the new Pope’s thinking on appointments, promotions and demotions.
‘Is the list genuine?’ Luciani asked.
Felici told the Pope that in his view it was a clever mix. Some on the list were Masons, others were not. He elaborated. ‘These lists appear to have emerged from the Lefebvre faction . . . Not created by our rebel French brother but certainly used by him.’
Bishop Lefebvre had been a thorn in the side of the Vatican and particularly of Pope Paul VI for a number of years. A traditionalist who considered the Second Vatican Council to be the ultimate heresy, he largely ignored the Council’s conclusions. He had obtained worldwide notoriety by his insistence that the Mass should be celebrated only in Latin. His right-wing views on a variety of subjects had resulted in his public condemnation by Pope Paul VI. With regard to the Conclave that had elected Pope John Paul I Lefebvre’s supporters had initially stated that they would refuse to recognize the new Pope because he had been elected by a Conclave which excluded cardinals over the age of eighty. They had subsequently bemoaned the choice of names as being ‘ominous’.
Luciani considered for a moment. ‘You say lists like this one have been in existence for over two years.’
‘Yes, Holiness.’
‘Have the Press got hold of them?’
‘Yes, Holiness. The full list has never been pubiished, just a name here, a name there.’
‘And the Vatican’s reaction?’
‘The normal one. No reaction.’
Luciani laughed. He liked Pericle Felici. Curial to his finger-tips, traditional in his thinking, he was nevertheless a witty, sophisticated man of considerable culture. ‘Eminence, the revision of Canon Law that has preoccupied so much of your time, did the Holy Father envisage a change in the Church’s position on Fremasonry?’
‘There have been over the years various pressure groups. Certain interested parties who urged a more “modern” view. The Holy Father was still considering the arguments when he died.’
Felici went on to indicate that among those who strongly favoured a relaxation of the canon rule that declared that any Roman
Catholic who became a Freemason was automatically excommunicated, was Cardinal Jean Villot.
In the days that followed their discussion the Pope took to looking carefully at a number of his visitors. The trouble was that Freemasons look uncommonly like the rest of the human race. While Luciani considered this unforeseen problem, several members of the Roman Curia who were strongly sympathetic to Licio Gelli’s right-wing view of the world were channelling information out of the Vatican. The information eventually reached its destination, Roberto Calvi.
The news from the Vatican was grim. The Milanese banker was convinced the Pope was seeking revenge for the takeover of Banco Cattolica del Veneto. He could not envisage that Luciani’s probe into the Vatican Bank was other than personally directed and inspired by his desire to attack Roberto Calvi. Calvi recalled the anger among the clergy in Venice and Luciani’s protests, the closure of the many diocesan accounts and their transfer to a rival bank. What should he do? A substantial gift to the Vatican perhaps? A lavish endowment for charitable works? Everything he had learned of Luciani, however, would have told Calvi that he was dealing with a type of man he had met only rarely in his business, someone who was completely incorruptible.
As the days of September ticked by, Calvi moved around the South American continent, Uruguay, Peru, Argentina. Close by him at all times was either Gelli or Ortolani. If Marcinkus fell, a new man would soon discover the state of affairs and the true nature of the relationship between the Vatican Bank and Banco Ambrosiano. Mennini and De Strobel would be removed. The Bank of Italy would be informed and Roberto Calvi would spend the rest of his life in prison.