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

by Gerald Posner

  81 Victor L. Simpson, Associated Press, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, September 29, 1978.

  82 Russell Watson, Loren Jenkins, Paul Martin, and Elaine Sciolino, “A Death in Rome,” Newsweek, October 9, 1978, 70; Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 244; Untitled, dateline Canale D’Agordo, Italy, P.M. cycle, Associated Press, September 29, 1978; Untitled, Dennis Redmont, dateline Vatican City, P.M. cycle, Associated Press, September 29, 1978; “The Original Engelbert,” Irish Daily Mail, October 19, 2012, 38.

  83 Buzzonetti interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 218.

  84 Lorenzi interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 111.

  85 Claiborne, “Thousands Mourn Pope’s Death,” A1.

  86 Villot quoted in Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 263; see also Hoffman, The Vatican’s Women, Kindle edition, location 2091 of 2992; and Sister Irma interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 215.

  87 Magee interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 249.

  88 Hoffman, The Vatican’s Women, Kindle edition, location 2077 of 2992; see also Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 263.

  89 In a two-page “Vatican Memorandum Supplied to Episcopal Conference, dated 1984,” the Vatican played down the significance of who first found the Pope. “While it makes no difference whether the Pope was found dead by a sister, or, as the Vatican communiqué said, by the private secretary of the Pontiff, in fact, the secretary instantly ran to the bedside of Pope John Paul I when he was summoned by the sister who suspected that something might be wrong.” The 1984 Vatican memo is reprinted in English in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 347–48.

  90 Ibid., 196, 201.

  91 Pope Paul VI was an avid fan of British novelist Graham Greene, and even arranged a meeting with him. Marcinkus recalled that Greene “almost dropped dead” when the Pope told him he had read “every one of your books.” The Vatican ensured that the news of Paul VI’s popular cultural preferences was never publicized. Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1a, provided to author courtesy of Willan. See also Farusi interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 202–3; in the “Vatican Memorandum Supplied to Episcopal Conference, dated 1984,” it was emphasized that “No official document ever mentioned it [the Imitation of Christ].” Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 347–48. For an example of how the story ran internationally, see “Book a 15-Century Work,” The Boston Globe, September 30, 1978, 9.

  Twenty-five years after the event, Lorenzi told the National Catholic Reporter’s John L. Allen Jr. that the papers in John Paul’s hand were some notes from his days as the Patriarch of Venice, which he was reviewing in preparation for the next Sunday sermon. “I’d like to know how anyone can say anything different,” Lorenzi told Allen. “Who else was there? Only we [Lorenzi, Magee, and Vincenza] were there.” John L. Allen Jr., “Lessons from a 33-Day Pontificate: John Paul I’s Secretary Reminisces on the Man and His Life,” National Catholic Reporter, September 5, 2003.

  92 Arnaldo Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 271. The Signoraccis, who claimed to use their own secret formula based on formaldehyde, considered John XXIII their finest work. His coffin was opened in 2001, thirty-eight years after his death, in order to move his remains from the crowded crypt in St. Peter’s to a new tomb in the basilica above. The body was still perfectly preserved. The Signoracci business was closed in 2002 after the death of the last brother, Renato. At the time, La Repubblica noted it was ironic that John Paul II, then eighty-one and in the twenty-fourth year of his Papacy, had outlived the Papal embalmers.

  93 Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 283–85.

  94 Arnaldo and Ernesto Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 272–73, 275.

  95 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 263; unidentified Curial monsignor quoted in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 52.

  96 Although Vatican entry logs show the morticians arrived that morning, the eyewitnesses to the traumatic event do not always recall it correctly. A decade later, Monsignor Lorenzi told John Cornwell that he did not remember the Signoracci brothers arriving until the evening. He then recounted that he, Villot and Dr. Buzzonetti had laid out the body. In fact, the morticians did that. As for the Signoraccis, when Cornwell interviewed them a decade later, they could not remember precisely when they got to the Vatican. Ernesto said, “It could have been at seven in the morning . . . it could have been ten in the morning . . . or at three in the afternoon, I don’t know.”

  97 Arnaldo Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 278; Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 263.

  98 Ernesto Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 275–77.

  99 Evan Whitton, “The Road to Rome,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 22, 1986, 41; Norwich, “Was Pope John Paul I Murdered?” The medication that was later confirmed as having been in the room was Effortil, an analeptic used to stabilize blood pressure, and often prescribed in instances of persistent low blood pressure. See also Watson, et. al., “A Death in Rome,” 70. As for the missing pages in the records of the Vatican pharmacy, see Cornwell’s interview with Brothers Fabian and Augusto in A Thief in the Night, 312–13.

  “He [Pope John] had no medical attention throughout his brief pontificate.” Peter Hebblethwaite, “Death of a Rumour,” The Spectator, June 16, 1989, 30.

  100 Associated Press, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, September 29, 1978. For the way the press release by the Vatican was placed into full news coverage, see generally “Pope John Paul Dies in Sleep: Succumbs to Heart Attack After Month in Office,” Associated Press, The Boston Globe, September 29, 1978, 1.

  101 Paul Hoffman, “Bungling and Surmises,” The New York Times, July 8, 1984, BR32. When Villot died of “acute bronchial pneumonia” at age seventy-three the following March, he was in Gemelli Hospital. He had been admitted two days earlier. But that did not stop his own death from being the subject of false speculation inside the Curia. An unnamed monsignor told John Cornwell that the “real” story was that Villot “collapsed outside the Vatican and got taken to the Gemelli. The Vatican people rushed around and snatched the body. . . . They pretended the corpse was still alive, took it back to the Vatican, and said he died holily in bed.” Unnamed monsignor interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 96.

  102 “Catholic Group Calls for Inquest into John Paul’s Sudden Death,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), October 4, 1978.

  103 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 269.

  104 Magee interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 251, 253.

  105 Ibid., 253.

  106 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 269; see generally Sandra Miesel, “A Quiet Death in Rome: Was Pope John Paul I Murdered,” Crisis Magazine, April 1, 2009.

  107 Obituary: “Archbishop Romeo Panciroli: Ponderous Vatican Press Officer,” The Independent (London), March 21, 2006, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/archbishop-romeo-panciroli-470769.html.

  108 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 270.

  109 Cardinal Felici spent the next two days combing through the Secret Archives to see if he might find any precedent for a postmortem exam. He discovered that in the diary of Agostino Chigi, heir to a Renaissance banking family, there was an entry that a secret autopsy had been conducted on Pius VIII, a day after his November 30, 1816, death. Pius died at the age of sixty-nine, after eighteen months as Pope. The purpose had been to see if his organs showed any evidence he had been poisoned (he had not). Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 271, 277–79.

  110 Whitton, “The Road to Rome,” 41; see also Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 272.

  111 Article 17 of Pope Paul VI’s Apostolic Constitution implicitly ruled out any autopsy since the only official method approved for certifying the death of a Pontiff is for the Camerlengo to confirm the death in the presence of witnesses and to then draw a death certificate. Some news accounts incorrectly reported that an autopsy was explicitly banned. See for instanc
e, Watson, et al., “A Death in Rome,” 70: “[t]he papal constitution forbids autopsies for popes.”

  112 Sari Gilbert, “Some Wonder Why No Autopsy on Pope,” The Boston Globe, October 2, 1978, 2. One of Italy’s preeminent surgeons, Dr. Pier Luigi Prati, told reporters for La Stampa and the Associated Press that it was possible that Pope John Paul died of a heart attack. “But it also could have been a cerebral hemorrhage. . . . In order to ascertain this, an autopsy would be necessary.” Dennis Redmont, Associated Press, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, September 30, 1978.

  113 Lorenzi interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 111–12.

  114 Ernesto Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 277. The Signoraccis were not paid for their services. “Absolutely nothing, only medals,” Arnaldo later recalled. “They made us [a] Knight of Gregory, with a diploma and that sort of thing,” confirmed Ernesto. Arnaldo and Ernesto Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 279.

  115 Hilmi Toros, Associated Press, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, October 2, 1978.

  116 Signoracci interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 272.

  117 Jose Torres, Associated Press, Rome, P.M. cycle, October 6, 1978. For Pope Paul VI and his comment on Satan entering the Vatican, see Donald R. McCleary, “Pope Paul VI and the Smoke of Satan,” An American Catholic, December 4, 2011.

  118 Gilbert, “Some Wonder Why No Autopsy on Pope,” 2.

  119 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 283.

  120 The Vatican decided at that point not to make records related to John Paul’s death available for any independent review. Author John Cornwell was refused in 1988 access to any documentation about the Pope’s passing, from his death certificate to medical records to his will. The author’s own requests for such materials twenty-five years later went unanswered.

  As for In God’s Name, by David Yallop, the book that later claimed the Pope was poisoned, the fact that many critics trashed it did not prevent it from becoming a bestseller. Steve Weinberg, the editor of Investigative Reporters and Editors, wrote in the Balitmore Sun, “The shame of publishing: truth is of no concern; neither factual accuracy nor overall truthfulness is taken seriously by many book publishers” (Steve Weinberg, “The Shame of Publishing,” Baltimore Sun, August 2, 1998, p. 11F). In a meticulous deconstruction in the Columbia Journalism Review, Weinberg called it “the Kitty Kelley syndrome,” and noted that Yallop’s book “proved none of its fantastic claims,” and had no source notes or bibliography (Steve Weinberg, “The Kitty Kelley Syndrome; Why You Can’t Always Trust What You Read in Books,” Columbia Journalism Review 30, no. 2 [July/August 1991]: 36). The Chicago Tribune said In God’s Name “was so conspiratorial that it bordered on the ludicrous,” and that although Yallop “fudged his sources,” and that “despite savage reviews, repeated Vatican denunciations and bewilderment and outrage by people Yallop claimed to have interviewed,” book sales had soared (Peter Former and John Blades, “Fiction Passing as Fact Fuels a Crisis in Print,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1985, p. C1].

  121 David Yallop, In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, 240–42, 289–92; Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 313–25. See also George Rush and Joanna Molloy, for church comments regarding In God’s Name, see generally Untitled, dateline Vatican City, International News, A.M. cycle, Associated Press, June 12, 1984. “Elton John’s Movie Plans Provoke Vatican’s Wrath,” The Toronto Star, February 17, 1999.

  In 2014, a successful play about foul play in John Paul’s death titled The Last Confession kicked off an international tour in Toronto. “The Last Confession Probes Papal Death, Vatican Intrigue,” CBC News, April 19, 2014.

  122 Martin, Final Conclave; Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 295.

  123 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 309.

  124 They included Madrid’s Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, Samoa’s Pio Taofinu’u, Holland’s Johannes Willebrands, England’s Basil Hume, and São Paulo’s Paulo Evaristo Arns.

  125 Malula quoted in “A Foreign Pope,” Time, October 30, 1978.

  126 Günther Simmermacher, “Electing a Pope: The Conclave of October 1978,” The Southern Cross, March 7, 2013; see also Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 152.

  127 König interviewed in George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: Cliff Street, 1999), 253.

  128 Author interview with Andrew Greeley, May 11, 2007.

  129 Simmermacher, “Electing a Pope: The Conclave of October 1978”; Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 313–14.

  130 Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 153.

  131 Whitton, “The Road to Rome,” 41; see also Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 314–16.

  132 Wojtyla quoted in Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 319.

  133 Simmermacher, “Electing a Pope: The Conclave of October 1978”; Whitton, “The Road to Rome,” 41.

  134 Cardinal Hume quoted in Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 156.

  135 He was a moderate by the standards of the church’s six Eastern European cardinals, but considered somewhat of a conservative by Western standards.

  136 Ronald Koven, “Cardinal Wojtyla of Poland Breaks Line of Italian Popes,” The Washington Post, October 17, 1978, A1.

  137 Weigel, Witness to Hope, 254.

  Chapter 21: The Backdoor Deal

  1 Weigel, Witness to Hope,16, 23. His mother’s family came from Silesia, and his father served in the Austro-Hungarian army. That meant Wojtyla’s second language at home was German. Hebblethwaite, Pope John Paul II and the Church, 260.

  2 Edward Stourton, John Paul II: Man of History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006), 25; Weigel, Witness to Hope; see also Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 157–60.

  3 Official biography [short] of John Paul II, Holy See Press Office, last updated June 30, 2005.

  4 Weigel, Witness to Hope, 44.

  5 Years later he bemoaned that he had not been present for the death of either of his parents or for a brother who died during the war. “At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved.” See generally Stourton, John Paul II: Man of History, 60. As for Kraków’s Black Sunday, see generally Norman Davies, Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw (London: Viking, 2004), 253–55.

  6 See “When Karol Wojtyla Refused to Baptize an Orphan,” Zenit, January 18, 2005, online at http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/when-karol-wojtyla-refused-to-baptize-an-orphan.

  7 Patricia Rice, “They Call Him ‘Wujek,’ ” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 24, 1999, 18.

  8 Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 165-66.

  9 Whitton, “The Road to Rome,” 41.

  10 Ibid., citing National Foreign Assessment Center report for the CIA, 59.

  11 Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, 257.

  12 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 347.

  13 See Lai, Finanze vaticane, 149.

  14 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 348.

  15 Marcinkus was raised in a household in which Lithuanian was his first language. His parents spoke it exclusively at home. He also studied it at school. Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1b, provided to author courtesy of Willan. “Marcinkus spoke good Polish”: Curzio Maltese, in collaboration with Carlo Pontesilli and Maurizio Turco, “Scandal, Intrigue and Mystery; The Secrets of the Vatican Bank,” translated by Graeme A. Hunter, La Repubblica, January 26, 2008.

  16 The shrine was located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a suburb about thirty miles from Philadelphia; in the U.S. the monastic order is referred to as the Pauline Fathers, but in Poland the 770-year-old sect is known officially as the Order of St. Paul the First Hermit.

  17 Gannett was awarded a 1980 Pulitzer for Public Service for its investigative series. It also resulted in a $110 million libel suit by the former father superior of the Pauline shrine. That lawsuit was dismissed.

  18 The first signs of something amiss came up after a routine 1972 audi
t conducted by the Philadelphia diocese. See generally Ben A. Franklin, “Cover-Up Alleged in Monastic Scandal,” The New York Times, September 21, 1979, 14; “Pope Reportedly Blocked Investigation of Pauline Father’s Financial Dealings,” The Washington Post, September 10, 1979, A3.

  19 Vatican report cited in “Pope Reportedly Blocked Investigation of Pauline Father’s Financial Dealings,” The Washington Post, A3. See also “Vatican Refuses to Comment,” Observer-Reporter (Pennsylvania), September 11, 1979, A7.

  20 “Gannett Sued for $110 Million,” Associated Press, Domestic News, New York, P.M. cycle, September 16, 1980; see also “Catholic Order’s Squandering of Millions in Contributions, Loan, Investments Alleged,” The Blade (Ohio), September 10, 1979, 8.

  21 “Pope Reportedly Blocked Investigation of Pauline Father’s Financial Dealings,” The Washington Post.

  22 Untitled, Associated Press, Washington, A.M. cycle, September 10, 1979.

  23 Franklin, “Cover-Up Alleged in Monastic Scandal,” 14.

  24 Untitled, Associated Press, Washington, A.M. cycle, September 10, 1979; see also Franklin, “Cover-Up Alleged in Monastic Scandal.”

  25 “Probe of Monks Cites Kickbacks,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 11, 1979, 3; Untitled, Associated Press, Washington, A.M. cycle, September 10, 1979.

  26 Untitled, Associated Press, Washington, A.M. cycle, September 10, 1979.

  27 Untitled, Associated Press, Washington, A.M. cycle, September 9, 1979; see also “Pope Reportedly Blocked Investigation of Pauline Father’s Financial Dealings,” The Washington Post.

  28 “Pope Reportedly Blocked Investigation of Pauline Father’s Financial Dealings,” The Washington Post.

  29 Franklin, “Cover-Up Alleged in Monastic Scandal”; untitled, Associated Press, Washington, P.M. cycle, September 10, 1979.

  30 Untitled, Associated Press, Washington, A.M. cycle, September 11, 1979.

  31 Cardinal Krol personally oversaw the distribution of the funds through his own diocese so the source of the money appeared to be from Philadelphia as opposed to Rome. The order of payments was determined with the assistance of attorneys from the Philadelphia law firm of Eastburn & Gray. A fundraising drive among the faithful—“to honor their Polish ancestors”—to pay some of the Pauline debts raised some $2 million. The author could not determine if that money was returned to Marcinkus and the IOR. Francesco Pazienza recounting contemporaneous conversations with Marcinkus, interview with author, September 18, 2013. See also Untitled, Associated Press, Domestic News, Camden, NJ, A.M. cycle, September 12, 1979. “When Marcinkus made it go away quickly he had earned the immediate loyalty of John Paul,” said Francesco Pazienza.