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

by Gerald Posner

  66 Raw, The Moneychangers, 359; Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 136. The indemnity letter also extended the Vatican’s exit to four companies not listed in the patronage letters; these were Inparfin, Intermax, Suprafin, and Intermax. See also Assize Court of Rome, 6 June 2007, Calõ + 4, cit., 22; referring to April 22, 1998, interview with Orazio Bagnasco by the magistrate.

  67 Calvi gave the patronage letters to the Banca del Gottardo and the Ambrosiano Services holding company, among others. Harry Anderson, Rich Thomas, and Hope Lamfert, “Inside the Vatican Bank,” Newsweek, September 13, 1982, 62; Raw, The Moneychangers, 372–73.

  68 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 133. Even when Marcinkus’s staunchest defenders acknowledge those facts they still invariably excuse him. Typical is Pope John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel: “It looked to some like fraud, but to those who knew Marcinkus, it was indicative of his naïveté.” Weigel, Witness to Hope, 747.

  69 Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 247–48.

  70 Calvi eventually sent more than $8.8 million to Pazienza-controlled accounts at two of the ghost companies, Realfin and Finanzco. Some of that was traced later to Carboni, who evidently used it mostly to buy cars and jewelry. Pazienza spent $2.5 million on two yachts.

  71 Galli, Finanza bianca, 85–86.

  72 Italian investigators concluded that the patronage letters were prima facie evidence of high-level collusion between Calvi and Marcinkus. See Colby, “Vatican Bank Played a Central Role in Fall of Banco Ambrosiano,” 1. As for the October 26, 1981, letters, signed by de Strobel and Mennini, they are cited in Raw, The Moneychangers, 373–74. (The Wall Street Journal reported the power of attorney letter as being dated October 16.)

  73 “Memo prepared by IOR’s lawyers re Laura Colby’s article,” reproduced in its entirety in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 354–58.

  74 It was Marcinkus’s nineteenth board meeting for Cisalpine since becoming a director in 1971.

  75 Henry Kamm, “Pope Vows to Assist Bank Study,” The New York Times, November 27, 1982, 35.

  76 George Cornell, “Church Plans to Open Books on Troubled Vatican Finances,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), September 19, 1981.

  77 Benny Lai interview of Cardinal Palazzini, in Lai, Finanze vaticane, 141.

  78 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 58–59.

  79 Paul Lewis, “Sharing Ambrosiano’s Losses,” The New York Times, December 18, 1982, 35.

  80 Assize Court of Rome, 6 June 2007, cit., 4; Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 137. Carboni was also partners with Italy’s future three-time Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who then owned a television station and had wide-ranging real estate interests. They shared the same grand villa, Villa Certosa, on Sardinia’s northern coast. See generally Philip Willan, The Vatican at War: From Blackfriars Bridge to Buenos Aires (iUniverse LLC: Bloomington, IN, 2013), Kindle edition, locations 5132, 5080 of 6371.

  81 Raw, The Moneychangers, 356–57; Willan, The Last Supper, 184.

  82 Calvi knew, for instance, that Carboni was close to Giovanni Spadolini, head of the Republican Party and the current Prime Minister. Calvi overlooked, as did Carboni’s other political acquaintances, that the Sardinian was also friends with the mobster Domenico Balducci.

  83 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 174–75.

  84 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 85–86.

  85 “Carlo de Benedetti; Yesterday Italy, Today Europe, Tomorrow the World?,” The Economist, February 22, 1986, 70 (U.S. edition, p. 68).

  86 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 153–54; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 87–91.

  87 Galli, Finanza bianca, 85.

  88 Author interview with Carlo Calvi, September 10, 2006.

  89 Lewis, “Italy’s Mysterious, Deepening Bank Scandal,” A1. See also Cornwell, God’s Banker, 155–62.

  90 “Banco Ambrosiano: Exit de Benedetti,” The Economist, January 30, 1982, 83 (U.S. edition, p. 77); Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 91. Eleven years later, in 1992, De Benedetti was convicted of a fraud in the Ambrosiano’s collapse. He had been the bank’s deputy chairman for only sixty-five days. An appeals court upheld the conviction in 1996, but in 1998 the equivalent of the Italian Supreme Court reversed it. Alan Riding, “Olivetti’s Chief Convicted in Collapse of Bank in 1982,” The New York Times, April 17, 1982; “High Court Overturns Conviction of Olivetti Chairman in Bank Collapse,” Associated Press, Business News, Rome, April 22, 1998; Raw, The Moneychangers, 380–82, 388–91.

  91 Colby, “Vatican Bank Played a Central Role in Fall of Banco Ambrosiano,” 1. The unidentified official in Colby’s article was later identified by Benedetti as Cardinal Casaroli. Calvi and De Benedetti turned to the media to spin their own versions of who was to blame for the fast divorce. “Why I Married De Benedetti” was Calvi’s take in L’Espresso in December 1981. De Benedetti followed three months later with “My 65 Days with Calvi” in Italy’s Panorama.

  92 Raw, The Moneychangers, 385.

  93 “Banco Ambrosiano; Calvinism,” The Economist, June 19, 1982, 103 (U.S. edition, p. 93); Raw, The Moneychangers, 392–93; see also Galli, Finanza bianca, 85.

  94 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 163.

  95 Typical was the Financial Times: “Banco Ambrosiano Is Doing Fine.” Raw, The Moneychangers, 402. See also Gurwin. The Calvi Affair, 93.

  96 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 168–69.

  97 Gurwin. The Calvi Affair, 93.

  98 Ibid., 79.

  99 Calvi quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 408.

  100 Anna Calvi gave this statement in a sworn deposition before the Court of Assizes of Rome, Assize Court of Rome, 6 June 2007, cit. 86.

  101 Raw, The Moneychangers, 403.

  102 “Banco Ambrosiano; Liquidated,” The Economist, August 28, 1982, 59 (U.S. edition, p. 61); see also Cornwell, God’s Banker, 175; and Raw, The Moneychangers, 403–4.

  103 Author’s written inquiries to Vatican Press Office, 2006.

  104 Calvi quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 403.

  105 “Banco Ambrosiano; Liquidated,” The Economist, 59 (U.S. edition, p. 61).

  106 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 170.

  107 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 102.

  108 Letter, Calvi to Palazzini, quoted in Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona,139–40.

  109 Carboni interviewed in Raw, The Moneychangers, 400.

  110 Raw, The Moneychangers, 389.

  111 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 103.

  112 Raw, The Moneychangers, 406.

  113 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 214, 230–31, 270; see also Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona,139.

  114 Willan, The Last Supper, 46–48; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 177. For his long-shot deal with Opus Dei, Calvi likely relied on his business and personal connections at Madrid’s Banco Occidental. Gregorio de Diego, that bank’s owner, and most of its top executives, were Opus Dei members. Calvi had done business with the bank since the mid-1970s. Hutchison, Their Kingdom Come, 264-66, 282-84.

  115 Letters, possibly forged, found after Calvi’s death are cited sometimes to show that the troubled financier was in touch with Opus Dei through Carboni and Monsignor Hilary Franco, who held the honorary title of Prelate of the Pope. Franco’s name was on a scrap of paper, along with several others, found in one of Calvi’s suit pockets when his corpse was recovered under Blackfriars Bridge. Monsignor Franco was charged in 1986 over the illegal currency export of $13.2 million. In his defense, he said that his three co-conspirators were generous contributors to church charities and that he believed in their “good and pious intentions.” Franco was acquitted. Lernoux, In Banks We Trust, 215–16; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 102–3; Raw, The Moneychangers, 406, 421; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 198.

  116 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 127–29, 166; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 100–101; Raw, The Moneychangers, 386–87.

  117 Raw, The Moneychangers, 410.

  118 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 105; Lernoux, In Banks We Trust, 197–98, 218.

  119 Lewis
, “Italy’s Mysterious, Deepening Bank Scandal,” A1; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 180.

  120 Lewis, “Italy’s Mysterious, Deepening Bank Scandal,” A1; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 179; Raw, The Moneychangers, 408.

  121 Richard Owen, “Plea to Pope from ‘God’s Banker’ Revealed as Murder Trial Begins,” The Times (London), October 6, 2005.

  122 Andrea Perry, Mark Watts, and Elena Cosentino, “Help Me. Murdered Banker Calvi’s Last Desperate Plea to the Pope,” Sunday Express (London), April 16, 2006, 39.

  123 Owen, “Plea to Pope from ‘God’s Banker’ Revealed as Murder Trial Begins.”

  124 For a full copy of the June 5, 1982, letter, see Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona,141–43.

  125 Raw, The Moneychangers, 410–11.

  126 Ibid., 419, 440; Cornwell, in God’s Banker, 185–86, has Calvi calling Luigi Mennini within forty-eight hours, but in fact it was two of Calvi’s Rome attorneys who got the call.

  127 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 108. Calvi was anything but calm. On June 5, Luciano Rossi, a lieutenant colonel in a special criminal financial investigative unit was found shot to death in his Rome office. Rossi had been at the center of a probe into law enforcement corruption relating to P2 and some offshore Licio Gelli accounts. The death was listed as suicide, even though there was no note and some conflicting forensics evidence. Calvi was convinced that Rossi had been murdered, the same as he believed another financial inspector, Lieutenant Colonel Salvatore Florio, had been killed in a single car accident a couple of years earlier. See generally Charles Ridley, “Colonel Linked to Scandal Commits Suicide,” United Press International, International News, Rome, A.M. cycle, June 5, 1981.

  128 According to Father Lorenzo Zorza, Pazienza helped obtain the passport through the Knights of Malta. “Back then,” Zorza told me, “a Knights of Malta passport was good for entry into England.” Author interview with Father Lorenzo Zorza, September 6, 2013.

  129 Raw, The Moneychangers, 424.

  130 The loans totaled 123,965,000 Swiss francs, then trading at 2.03 to the dollar.

  131 Raw, The Moneychangers, 424.

  132 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 7a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

  133 See generally Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 201–2.

  134 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 61.

  135 Ibid., 64.

  136 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 9a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

  137 Willan, The Last Supper, 247-48; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 188.

  138 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 109–10, 171; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 188.

  139 Raw, The Moneychangers, 430–31.

  140 Rosone quoted in Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 110.

  141 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 188.

  142 Leemans and Marcinkus quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 436–37; see also Cornwell, God’s Banker, 189; and Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 119–20.

  143 Some journalists report it as fifth floor window. Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 199.

  144 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 191; “Italy Banker Linked to Scandal Found Hanged,” Miami Herald, June 20, 1982, A6. In some published accounts, the note is quoted as saying, “Curse him for all the wrong he is doing to all of us from the bank and the group of whose image we were once so proud.” See generally Mark S. Smith, untitled, Associated Press, International News, London, A.M. cycle, June 19, 1982.

  145 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 186.

  146 Author interview with Father Lorenzo Zorza, September 6, 2013.

  147 Sindona was certain Calvi had been murdered: “Calvi’s death was certainly not suicide . . . he was terrified of heights. He would never have climbed over a bridge on the high scaffolding. . . . Calvi was murdered, and those who killed him made it appear to be some sort of ritual Masonic execution.” Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 245.

  Chapter 25: “Protect the Source”

  1 Michael Sheridan, “Loss of Face—and Funds—Worries Church,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 1982, A5.

  2 “Archbishop Quit Bank, Paper Says,” The Miami Herald, July 8, 1982, A2, cited in Cornwell, God’s Banker, 207.

  3 Clara Calvi, the banker’s wife, was outspoken, offering her testimony to the parliamentary investigating committee as well as the prosecutors looking into the Ambrosiano’s collapse. “I could be very upset about what she has said,” Marcinkus later told author John Cornwell. “She called me all kinds of names and accused me of a lot of things. That’s something she’ll have to answer for, not me.” Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 132.

  4 Beniamino Andreatta quoted in “Italian Bank Probe Faces Wall of Silence,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), July 24, 1982; Daniela Iacono, “Official Links Vatican to Scandal-Ridden Bank,” United Press International, International News, Rome, A.M. cycle, July 3, 1982; Kay Withers, “Marcinkus Says He’ll Stay, Denies Tie to Bank Scandal,” Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1982, 1.

  5 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 210.

  6 Beniamino Andreatta quoted in John Winn Miller, “Says Pope Should Order Bank Liable for $1.2 Billion,” Associated Press, International News, Rome, A.M. cycle, October 8, 1982. The Treasury Ministry was also furiously trying to determine how much the IOR owned of the Ambrosiano. The Vatican said it was 1.58 percent, but some press reports put the share much higher, at 16 percent. See “Special Commission to Probe Dealings of Vatican Bank,” United Press International, International News, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, December 24, 1982. Calvi’s son, Carlo, claimed that with a 16 percent share, the Vatican was the effective owner of the Ambrosiano. See Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 172. Investigators had difficulty determining an accurate number because the Vatican Bank likely held some of its shares through Calvi’s offshore proxies, accounts to which Italian investigators could not get access. There was evidence suggesting that the IOR controlled an additional 7.5 percent of the Ambrosiano through its Luxembourg holding company, Manic.

  Marcinkus had no incentive to reveal that the church had a larger stake in the parent company under attack for improper and illegal behavior. He knew that any equity stake, whether 2 percent or16 percent, would be worthless once Italian regulators dissolved the bank. Vatican attorneys later admitted that the shell companies “had de facto control” of the Ambrosiano, but emphasized that the shells “were never owned by the IOR.” See generally Colby, “Vatican Bank Played a Central Role in Fall of Banco Ambrosiano,” 1; and “Memo prepared by IOR’s lawyers re Laura Colby’s article,” reproduced in its entirety in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 354–58.

  7 They were Giovanni Arduino and Antonio Occhiuto, two veteran bankers.

  8 “Italian Bank Probe Faces Wall of Silence,” The Globe and Mail (Canada); Cornwell, God’s Banker, 208–9.

  9 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 208–9.

  10 Sheridan, “Loss of Face—and Funds—Worries Church,” A5.

  11 Franco Calamandrei quoted in “Financier Linked to Arms Deal,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), July 8, 1982. This story developed into one in which MI6, British secret service, had targeted the Ambrosiano because Calvi’s bank financed Argentine purchases of $200 million to buy Exocet missiles during the Falklands War between the two countries. Although a handful of ex-intelligence agents made some sensational claims, there was ultimately no hard proof that the Ambrosiano played such a role. When Marcinkus was asked about whether some of the money from the IOR-Ambrosiano ventures ended up in Argentine deals, he said, “I never saw it.” See generally Lewis, “Italy’s Mysterious, Deepening Bank Scandal,” A1; Lernoux, In Banks We Trust, 207; Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 134.

  12 “Vatican Bank’s Head Is Reported Resigning,” The New York Times, July 8, 1982, A4; “Report Archbishop Marcinkus Has Resigned,” United Press International, International News, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, July 7, 1982.
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br />   13 Withers, “Marcinkus Says He’ll Stay, Denies Tie to Bank Scandal,” 1; “Vatican City Bank Chief’s Job on Line,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 1982, 1; “Report Archbishop Marcinkus Has Resigned,” United Press International. When reporters called Father Romeo Panciroli, the Vatican’s press spokesman, and asked if Marcinkus was about to become a cardinal, he offered no comment. John Winn Miller, Untitled, Associated Press, International News, Rome, A.M. cycle, July 7, 1982.

  14 “Archbishop Quit Bank, Paper Says,” The Miami Herald, A2; Kay Withers, “Marcinkus Says He’ll Stay, Denies Tie to Bank Scandal,” Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1982, 1.

  15 Hornblow returned to the Vatican for six months of additional service in 1989.

  16 Author interview with Michael Hornblow, January 28, 2014.

  17 “Pope Reportedly Asked to Remove Marcinkus,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1982, 8, citing The Daily American, reporting from Rome.

  18 Marcinkus interviewed in Withers, “Marcinkus Says He’ll Stay, Denies Tie to Bank Scandal.”

  19 “Marcinkus Link Seen in Choice of Bernardin,” Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1982, A5.

  20 Marcinkus quoted in “Marcinkus Vows to See Scandal ‘Through to End,’ ” United Press International, International News, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, November 27, 1982.

  21 “Banco Ambrosiano; Enter God’s Sleuths,” The Economist, July 17, 1982, 76 (U.S. edition, p. 80); Paul Lewis, “Italy’s Mysterious, Deepening Bank Scandal,” The New York Times, July 28, 1982, A1.

  22 John Winn Miller, “Under Pressure, Vatican Calls in Bank Consultants,” Associated Press, International News, Vatican City, A.M. cycle, July 13, 1982.

  23 “3 Named by Vatican to Study Bank Ties,” The New York Times, July 14, 1982, D1. Cerutti had been a financial advisor to every Pope since Pius XII: Cornwell, God’s Banker, 209.

  24 “Some Italian bankers and officials feel that, with the exception of Mr. de Wech [sic], the commission is an ineffective group that may not make much of an impact on the Vatican’s ponderous administrative machinery”: Lewis, “Italy’s Mysterious, Deepening Bank Scandal,” A1.