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

by Gerald Posner

  33 While Nogara and his financial administration prepared for the postwar era, Pius also set about to make his permanent mark on Catholicism. In 1950, he announced Munificentissimus Deus, the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. It decreed that God had taken to heaven the physical body of the mother of Jesus. The doctrine had been debated in earlier centuries and rejected by other Popes since scripture did not support it. Pius definitively settled the issue by invoking the Papal doctrine of infallibility (no other Pope has ever claimed infallibility on a matter of faith). Four years later, in his encyclical Sacra Virginitas, Pius cited Mary for the concept that virginity was more perfect than marriage. See Sacra Virginitas, March 25, 1954, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_25031954_sacra-virginitas_en.html. See generally Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 21.

  34 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 57.

  35 Grilli, La finanza vaticana in Italia, 131, 139–41.

  36 Montini and Monsignor Domenico Tardini had jointly filled the office—subject to Pius’s tight supervision—that had been vacant since Cardinal Maglione’s 1944 death.

  37 Steinacher, Nazis on the Run, 106.

  38 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 57–58.

  39 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 136.

  40 “New Cardinals Receive Symbolic Hats from Pope,” The Boston Globe, January 14, 1953, 8.

  41 Pius also passed over his other Undersecretary of State, Monsignor Tardini. In a January 12, 1953, meeting of some cardinals, Pius said he had wanted to appoint both Montini and Tardini, but that they had declined. Their decision, said Pius, was “palpable evidence of their virtue.” Few in the Curia believed that the duo had voluntarily passed the chance to become to cardinals. Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 112.

  42 Francis Xavier Murphy, “City of God,” The Wilson Quarterly 6, no. 4 (Autumn 1982): 105.

  43 See Roland Flamini, Pope, Premier, President (New York, Macmillan, 1980), 166–67; Michael Novak, The Open Church (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 31–32. Theoretically any Catholic man can be selected at a conclave to serve as Pope. But the last noncardinal, Urban VI, was picked in 1378, and his choice led to the Western Schism in which Urban had to fight for legitimacy against Clement VII.

  44 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 22.

  45 Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 146; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 29.

  46 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 52–56.

  47 See generally Raw, The Moneychangers, 52;. At the Ceramica Pozzi (earlier Pozzi-Ginori), Paolo Nogara served with Prince Marcantonio Pacelli, who represented the church’s investment in the firm. Paolo also served on a series of boards in the chemical industry, all of which had Vatican investments.

  48 Grilli, La finanza vaticana in Italia, 114–15, 156–57.

  49 Ibid., 114–15.

  50 Arnaldo Cortesi, “Pope over Crisis, His Doctors Feel; New Therapy Set,” The New York Times, December 5, 1954, 1; Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 155.

  51 Pascalina later wrote admiringly of Niehans, see generally Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 154–58, 179.

  52 Sister Pascalina wrote in her memoirs about Pius’s “serious illness” and that “his stomach rejected all food.” He was beset daily with nausea and “the continued, cruelly debilitating hiccupping. The only periods of respite were the brief half hours of sleep.” Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 155.

  53 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 22–23.

  54 Niehans convinced the Pope not to undergo exploratory surgery to check further on what was causing his stomach problems. Instead, Niehans continued administering a combination of his specially formulated injections and as well as blood transfusions. Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 158.

  55 Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 156–57.

  56 By that time, Niehans had formed his own Swiss clinic that was shipping its products worldwide. Although he died in 1981, the eponymously named clinic flourished. On its website—http://www.paulniehans.ch/clinic.htm—the Clinic Paul Niehans claims it can “rejuvenate and revitalize your body” and cites famous patients including Pope Pius XII, Charlie Chaplin, Saudi King Ibn Saud, and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

  57 Niehans returned to treat Pius in October 1958. He was there during the Pope’s final days; Pascalina “Niehans never left the bedside.” Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 187, 190, 192.

  58 Robert A. Ventresca, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII (Cambridge: Harvard University Press/Belknap Press, 2013), 294. “I shall die quite suddenly one day and I’m glad I’ve written my testament. . . . I asked God for a day.” Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 164.

  59 Sister Pascalina later recounted how she and a few other Papal confidants had tried but failed to see what Pius described. “The following day was a Sunday. Full of expectation we went into the garden, hoping to see the spectacle as well, but we came home again disappointed.” Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 136. See also Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 20–21.

  60 Ventresca, Soldier of Christ, 292–93.

  61 See for example Cortesi, “Pope over Crisis, His Doctors Feel; New Therapy Set,” 1.

  62 Although embalming was against Vatican tradition, Dr. Galeazzi-Lisi persuaded Cardinal Tisserant that Pius had secretly authorized him to do it utilizing a method the doctor swore was the same ancient formula used for Jesus. But he botched the herbal and chemical preparation. While Pius’s body was still at Castel Gandolfo, where he died, Galeazzi-Lisi wrapped it in plastic in a failed attempt to minimize the horrific odor. During the public procession from the summer palace to Rome, Pius’s chest exploded and some of the body began disintegrating before the horrified crowd. After spending a full night repairing the corpse, the following day Pius was laid in a transparent sheath on a colossal catafalque in St. Peter’s. As thousands slowly passed to pay their respect, yellowish gray splotches began appearing on Pius’s face. The decaying odor was soon so strong that one of the Swiss Guards fainted. At night, with the crowds gone, Galeazzi-Lisi climbed a ladder to pour more of his herbal concoction into the Pope. It was for naught. The casket had to be sealed and placed into a larger lead coffin before it could be buried without further incident. Galeazzi-Lisi compounded his bungled embalming by selling to Paris Match photos of the dead Pontiff as well as what he claimed was his diary of the last four days of Pius’s life. Italy’s medical association expelled him for “infamous conduct,” and the Catholic church censured him. But he incredibly reclaimed his medical license because of a technical flaw in the administrative proceedings against him. “Funeral of Pope Pius XII and Coronation of John XXIII,” 1958, DO 35/8036 (reference prior department CON 221/1), National Archives, Kew, UK; see generally Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 23–26; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 356; and Murphy, La Popessa, 15–16.

  63 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 31; Cooney, The American Pope, 258; see also Arnaldo Corteri, “Cardinal Roncalli Elected Pope; Venetian, 76, Reigns as John XXIII,” The New York Times, October 29, 1958, 1.

  64 Peter Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes (Cleveland, OH: William Collins, 1978), 73–74.

  65 When Venice was a republic, its top cleric was titled a Patriarch. That title from the days of the empire of the Papal States carried over to modern times. “Elections of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI; visit of Archbishop of Canterbury to Rome, 2 December 1960,” 1958–1963, PREM 11/4594, National Archives, Kew, UK.

  66 Reese, Inside the Vatican, 95.

  67 Cooney, The American Pope, 260; see also Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 41. A continuing conspiracy theory emerged from the conclave that Cardinal Siri was in fact elected, and then either not allowed to become Pope or for reasons not clear was afraid to accept the post. The so-called Siri Thesis is promoted by a small clique of Catholic traditionalists—called Sirianists—who believe that Roncalli was selected to liberalize the church by calling for the reform-minded Second Vatican Council. The “Siri-was-elected thesis” is based on several minutes of white s
moke after a vote on the second day, as well as some incorrect Italian newspaper accounts. It has been repeated everywhere from self-published books to YouTube videos. Some proponents have cited still classified FBI reports (conveniently not available for independent review) to support the theory. At the next three conclaves, in 1963 and 1978 (two that year), Siri was the top vote getter on the first ballots. See Reese, Inside the Vatican, 78, 85, 91, 93, 95.

  68 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 41; “Religion: I Choose John . . . ,” Time, November 10, 1958.

  69 “Religion: I Choose John . . . ,” Time.

  70 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 111–12.

  71 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 48.

  72 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 17–18; Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 48–49.

  73 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 325.

  74 Sereny, Into That Darkness, 323, note.

  75 Wilton Wynn, Keepers of the Keys: John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II—Three Who Changed the Church (New York: Random House, 1988), 17–18.

  76 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 19.

  77 Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 189.

  78 One version (Murphy, La Popessa, 301) has Pascalina slapping Tisserant. See also Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 137–-38; and Cooney, The American Pope, 262.

  79 Spellman quoted in Cooney, The American Pope, 261.

  80 John XXIII ordered the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano, to stop referring to him as “The Illuminated Holy Father,” or “The Highest Pontiff,” and instead use the simpler “Pope.” “Religion: I Choose John . . . ,” Time.

  81 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 27.

  82 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 236.

  83 Patrick Allitt, “Catholics and the New Conservatism of the 1950s,” U.S. Catholic Historian 7, no. 1, “Transitions in Catholic Culture: The Fifties” (Winter 1988): 15–37. The U.S. intelligence report is from Cooney, The American Pope, 278–79, citing memorandum, CIA staff report, “Change in the Church,” No. 27-63, May 13, 1963.

  84 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 14–17.

  85 Pope John refused repeated entreaties from the conservatives to mobilize the church in Italian elections on behalf of the Christian Democrats. In Latin America, John allowed bishops to criticize some totalitarian regimes backed by the U.S. When Spellman visited Nicaragua, the Pope personally requested that the New York cardinal not pose for any pictures with the right-wing strongman, Anastasio Somoza. Spellman ignored the directive and not only was photographed with Somoza but even gave his permission for his image to be put on a stamp with the dictator. “Visit by Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York to Nicaragua,” Code AN File 1781, FO 371/139625, National Archives, Kew, UK.

  86 “Nogara, 88, Directed Vatican’s Finances,” The New York Times, November 16, 1958, 88.

  87 See for instance “Bernardino Nogara,” The Boston Globe, November 16, 1958. The Globe, as did many other newspapers, had trouble describing what Nogara had done during his twenty-five years in the city-state. Some obituaries mistakenly referred to him as monsignor. Also, a few books and articles cite a statement attributed to Cardinal Spellman at the time of Nogara’s death: “Next to Jesus Christ the greatest thing that has happened to the Catholic Church is Bernardino Nogara.” However, no citation is provided. In his comprehensive biography of Cardinal Spellman (The American Pope), John Cooney does not repeat it, nor does John Pollard in his book, in which Nogara figures prominently, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.

  88 R. García Mateo, Rafael Wirth, and J. M. Puig de la Bellacasa, “Las finanza del Vaticano,” El Ciervo 19, no. 198 (August 1970): 10–11.

  89 Francis Xavier Murphy, “A Look at the Earth’s Tiniest State,” Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1982, 11; Murphy, “City of God,” 104.

  90 The First Vatican Council, called in 1864 by Pius IX, debated the role of the church in the modernist movement, and addressed whether the Pope was infallible when it came to matters of faith. Earlier Ecumenical Councils summoned in the church’s history—one in 325 to set the date for Easter or one in 431 to declare Mary the mother of God—did not require that all bishops assemble in Rome.

  91 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 361. The Second Vatican Council led to the removal of some of the most incendiary anti-Jewish language that had been a hallmark of the Catholic liturgy for centuries. Many traditionalists resented the changes, charging that the removal diluted the faith. A few conservative congregations refused to abide by the new rules. French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 led a breakaway group of uncompromising conservatives he called the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). Lefebvre was excommunicated, although in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI reversed the excommunication posthumously.

  92 “Pope Acts to Unite All Christians: Summons First Ecumenical (World-Wide) Council in Nearly a Century,” The Boston Globe, January 26, 1959, 1.

  93 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 153.

  94 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 35.

  95 Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 187; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 96–97. One of the best estimates of the value of the Vatican’s real estate holdings was a 1978 survey mostly from public records, and excluding real estate held by foreign dioceses, by the International Herald Tribune. It put the value at $36 billion ($176 billion in 2014 dollars). In 1985, New York Times reporter Paul Hoffman reported that the church owned between 20 percent of all land and 25 percent of all buildings in Rome’s city limits: Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 171.

  96 Raw, The Moneychangers, 51; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 97

  Chapter 14: The Men of Confidence

  1 Anonymous business colleague of Sindona quoted in Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Pontiff (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 145.

  2 Sindona’s father had trouble holding a regular job and his mother was an invalid. Sindona’s maternal grandmother raised him and his brothers. Raw, The Moneychangers, 56.

  3 Galli, Finanza bianca, 65. Author John Cornwell charged that immediately after the war, Sindona was “illegally trafficking in grains, with the benign acquiescence of the Allied Military Government on the island [Sicily].” Cornwell, God’s Banker, 36. Cornwell does not provide a citation for the allegation, and this author did not find documentary evidence to support it.

  4 Luigi DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker: Michele Sindona (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983), 13–14, 22.

  5 Jennifer Parmelee, Untitled, Associated Press, International News, Rome, BC cycle, May 18, 1986.

  6 Gianni Simoni and Giuliano Turone, Il caffè di Sindona: Un finanzieri d’avventura tra politica, Vaticano e mafia (Milan: Garzanti Libri, 2009), 33–34; see also Galli, Finanza bianca, 72.

  7 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 189.

  8 Ibid., 190.

  9 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 31; Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 146. Some writers, such as Charles Raw (The Moneychangers) believe that Sindona did not meet Spada until 1958. But their correspondence predates that.

  10 The party was the Partito Popolare.

  11 Nick Tosches, Power on Earth (New York: Arbor House, 1986), 22; see also Galli, Finanza bianca, 65.

  12 Murphy, “City of God,” 111; historian Carlo Pellegrini Bellavite, in a 2002 history of the Banco Ambrosiano (Il caso del controllo del Banco Ambrosiano), noted that “Montini had a good impression of Sindona. It was unlikely to find two people more different, Montini on the one hand a slender figure and ascetic, the disciple of Maritain, and the other figure a cold and ruthless Sicilian financier.” Cited in Galli, Finanza bianca, 69.

  13 Michael Arthur Ledeen, West European Communism and American Foreign Policy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987); “Chief Italian Red Sees Rightist Plot,” The New York Times, August 2, 1948, 3.

  14 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 35.

  15 Although Montini and Sindona were energized over the battle for control of the trade union because Secchia was a communist, neither man liked labor unions. Sindona thought they crippled fast-growing Italian companies from
competing internationally, and Montini feared that if they grew too powerful, it would only be a matter of time before the Vatican’s menial lay workers would want to organize. In fact, in 1979, many Vatican employees did join the Association of Lay Vatican Workers. Although unions were still banned inside the city-state, the association operated loosely as a central bargaining authority when it came to salary increases, adjustments in work hours, and changes to pension rights. DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 34–35; Tosches, Power on Earth, 37.

  16 “Italy: Beating the Cycle,” Time, September 25, 1964; see also Malachi Martin, The Final Conclave (Briarcliff, NY: Stein & Day, 1978), 28; Galli, Finanza bianca, 72.

  17 Within three weeks of assuming the Papacy, Pope John broke a 372-year history by expanding the College of Cardinals to seventy, the largest ever. During his Pontificate, he added another fifteen, including five Americans. Senior cardinals were not pleased with the expansion since it diluted their exclusive club. Although John is often deemed a reformer since he appointed the first cardinals from the Philippines and Japan, the college became more Italian under him than it had been since the turn of the century. He also increased, to one third, the number of cardinals who were Curia officials.

  18 Account of unnamed priest recounted in DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 35.

  19 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 59.

  20 David Yallop, In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007), 97–98; Paul L. Williams, The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 100–1.

  21 Between 1958 and 1965, the percentage of Italian families that owned televisions rose from 12 percent to 49 percent, refrigerators from 13 percent to 55 percent, and washing machines from 3 percent to 23 percent. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 239; see also William Easterly, “Reliving the 1950s: The Big Push, Poverty Traps, and Takeoffs in Economic Development,” Journal of Economic Growth 11, no. 4 (December 2006): 289–318; see also Cornwell, God’s Banker, 33.