35 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 44; Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 34.

36 “Cardinal Canali Is Dead at 87; Administrative Head of Vatican,” The New York Times, August 4, 1961, 21; Grilli, La finanza vaticana in Italia, 76.

37 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 47–48.

38 Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 15.

39 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 96–98.

40 Ibid., 97–98.

41 Cooney, The American Pope, 278–79.

42 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 168–69; Cooney, The American Pope, 278.

43 Cardinal Siri quoted in Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 142; see also Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 29.

44 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 162–63.

45 Victor L. Simpson, “Today’s Topic: Inside the Conclave,” Associated Press, Vatican City, P.M. cycle August 8, 1978.

46 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 151–52; See also Persona Humana, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, December 29, 1975; Franco Bellegrandi, Nichitaroncalli: Controvita di un papa (Rome: Edizione Internazionali di Letteratura e Scienze, 1994; Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 151; Author interviews with a U.S. diplomat stationed in Rome during 1975 to 1979, October 13, 2012; Author interview with an Italian priest who had worked for the Secretariat of State during Pope Paul VI’s Papacy, June 5, 2006.

47 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican,145–51. Sindona knew Macchi well and thought he was an ambitious and mean-spirited gatekeeper. “He talks like Mao Tse-Tung but lives like Louis XIV,” Sindona said about him. Tosches, Power on Earth, 51.

48 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 31.

49 The other cardinals were Chicago’s Albert Meyer, St. Louis’s Joseph Ritter, Pittsburgh’s John Wright, and Boston’s Richard Cushing; Cooney, The American Pope, 280.

50 Reese, Inside the Vatican, 84; see also Giancarlo Zizola, Quale papa? (Rome: Borla, 1977).

51 Some controversy developed when Italian newspapers reported that the CIA had the news about the new Pope before it was announced outside the sealed conclave. That led to speculation that the CIA had bugged the Apostolic Palace. Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 173–74.

52 “Reign of ‘Pope of Unity’ Studded with Landmarks,” Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1963, 8; Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 28.

53 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 126–27.

54 “Reign of ‘Pope of Unity’ Studded with Landmarks,” Chicago Tribune, 8.

55 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 30.

56 In 1966, Paul built a roof garden on top of the Apostolic Palace, with direct access from his apartment. That meant he no longer had to walk through the more public Vatican gardens when he wanted to get fresh air. “Faceliftng Due on Papal Palace,” AP, Vatican City, July 10, 1966.

57 Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 193; Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (London: HarperCollins, 1993). See also Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 169.

58 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 52.

59 Ibid., 164–65.

60 “Vatican’s Budget Is Vetoed by Pope,” The New York Times, January 23, 1975. The New York Times reported about Paul VI, “He is known to take a personal interest in budgetary matters. He made a reputation as a top administrator while Archbishop of Milan.”

61 David S. McLellan and Robert McLellan, “The 1963 Italian Elections,” The Western Political Quarterly 17, no. 4 (December 1964): 671–89.

62 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 53; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 112.

63 “Italy: Hens Nesting on Rocks,” Time, September 19, 1969; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 59–64.

64 See generally Tosches, Power on Earth, 53–55.

65 Robert C. Doty, “Italian Collector’s Treasures Include 2 American Companies,” The New York Times, August 16, 1964, F1; see DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 74, and Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 59.

66 Moneyrex’s legal name was Euro-Market Money Brokers, S.p.A. It was incorporated in Liechtenstein by Sindona’s Luxembourg-based holding company, Fasco. See generally Raw, The Moneychangers, 58, and Tosches, Power on Earth, 139, 145; Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 41.

67 Gianni Simoni and Giuliano Turone, Il caffè di Sindona: Un finanzieri d’avventura tra politica, Vaticano e mafia (Milan: Garzanti Libri, 2009), 35, 162; Raw, The Moneychangers, 66–67, 331.

68 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, n. 204, and June 23, 1981, n. 315, 26; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 75–84.

69 Two of his most profitable banks turned out to be Milan’s Banca Unione and Sicily’s Messina Banca. Tosches, Power on Earth, 118; Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 35–36.

70 Banca Unione is typical of how enmeshed Sindona was with the Vatican. The church had been an equal partner with a publishing company, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. The IOR provided the financing for Sindona to buy the bank. The church retained a 20 percent stake. Luigi Mennini was the bank’s executive director and also a member of the board. Mennini was also on the board of Sindona’s Finabank and Banca Privata Finanziaria. Tosches, Power on Earth, 118; Raw, The Moneychangers, 56–57.

71 Spada quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 57.

72 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 189; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 12.

73 Ginder in Our Sunday Visitor, quoted in Gollin, Worldly Goods, 6. In 1969, Ginder was arrested for possession of child porn and sentenced to ten years of probation. After he published a book in 1976 in which he excoriated the church’s doctrines on sexuality, he was evicted from the priesthood. Two years later, 1978, he was arrested, tried, and convicted of sodomizing two underage boys. He was sentenced to four years in prison. “5 Pittsburgh Priests Went to Prison,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 28, 2004.

74 “Italy: Beating the Cycle,” Time.

75 Business Week, Part 2, referring to an article “Italy: A Sicilian Financier” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 928; Fortune, Volume 88 (New York: Time Inc., 1973), 174; Doty, “Italian Collector’s Treasures Include 2 American Companies,” F1; Nick Tosches, The Nick Tosches Reader (Boston: Da Capo, 2000), 257. A few years later, in 1969, Time said about Sindona that “no one has done more to shake the country’s old financial structure,” and that his “financial empire [that] spans three continents” helped him “leap from obscurity to international prominence.” “Italy: Hens Nesting on Rocks.”

76 “Watergate’s Landlord,” The Economist, June 16, 1973, 105–6.

77 DiFonzi, St. Peter’s Banker, 68–69. For the fullest biography of Gelli, see Gianfranco Piazzesi, Gelli: La carriera di un eroe di questa Italia (Milan: Garzanti Libri, 1983).

78 Even fewer knew that after Mussolini’s fall in July 1943, the fascist Gelli had become a liaison officer with the SS. He later told author Charles Raw that his only choice was either to work with the SS or be sent to a German prison camp. He was detained and released four times by Allied forces, suspected on each occasion of having collaborated with the Nazis. Somehow, he ended up working with American counterintelligence, and later went on to assist Italy’s postwar intelligence services. Willan, The Last Supper, 118–19; Raw, The Moneychangers, 140; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 50–51.

79 Some accounts list 962 names and others 953. Henry Tanner, “Italian Elite Embroiled in Scandal,” The New York Times, May 24, 1981, 1, and Willan, The Last Supper, 15. Gelli chose “Propaganda” as the name for his lodge since it had been the same name used for a lodge by Giuseppe Mazzini, one of the heroes of the 1848 Italian revolution that led to a unified national government.

80 Memo, “Cossiga Orders Study of CIA-Terrorism Links,” Ref: AU2307110890 Paris, Source ROME ANSA in English, Approved for Release May 1998, pages 0089-0091, released pursuant to a Freedom of Information and Privacy request to the CIA.

81 Victor L. Simpson, “Scandal in Italian Masonic Lodge Clouds Movement Long Criticized by the Church,” Associated Press, A.M. cycle, May 27, 1981.

82 In introducing the Anti-Masonic Law of 1925, Mussolini said that Freemasonry was “a danger to the peace and quietude of the State.” 1948 Official Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Missouri, The Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Missouri, The One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Annual Communication, St. Louis, September 28–30, 12c–13c, available at http://issuu.com/momason/docs/gl_proceedings_1948.

83 Simpson, “Scandal in Italian Masonic Lodge Clouds Movement Long Criticized by the Church”; Willan, The Last Supper, 118.

84 Ibid., 120.

85 Hearings Before the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, House of Representatives, 1976.

86 Tosches, Power on Earth, 167. In an interview with author Nick Tosches, Sindona recounted meeting Gelli in 1974. But it was almost certainly a decade earlier according to P2 documentation seized by Italian authorities.

87 Although Sindona said he turned down the offer of a P2 membership card, and that he and Gelli were only political allies, when Italian authorities seized P2’s records, they found Sindona’s entry, #1612, in the ledger. Some others listed in the P2 files claimed they were not in fact members, but investigators determined the documents to be accurate. Tosches, Power on Earth, 169; Willan, The Last Supper, Notes on Text.

According to DiFonzo in St. Peter’s Banker (65–71), “There is no way to be sure how the oath [was] read or how it was taken because Gelli quite often would change the ceremony and the oath to fit his own moods.” Still, DiFonzo spends four pages setting forth a version of what the ceremony might have looked like, complete with KKK-like black hoods, pictures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Perón, live serpents, a blood oath, and a pagan rite during which Sindona swore loyalty to Gelli and P2 under threat of death. While it seems certain that Sindona was in fact a P2 member, and some inductees did go through a jazzed-up Masonic ceremony, there is no evidence that Sindona ever underwent one.

88 Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” The New York Times, September 30, 1974, 57.

89 Tosches, Power on Earth, 168–69.

90 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 90–97; see also Martin, The Final Conclave, 26–27.

91 Martin, The Final Conclave, 27.

92 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 94–96.

93 See generally ibid., 100–104. Montecatini had merged with the Edison Company in 1966 to become Montedison.

94 “Finance: Diversification at the Vatican,” Time, January 25, 1971; Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 194; see also Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 34; Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 65.

95 This was a title often given to the Black Nobles, and before the Second Vatican Council it was the Papal Chamberlains of the Sword and Cape (Cameriere di spada e cappa); John Hooper, “Luigi Mennini: Shadow over the Vatican,” The Guardian, August 14, 1997, 14.

96 See Nostra Aetate, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965.

97 Cardinal Siri quoted in Hebblethwaite, The Year of Three Popes, 142.

98 James Franklin, “John Paul and Changes in Vatican,” The Boston Globe, August 27, 1978, 11.

99 “Catholics Plan Aid to Hanoi,” The Boston Globe, April 1, 1967, 1; “Pope Eyed Trip to Hanoi,” The Boston Globe, November 22, 1968, 3. The two monsignors sent were Pope Paul’s personal secretary, Don Pasquale Macchi, and Paul Marcinkus, then an up-and-coming American cleric in the Secretary of State’s office. “2 Papal Aides Visited Viet, Vatican Says,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1966, 5. When reporters found out about the trip and asked Marcinkus why he had gone, he replied simply, “Vacation.”

100 Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 6. In 1973, Paul VI dispatched one of his diplomats, Monsignor Agostino Casaroli, to visit Moscow. Two years later Casaroli (later Secretary of State) made a state visit to Cuba and Fidel Castro. Conservative Curialists had reservations about each journey.

101 See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html; see also Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” January 1971, 30.

102 The Pope kept moving further to the left. He caused an uproar when he said that Mao Tse-tung’s atheistic philosophy shared “Christian values” with Catholicism. Paul Hoffman, “Vatican Sees Christian Ideas in Maoism,” The New York Times, April 19, 1973, 3; Flamini, Pope, Premier, President, 5. See also for the full encyclical: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html.

During his tenure, Paul VI expanded the College of Cardinals from the record number of eighty that he had inherited from John XXIII, to 136. He “internationalized” the Curia with many non-Italian appointees and ensured they had no connection to the traditional Roman bureaucracy. In some cases, as in Benin’s Bernardin Gantin, Brazil’s Alosio Lorscheider and Paulo Evaristo Arns, Argentina’s Eduardo Pironio, the Philippines’ Jaime Sin, and Senegal’s Hyacinthe Thiandoum, he picked avowed progressives, not only rankling traditionalists, but most of the Curia, who did not like to see their Italian-centric power diluted. And he tried to tilt any future conclave toward choosing a younger Pope by his ruling that all cardinals had to submit their resignations by seventy-five. Even in instances in which the Pope asked them to continue to serve, they had to step aside on their eightieth birthday. After eighty they no longer could cast a vote in the conclave. When Pope Paul issued the decree in 1970, it meant that twenty-five of the 127 cardinals were automatically excluded from electing the next Pontiff. The edict caused considerable griping from those affected. See generally Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 72–73; and “Roman Catholics: Princely Promotions,” Time, April 4, 1969.

103 See “The Deception of the Century,” http://www.tldm.org/News3/impostor.htm.

104 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 108–22. Although the investments sound straightforward, they were usually done through holding companies and proxy subsidiaries. For instance, the Vatican had, among other banks, an interest in a small regional bank near Genoa, Banca Naef Ferrazzi Longhi of Spezia. Its ownership there was hidden under the Istituto Bancario Italiano, a financial holding company established in 1967 by the cement company Italcementi. The only tangential evidence of the church’s role in newly acquired banks such as Naef Ferrazzi Longhi was when Italcementi’s president appointed Massimo Spada as vice president and a director of the new financial consortium.

105 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 168–69.

106 Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 194–95.

107 The wealthiest Italians continued to avoid any tariff by holding their stocks in foreign shell companies through proxies. The foreign agent who held the stock would be listed as the owner for Italian tax purposes and pay only the 15 percent rate. The foreign agent would then deduct a service commission, but still the Italian taxpayer would pay far less than Italy’s punitive 30 percent tax. A flourishing part of Sindona’s law practice was the use of Swiss fiduciary contracts to evade taxes for wealthy clients. See Commissione Parlamentare D’inchiesta Sul Caso Sindona E Sulle Responsabilita Politiche Ed Amministrative Ad Esso Eventualmente Connesse, hereinafter Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected to It), Chamber of Deputies of the Senate, VIII Legislature, Doc. XXIII, May 22, 1980, n. 204, and June 23, 1981, n. 315, 44–45, 49–50.

108 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 139; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 132.

109 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 126.

110 Sindona interview in Tosches, Power on Earth, 87.

111 Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 195.

112 Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 31–32; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 127–28.

113 Robert C. Doty, “Vatican Is Stunned by Plan to Tax It,” The New York Times, July 13, 1968, 1.

114 Before there was a press office, the Vatican unofficially allowed some prelates to sell to reporters a daily typewritten list of Papal audiences and other tidbits of Vatican news. Monsignor Emilio Pucci’s onionskin paper bulletins—although not always reliable—were required reading by news organizations for more than a decade. Pucci was forced to resign from his Secretariat of State position after World War II when he was exposed as a paid informant for Mussolini’s secret police. A successor to the business, a layman, Virgilio Scattolini, ended up in jail after he was unmasked for fabricating stories and passing them along as news (his fake stories ended up in U.S. and British newspapers). See Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 255–61.

115 “An Official Press Office Is Established by Vatican,” The New York Times, October 19, 1966, 27. Another early issue Vallainc addressed was publicity over the publication of Robert Katz’s critically acclaimed Death in Rome, in which Katz contended that although Pius XII knew some nineteen hours in advance about the Nazi plan to massacre civilians at the Ardeatine Caves, he did nothing. “This is not a book of history but a polemic in which the special interests of the author are dominant and in conflict with the interests of research presentation for the facts,” said Vallainc. This type of generic dismissal, without contesting facts or providing additional information, became the template for how the press office handled subsequent questions raised by historians over the wider issue of Pius’s silence during the Holocaust.

116 Doty, “Vatican Is Stunned by Plan to Tax It,” 3.

117 Reese, Inside the Vatican, 204–5. The subsidy amounted to $280 million annually when it was finally terminated ($506 million in 2014 dollars). See also Lai, Finanze vaticane, 46.

118 “Finance: Diversification at the Vatican,” Time, January 25, 1971; Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 31.

119 Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 187.

120 Maillardoz had helped run the Special Administration, under Nogara. Some of its liquid assets had been moved to the Vatican Bank over the years, leaving mostly the real estate that was at the core of the newly formed APSA.

121 Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 31; Lai, Finanze vaticane, 43–44; Raw, The Moneychangers, 52.

122 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 44.

123 Ibid., 122, Lai interview with Massimo, April 3, 1972.

124 James Franklin, “John Paul and Changes in Vatican,” The Boston Globe, August 27, 1978, 11.

125 Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 189.

126 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 176.

127 Cardinal Egidio Vagnozzi, the new chief of the Prefecture, at least claimed he could read a balance sheet. And one of his early goals was to initiate a single balance sheet that would cover all Vatican departments that had anything to do with money. The staunchly independent IOR put a quick stop to such talk. See Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 32.

128 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 32.

129 Francis Xavier Murphy, “City of God,” The Wilson Quarterly (1976), 6. no. 4 (autumn 1982): 110–11.

130 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 31–32.

131 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 46–47, 57.

132 Francis Xavier Murphy, “A Look at the Earth’s Tiniest State,” Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1982, 11; Murphy, “City of God,” 111. Vagnozzi soon added an additional two more cardinals as aides, Chicago’s John Cody and Cologne’s Joseph Höffner. Although they were in theory more adept at financial administration since they ran their own dioceses, both were so far removed from day-to-day events at the Vatican that they afforded little guidance.

133 Reese, Inside the Vatican, 203–4.

134 Walter Scott, “Personality Parade,” The Boston Globe, October 12, 1969, C2; Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 140; Lewin, “The Finances of the Vatican,” 199; see also Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 177.

135 Horne, “How the Vatican Manages its Money,” 80.

136 Grilli, La finanza vaticana in Italia, 149.

137 Pope John XXIII had established a commission to study what policy was best for the church to adopt about birth control. The advent of a daily pharmaceutical pill in the early 1960s had made birth control both affordable and widely available. The church’s only previous pronouncement had been Pius XII’s 1951 declaration that the church would sanction the use of the rhythm method as a “natural” means of birth control. Before that, the only approved option was abstinence. Pope John’s committee finished its work after his death. Its recommendation to Paul VI was that the church should consider liberalizing its ban on all forms of artificial birth control. The conservatives on the committee leaked word of the panel’s suggestion. Traditionalists raised a fury, so much so that Paul felt compelled to issue a blanket ban in Humanae Vitae. See http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html.

The bishop who later run the IOR, Paul Marcinkus, claimed—without proof—that the church’s stake in the manufacturer of birth control was only “one share, that somebody had left in a will.” See Marcinkus interviewed in John Cornwell, A Thief in the Night: Life and Death in the Vatican (New York: Penguin, 2001), 134. Marcinkus also asserted that after he took control of the IOR in 1969, “I gave orders: no pharmaceuticals, no armaments, no luxury buildings of any sort.” Marcinkus also claimed that under his direction, the IOR had “no exposure in South Africa,” which was then off limits because of international sanctions over the white-controlled apartheid government. “But some of our clients do.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 6b, 7a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

138 “Investment: Low Profile for the Vatican,” Time, November 28, 1969; Andrew Blake, “Financier’s Fall Costly to Vatican,” The Boston Globe, February 2, 1975, 21; see also Martin, The Final Conclave, 24.

139 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 146–47. After Paul VI’s death in 1978, Macchi worked to move along the church bureaucracy responsible for putting Paul on track for sainthood. During those years, Macchi claimed to reporters that Paul had never met Sindona. To others he said they met only once, “at a formal dinner in New York.” As author Giancarlo Galli wrote, Macchi considered a Sindona friendship with Pope Paul VI to be “shadows best deleted.” Finanza bianca, 71.

140 Neal Ascherson, “Revolution on World’s Campuses: Students’ Target: The Bureaucratic State,” The New York Times, May 27, 1968, 13; “Students in Rome Gain Supporters,” The New York Times, March 4, 1968, 8.

141 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 155.

142 “Investment: Low Profile for the Vatican,” Time; Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 156; see Raw, The Moneychangers, 52; Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 190; and Lai, Finanze vaticane, 47.

143 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 11–12.

144 Cardinal Vagnozzi interview, in Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 32.

145 Ibid., 30

146 “Paul VI considered Sindona a great genius of finance,” noted Giuseppe D’Alema, a member of parliament who was later a member of inquiry in Sindona’s affairs. See Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 13.

147 Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Michele Sindona, the Outsider as Insider in Worldwide Finance,” The New York Times, May 20, 1974, 47. Malachi Martin in Rich Church, Poor Church claimed that Pope Paul had signed a document “giving Sindona total control over all Vatican investments.” There is no source for the charge, and the author has not found any independent proof that such a document was executed.

148 “Investment: Low Profile for the Vatican,” Time.

149 Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 147; Andrew Blake, “Financier’s Fall Costly to Vatican,” The Boston Globe, February 2, 1975, 21.

150 Years later, when the wisdom of that sale was under attack, the IOR’s chief cleric, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, disingenuously said, “APSA sold him [Sindona] the shares for Immobiliare. . . . I had nothing to do with it.” Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 131–32. For details of the sale, see Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 80. As for Spada’s role, see Lai, Finanze vaticane, 48.

151 “Investment Shift by Vatican Seen,” The New York Times, June 19, 1969, 19. The sale technically came from APSA. When Nogara ran both the IOR and APSA’s predecessor department, the Special Administration, he had blurred the separation of responsibilities and duties between the two. In the restructured Vatican the company investments and stocks were sold by APSA, but the reinvested monies were directed by the IOR. See also “Hear Vatican Disposing of Italy Stocks,” Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1969, A6.

152 “Vatican Stock Sale Hinted,” The Boston Globe, June 19, 1969, 3; see also “Vatican Confirms Sale of Holdings,” The New York Times, June 21, 1969, 9. As for the Sindona purchase of the church’s shares, see Cornwell, God’s Banker, 40–41.

153 No reporter knew that Sindona himself had bought the church’s SGI shares. He did so in typically convoluted Sindona-style. He first arranged for the Vatican Bank’s shares to be sent to Paribas Transcontinental of Luxembourg, a wholly owned subsidiary of Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (Paribas). Paribas then transferred the shares to Sindona’s Luxembourg holding company, Fasco. Two different Swiss holding companies acted as the owner at different stages of the transfer. As for the money, Fasco joined British merchant bank Hambros in forming Distributor, a Luxembourg holding company. Most of the funding passed through that new entity, coupled with some fiduciary deposits from Sindona’s Banca Privata. See generally “Sindona, Self-Made Man of 53, Rules a Vast Industrial Empire,” The New York Times, May 13, 1974, 48; Farnsworth, “Michele Sindona, the Outsider as Insider,” 47; see also Raw, The Moneychangers, 59; and Lai, Finanze vaticane, 48; see also Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It. SGI soared 300 percent in the year after Sindona bought the church’s stake, and it doubled in just six weeks in 1972: “Italian Bourse: Is Now the Time?,” The Economist, July 6, 2002, 104.

154 Farnsworth, “Michele Sindona, the Outsider as Insider.”

155 Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money”; “Finance: Diversification at the Vatican,” Time, January 25, 1971, 32, 35. The Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See had some assets, but far smaller than that what the IOR or APSA controlled. The interview by Horne was trumpeted by Institutional Investor as “the first time key Vatican financial officials have talked so freely with a reporter.” The then IOR chief Bishop Marcinkus refused to meet Horne, but did talk to him by phone. The journalist described him as “reticent.” Marcinkus said it would take time for the IOR to implement any changes and he downplayed the size of the IOR’s holdings.

156 The Institutional Investor article erred on the low side of the Vatican’s net worth because Horne had been blocked from getting any accurate information about the IOR. But other reports wildly inflated the church’s wealth. An Episcopalian bishop, James Pike, who had formerly worked with the SEC, wrote an article in Playboy in which he asserted—without any evidence—that the Jesuits alone owned 51 percent of Bank of America. They also had a majority stake, claimed Pike, in Phillips Petroleum and owned large portions of Boeing and Lockheed. Pike declared that the Jesuits’ investments returned $250 million annually. Gollin, Worldly Goods, 12–13.

157 The estimates of the size of the Vatican’s investment assets ranged in the Italian press from $5 billion to $13 billion. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, went even further than Vagnozzi, estimating the church’s total investment capital only as $128 million. The newspaper provided no details or sources for how it reached its low conclusion. See Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 35.

158 As of 1971, when Vagnozzi spoke to Institutional Investor, the Vatican still had small stock positions in fifty-eight public Italian companies. It was a fraction of its ownership just a year earlier. Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 35.

159 Even inside the IOR, laymen dominated. Of the sixty employees at the time of this sea change in investment policy, only four were clerics. Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 78; see also Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 13.

Chapter 15: “You Can’t Run the Church on Hail Marys”

1 The name on his birth certificate is Paulius Casimir Marcinkus, but it appears that family and friends always called him Paul, the Anglicized version of his first name.

2 Hoffman, “Bishop with Chicago Roots Is Managing Pope’s Travels.” The New York Times, October 1, 1979.

Marcinkus later said, “You read these books about me and you get the impression I was raised by Al Capone in the streets. That’s because of Cicero, see?” Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 81. The Al Capone/Cicero connection even found its way into a Chicago Tribune profile about an eighty-five-year-old barber who ran a Cicero barbershop for almost seventy years. He boasted to the Tribune that his two most famous customers were Marcinkus and mobster Ralph “Bottles” Capone, Al’s brother. Kristen Scharnberg, “A Traditional Cut Above the Rest,” Chicagoland, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 2001, 1.

Francesco Pazienza, an Italian intelligence agent who was a friend of Marcinkus, told the author: “One day, Marcinkus confided to me that his father had been the preferred driver for Al Capone. He told me that very straight, no bullshit.” There is no evidence to support that, and Marcinkus was likely saying it to impress Pazienza, who had a reputation as a self-described “tough guy.” Author interview with Francesco Pazienza, September 18, 2013.

Besides being famous as Capone’s hometown, Marcinkus said that Cicero “became famous . . . for the race riots which they had” (1951 riots by thousands of white residents violently protesting the arrival of the first blacks). Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

3 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 81; Jim Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1983, G15–16.

4 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

5 He had been in a junior day seminary—Quigley Preparatory Seminary—since he was thirteen. It offered a classical Catholic education and was designed for youngsters who were considering the priesthood. His Lithuanian neighborhood where he grew up was overwhelmingly Catholic, with three churches in a four-block radius. Years later, when asked if he had ever dated a girl before he joined a full time seminary at eighteen, he said, “Maybe once in a while I would go out on a date . . . I wasn’t scared of them or anything.” Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 82. He also later described himself while a student as a “sports nut; I enjoyed sports more than anything else I did as a kid.” Marcinkus interviewed in Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G16.

6 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

7 Galli, Finanza bianca, 62.

8 While working at the marriage bureau, he lived in a parish that was 90 percent black. Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, no. 3, 2b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

9 “Cicero Priest Makes Good in Vatican Post,” Chicago Tribune, January 4, 1969, A12. In a Chicago Tribune article seven years earlier, Marcinkus’s first and only Chicago parish was listed as Holy Cross. The Chicago Diocese informed the author that St. Christina’s is the correct parish. Gwen Morgan, “Mrs. Kennedy in New Delhi,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1962, 1–2; Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 63–64.

10 Jim Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1983, G12.

11 Marcinkus said his “thesis [was] on baptism in relation to marriage.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan. See also Henry Gaggiottini, “Marcinkus Consecrated Bishop,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1969, A9; Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

12 Marcinkus served as the secretary to the Papal Nuncio in Bolivia from January 1955 to September 1956. While there he was given the rank of a Papal Chamberlain, with the title of “Very Reverend Monsignor.” He then served at the Nuncio’s office in Ottawa, returning to Rome in 1960.

13 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

14 Nino Lo Bello, “Bodyguard to Pope,” The Boston Globe, January 5, 1969, A19.

15 “Cicero Priest Makes Good in Vatican Post,” Chicago Tribune, 124.

16 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 77.

17 Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 64–65.

18 Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

19 “Cicero Priest Makes Good in Vatican Post,” Chicago Tribune; see Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” 22.

20 Hoffman, “Bishop with Chicago Roots Is Managing Pope’s Travels.”

21 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 86.

22 Ibid., 142–43.

23 Ibid., 142. “One has many colleagues but few friends in the halls of the Vatican,” wrote Hoffman in Anatomy of the Vatican, 11.

24 Marcinkus interviewed in Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

25 Author interview with Peter K. Murphy, Deputy Chief of Mission at the embassy, 1984–89, January 31, 2014.

26 “In Italy, Presidentessa: In India, Amriki Rani,” The Boston Globe, May 27, 1962, E11.

27 Marcinkus interviewed in Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

28 Marcinkus worked with a Yugoslavian emigrant, Stefano Falez, whom he had met in Rome. Falez went on to found Catintour, one of the most successful Vatican-approved travel agencies. See Willey, God’s Politician, 209.

29 Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 65.

30 Marcinkus interviewed in ibid., 140.

31 Marcinkus later said, “I never ran a tourist agency. I’ve never been involved in a tourist agency. I used people that were involved. I needed a guy who knew how to handle the logistics, tickets, the baggage; we never lost a bag. Same with the Pope’s trips.” Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 140. When John XXIII died, Marcinkus learned that the Pontiff had selected him to be one of only four clerics to serve as the honor guard at his funeral.

32 Gwen Morgan, “Pope in Death, Tranquil and Benign Figure,” Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1963, 1; “Chicagoan in Guard,” Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1963, 3.

33 Marcinkus interviewed in Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18. Also handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 3b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

34 Robert C. Doty, “Pope Paul, Class of ’23, Visits Vatican’s School for Diplomats,” The New York Times, January 18, 1965, 6; see also Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 65.

35 Marcinkus interviewed in Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

36 Barry Bishop, “Bogota Meet Is Aided by Cicero Priest,” Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1968, A5.

37 Galli, Finanza bianca, 74; Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 159–60; Paul Hoffman, “Bishop with Chicago Roots Is Managing Pope’s Travels,” A9. Marcinkus was the advance man on seven international trips: India, New York, Portugal, Chile, Turkey, the Philippines, and Uganda. He also handled all the Pontiff’s personal travel. Those trips marked the first time a Pope had ever traveled in a jet. See Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

38 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 85–86.

39 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 2b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

40 Wynn, Keepers of the Keys, 160; Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

41 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 84–85.

42 Bishop, “Bogota Meet Is Aided by Cicero Priest,” A6. Marcinkus thought he “was a good man” for the job because he was “very methodical [and] I had a good memory.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

43 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

44 The Chicago Tribune ran “local boy makes good” stories and photos of Marcinkus and Paul VI with the city’s mayor, Richard Daley (1964); Martin Luther King Jr. (1964); British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1965); and Robert Kennedy (1967): see “Pope Greets Daleys,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1964, 1; Richard Philbrick, “Professor Recalls His Doggedness and Integrity,” Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1968, A4; “Prime Minister, Wife Visit Pope,” Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1965, A13; “Kennedy Sees Loss of U.S. Prestige over War in Viet,” Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1967, 4.

45 Marcinkus interviewed in Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

46 Robert C. Doty, “Pope Will Visit New York Oct. 4,” The New York Times, September 9, 1965, 16; “Two Papal Aides Arrive,” The New York Times, September 9, 1965, 16. President Johnson informed the Pope that America was “quite heartened” at Paul VI’s “appointment of a Negro as the auxiliary bishop of New Orleans.” See Douglas Kiker, “Pontiff’s Visit ‘May Be Just What World Needs’—LBJ,” The Boston Globe, October 5, 1965, 11.

47 In 1968, Paul VI appointed Marcinkus as the rector of St. Mary of the Lake villa. It was informally called Villa Stritch, after the Chicago cardinal who had founded the American chapter of Opus Dei. Another Chicago cardinal, George Mundelein, had bought the walled-in villa, adjacent to Rome’s large Borghese Park, in 1935. Mundelein set it aside as a center for American clerics studying in Rome. Many in the Curia referred to the center simply as the Chicago House. There were only ten Americans at the Vatican at the time Marcinkus was appointed the rector. He had overseen the building’s multimillion-dollar renovation in 1963, and to the amazement of his Italian colleagues managed to accomplish it on time and within the original budget. See Gwen Morgan, “Meyer in Villa,” Chicago Tribune, June 16, 1963, 5; and Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G18.

48 Timothy M. Dolan, “ ‘Hence We Cheerfully Sent One Who Should Represent Our Person’: A Century of Papal Representation in the United States,” U.S. Catholic Historian 12, no. 2, The Apostolic Delegation/Nunciature 1893–1993 (Spring 1994): 21.

49 It is not clear if Marcinkus had such contacts or merely boasted about it in the hope that Spellman’s death presented an opportunity for advancement. He lobbied in particular Father Pasquale Macchi, Pope Paul’s close personal assistant, Tosches, Power on Earth, 122; see also Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 13. See also Lehnert, His Humble Servant, 105. As for Spellman’s replacement, Terence Cooke, he was not elevated cardinal until March 1969.

50 Sylvana Foa, “Vatican’s American Priests Are Bitter,” Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1977, 12.

51 “U.S. Priest in Vatican Post,” The New York Times, 45.

52 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 83. Marcinkus said that his “real financial experience [was] I’d count Sunday collection and it was never wrong.” He also thought the focus on his lack of training was misplaced. “Actually, you see, these people don’t understand. I am not making the transactions, I just set policy. We have people here who are technicians who’ve been doing it for thirty to forty years.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1b, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

53 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 188.

54 New York Times reporter Paul Hoffman wrote that Marcinkus took business administration courses at Harvard. The author was unable to confirm that Marcinkus had taken any classes there. Forty-five years after Marcinkus’s appointment at the IOR, former Vatican correspondent for the BBC David Willey wrote that the Pope had dispatched the bishop to Harvard for a six-week crash course about finances. According to the school, that never happened. David Willey, “The Vatican Bank Is Rocked by Scandal Again,” BBC News, July 17, 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23289297.

55 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

56 Ibid., 4a.

57 In any case, as far as Marcinkus was concerned, “Money is a tool. It’s a means, not a goal in itself.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 41, provided to author courtesy of Willan. See also Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 142.

58 Colleague of Marcinkus quoted anonymously in Willey, God’s Politician,, 210.

59 Sindona interviewed in Raw, The Moneychangers, 64.

60 Tosches, Power on Earth, 123.

61 Sindona quoted in Lernoux, In Banks We Trust, 209.

62 Reporter Jim Gallagher interviewed Sindona in 1983 while he was in a federal prison serving a sentence for a fraud conviction. Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G15.

63 Sindona also thought that Marcinkus was upset with him. When the IOR sold Immobiliare to Sindona, Marcinkus lost his status at the company’s Roman golf course. Sindona believed Marcinkus blamed him for the fall-off in his VIP status. Tosches, Power on Earth, 123–24.

64 Galli, Finanza bianca, 79; Raw, The Moneychangers, 62.

65 Leo Sisti and Gianfranco Modolo, Il banco paga: Roberto Calvi e l’avventura dell’Ambrosiano (Milan: Mondadori Milano, 1982). There are some incorrect published reports that the BCI branch was in Lecce.

66 Galli, Finanza bianca, 80.

67 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 27.

68 Raw, The Moneychangers,17; Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 195–96.

69 Grilli, La finanza vaticana in Italia, 32, 34.

70 “Marcinkus—Sindona con l’oro a Milano Fini la Capitale Morale,” La Repubblica, April 19, 1992; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 5–6; see also Giovanni Bazoli, “The Ambrosiano Failure,” The American Banker, July 12, 1983, 16.

71 Calvi’s business wardrobe consisted of identical dark gray suits, white shirts, dark blue ties, and black shoes. In the summer, he changed to a lighter shade of gray. See Francesco Pazienza interviewed in Willan, The Last Supper, 39; see also Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 6; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 31.

72 “Marcinkus—Sindona con l’oro a Milano Fini la Capitale Morale,” La Repubblica; Willan, The Last Supper, 35.

73 Calvi crammed in his self-taught language study at nights. Galli, Finanza bianca, 81–82.

74 “Marcinkus—Sindona con l’oro a Milano Fini la Capitale Morale,” La Repubblica; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 31.

75 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 32; Willan, The Last Supper, 35; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 115.

76 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 7, citing Andrea Barberi et al., “L’Italia della P2 (Milan: Mondadori, 1981). The Vatican institutions that offered stakes in foreign mutual funds were the Banca Provinciale Lombarda and the La Centrale financial holding company.

77 Galli, Finanza bianca, 82.

78 Raw, The Moneychangers, 62–63.

79 Rosone interviewed in Willan, The Last Supper, 34–35.

80 The son-in-law, Piersandro Magnoni, had married Sindona’s daughter, Maria Elisa, in 1967. Sindona brought him into his business. Piersandro’s father, Giuliano Magnoni, knew Sindona since college, and it was the senior Magnoni who knew Calvi and wanted Sindona to meet him. The younger Magnoni simply passed along the message. See Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 121.

81 Tosches, Power on Earth, 118–19.

82 Sindona describing conversation with Calvi in ibid., 120.

83 Marcinkus later claimed that he met Calvi through “the Milanese Curia,” but Sindona’s version was that he introduced Calvi to the top tier of IOR officials and Luigi Mennini later confirmed that. See generally Cornwell, God’s Banker, 54. See also Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 122; and Raw, The Moneychangers, 62.

84 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 26; Raw, The Moneychangers, 64–65.

85 All bishops are assigned titular titles. Marcinkus was the Bishop of Horta in Carthage (Italianized as Orta), after a Cypriot son of pagan parents who converted to Catholicism and became the bishop of Carthage in 248. Marcinkus’s mother, Helen, traveled to Rome for the consecration, as did Chicago’s cardinal, John Cody. “Cicero Priest Named Bishop by Pope Paul,” Chicago Tribune, December 25, 1968, C19; “Mother to See Son Become Bishop,” Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1968, 3; “Cody to See Marcinkus Elevated, Chicago Tribune, December 26, 1968, B3.

86 “Cicero Native Named Vatican Financial Aide,” Chicago Tribune, December 21, 1968, 11. “Finance: Diversification at the Vatican,” Time, January 25, 1971. See generally “Names and Faces,” The Boston Globe, February 25, 1969, 40.

87 The New York Times, “Investment Shift by Vatican Seen,” referred to Sindona as “Milan lawyer” and “secretary” of Generali. He had no public comment, according to the paper. The Boston Globe, “Vatican Stock Sale Hinted,” June 19, 1969, 3, referred to Marcinkus as “the Vatican’s American-born ‘finance minister.’ ” The Chicago Tribune noted, “The bishop’s robes also go with Marcinkus’ new post as second-in-command—but effective head—of the Vatican Bank,” “Cicero Priest Makes Good in Vatican Post,” January 4, 1969, A12. See also Hoffman, “Bishop with Chicago Roots Is Managing Pope’s Travels.” See also Lai, Finanze vaticane, 51.

88 In obtaining direct access to Pope Paul, Marcinkus had outmaneuvered Archbishop Giovanni Benelli, the Sostituto (substitute) Secretary of State, to whom he would have normally reported. The two clashed repeatedly inside the Curia, and Marcinkus made it clear to the Pope that reporting to Benelli would only hinder his work at the IOR. Benelli was nicknamed “the Master Sergeant” inside the Curia for his authoritarian “stickler for detail” attitude. Benelli, meanwhile, thought it demeaning that Marcinkus could bypass the traditional chain of authority. Bishop Marcinkus, and Director of FBI field office in Rome, Tom Biamonte, both interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 17–18, 85–86, 170–71. For Benelli’s reputation, see Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 116.

89 Marcinkus interviewed in “Finance: Diversification at the Vatican,” Time. “From the organizational viewpoint,” Marcinkus later said, “I think maybe I’ve always been very methodical.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 1b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

90 “Finance: Diversification at the Vatican,” Time, January 25, 1971.

91 Lai, Finanze vaticane, 52–53. Macchi had been elected to a Monsignor soon after Paul VI assumed the Papacy.

92 Henry Gaggiottini, “Marcinkus Consecrated Bishop,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1969, A9.

93 Francesco Pazienza, an Italian intelligence agent, told the author, “The Pope knew the IOR needed a son of a bitch.” Author interview, September 18, 2013.

94 Cody interviewed in “Cody to See Marcinkus Elevated,” Chicago Tribune, December 26, 1968, B3.

95 Hooper, “Luigi Mennini: Shadow over the Vatican,” 14. There was little doubt Marcinkus took charge at an important time. A thinly sourced but widely covered book about Vatican finances was coincidentally published just before his appointment. In The Vatican Empire, former Boston Globe reporter Nino Lo Bello asserted the IOR had close to $13 billion in cash ($85 billion in 2014 dollars) and exposed some of the bank’s secret business deals. After Germany’s Der Spiegel and Italy’s Il Mondo widely covered the book’s revelations, the Vatican issued its answer in an unsigned article in the church’s L’Osservatore Romano, in which it claimed that its cash wealth was “in reality . . . a hundredth” of what Lo Bello asserted. The church did not comment on Lo Bello’s claim that Marcinkus was a good manager in part because he had “established close links with [the] Rothschild banking interests.” Alfred Friendly Jr., “Vatican Denies It Has Billions: Book on Wealth Is Termed Greatly Exaggerated,” The New York Times, July 22, 1970, 8.

96 The fifteenth-century tower, sometimes called the bastion of Nicholas V, has walls nearly thirty feet thick near its base. They were built to withstand an armed assault.

97 Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 159. Marigonda was also a former USIA officer assigned to the U.S. embassy at Rome before leaving to take a position with Marcinkus; email from Peter K. Murphy to Gerald Posner, January 30, 2014.

98 Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 124.

99 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 187.

100 Eight-page attachment to Letter from William Wilson to William French Smith, July 15, 1982, William A. Wilson Papers, Box 2, Folder 66, Georgetown University Library, Special Collections Research Center, Washington, D.C.

101 Marcinkus and Marigonda interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 87–88, 141.

102 Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 124–25.

103 Author interview with Philip Willan, Rome, September 19, 2013; Philip Willan, “Three Jailed for 1969 Milan Bomb,” The Guardian, July 1, 2001, 14; “U.S. supported anti-left terror in Italy,” June 24, 2000, 19; Giovanni Mario Ceci, “The Explosion of Italian Terrorism and the Piazza Fontana Massacre Seen by the United States,” Historia, vol. 31, February 9, 2013, 29–40. See also Hutchinson, Their Kingdom Come, 269–75. Author interview with Francesco Pazienza, Rome, September 21, 2013.

104 Robert C. Doty, “Pontiff Sees a Difficult Road to Unity,” The New York Times, June 11, 1969, 14.

105 “Pope to Meet African Heads on Next Trip,” Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1969, A5; “Pope Paul, Nigerian Peace Official Meet,” Chicago Tribune, August 2, 1969, W13.

106 Hoffman, “Bishop with Chicago Roots Is Managing Pope’s Travels.”

107 Nino Lo Bello, “Bodyguard to Pope,” Boston Globe, January 5, 1969, A19.

108 “They use the word here [Italy] and everyone knows it is bodyguard.” Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, January 15, 1988, 2a, provided to author courtesy of Willan. See also Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 139; and see also Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 84.

109 “Archbishop Paul Marcinkus: Vatican Bank Head Hit by Scandal,” The Independent (London), February 23, 2006.

110 Published reports agree that Compendium was a Luxembourg holding company, that Calvi renamed it Banco Ambrosiano Holding, and that Calvi used Compendium to start Cisalpine (which means South of the Alps). Three authors write that Compendium was founded in 1963 by Ambrosiano, in connection with Lovelok, a Liechtenstein holding company: Robert Hutchinson, The Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 241; Raw, The Moneychangers, 63; Rupert Cornwell, God’s Banker, 33. Two other authors write instead that Sindona owned Compendium and that Calvi bought it from him in 1970: Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 17; Tosches, Power on Earth, 120. Tosches was the only author who had unrestricted access to Sindona. But Sindona’s recollection, years after the event, does not guarantee it is accurate. His recall is often incorrect when compared to the documentary record. The problem with settling the issue of precisely when and by whom Compendium was founded is that its records are no longer available for public review in Luxembourg, nor are any records available in the Bahamas for the Cisalpine Bank.

All the authors agree that by 1980, Calvi built Cisalpine into the second largest bank in the Bahamas, with about $500 million under its control. “Banks Ranked,” The American Banker, July 25, 1980. Time, in a 1982 special investigation, sided with the 1963 incorporation of Compendium by the Ambrosiano, without any Sindona involvement. Peter Stoler, with Jonathan Beaty and Barry Kalb, “The Great Vatican Bank Mystery,” Time, September 13, 1982, 24.

111 The IOR started by buying five thousand of the initially offered fifteen thousand Class A shares. Over several years, the church’s stake grew to 16,667 shares, 8.3 percent of the bank. Sindona, through his Finabank, owned 2.5 percent. Tosches, Power on Earth, 120; Rupert Cornwell, God’s Banker, 50; memorandum of Paul Marcinkus to the Joint Investigating Committee, Vatican and Italy, into the Affairs of the IOR, quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 67; see also pages 66–71.

112 Unnamed Bank of Italy official quoted in Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 17. When Cisalpine’s links to Calvi, Sindona, and the church later became public, the Nassau bank became a fulcrum of conspiracy theorists. One of the most often repeated is a tale in which Cisalpine laundered Mafia heroin profits through an Asian bank run by a CIA-linked Cuban expatriate. All that is missing is credible evidence.

113 Ann Crittenden, “Growing Bahamian Loan Activity by U.S. Banks Causes Concern,” The New York Times, March 3, 1977, 1. Penny Lernoux, in her 1984 book, In Banks We Trust, wrote: “Then, as now [1984], the Eurocurrency market was a giant floating crap game in which exchange dealers (mostly banks) bet on the rise or fall of national currencies.”

114 Sindona quoted in Stoler, Beaty, and Kalb, “The Great Vatican Bank Mystery.”

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

116 Marcinkus quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 71.

117 Raw, The Moneychangers, 8, 219; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 50.

118 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 50.

119 Willey, God’s Politician, 211.

120 Clara Calvi quoted in Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 26.

121 Marcinkus also visited the following year. Raw, The Moneychangers, 94; Cornwell, God’s Banker, 50, 54; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 65; Tosches, Power on Earth, 170.

122 Stoler, Beaty, and Kalb, “The Great Vatican Bank Mystery.”

123 Raw, The Moneychangers, 81–83. The back-to-back operations picked up steam after an April 25, 1972, Cisalpine board meeting in New York. Marcinkus and Calvi agreed to expand the scope of the deposits, although they kept their agreement secret from the other directors, as well as from Cisalpine’s titular president, Peter Siegenthaler. Radowal, a Liechtenstein holding company owned by Calvi, became a key way station between the Vatican Bank and other elements of the Calvi empire.

124 The back-to-back arrangements, which also involved joint IOR and Ambrosiano accounts at Banca del Gottardo in Lugano, were initially oral agreements, but were committed to writing in two November 1976 letters from Calvi to Marcinkus. Stoler, Beaty, and Kalb, “The Great Vatican Bank Mystery”; Raw, The Moneychangers, 74, 131–37.

125 Marcinkus made that statement to Paul Horne during a telephone interview for the in-depth 1971 Institutional Investor article about the finances of the church. Horne attributed it in the published piece only to “one Vatican insider,” but it was widely known in the Vatican that it was Marcinkus. (Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money,” 83.) Marcinkus later tried to step back from that quote: “The bank we have here is a service organization for the Church; it’s involved particularly in apostolic works. Somebody asked me one time, ‘Why this?’ I said, ‘When my workers here come to retire they expect a pension; it’s no use my saying to them, ‘I’ll pay you 400 Hail Marys.’ Now that’s been misquoted all over the place. They use that all the time, see? I’m quoted as saying, ‘You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys.’ It would be very nice if the Church could live without depending on these things, but you find a church you have to buy bricks, have a bricklayer.” Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 76. See also reference to a November 1982 interview by Marcinkus with Il Sabato, the weekly publication of the influential lay organization Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation); Cornwell, God’s Banker, 58. See also Hooper, “Luigi Mennini: Shadow over the Vatican,” 14; and see also Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 14.

Chapter 16: Operation Fraulein

1 Infighting between the two principals gave him an opportunity to seize the company. Raw, The Moneychangers, 69; Tosches, Power on Earth, 127–28; see also Henry Tanner, “Italy Suspends All Stock Trading: Moves to Halt Price Collapse,” The New York Times, July 9, 1981, D4.

2 Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977. Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 131–32. The Daily American, started by three American soldiers after World War II, was the only competitor in Italy to the International Herald Tribune. It went out of business in 1986.

3 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 191.

4 Felix Kessler, “Italy’s ‘Howard Hughes’ Said to Prepare for Sizable Increase in His U.S. Investments,” The Wall Street Journal, February 17, 1972, 12.

5 Ibid.

6 H. Erich Heinemann, “Loews Sells Million Franklin Shares,” The New York Times, July 13, 1972, 47.

7 H. Erich Heinemann, “A Question of Control: European Encounters American Bank Rules,” The New York Times, F5. Through Fasco, Sindona bought 18.4 percent of Franklin, less than the 25 percent that would have required Fasco to register with the Federal Reserve as a bank holding company. That would have immediately subjected Fasco to far greater scrutiny. New York State law presumed that control of a bank existed with as little as 10 percent ownership.

8 H. Heinemann, “Loews Sells Million Franklin Shares, 47; see also DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 138–39; “Sindona: He’s Popped Up Again,” The Economist, July 23, 1972.

9 In June 1972, one of Calvi’s companies, Cimafin Finanza Anstalt, agreed to buy Sindona’s Zitropo Holding S.A. and Pacchetti S.p.A. for $44,317,876 (the IOR made $860,000 on currency conversion commissions on that sale, on its way to earning $5.6 million that year just on exchanging lire for Calvi). Full transfer of ownership and payment for Franklin was not until February 1973. All money passed through Sindona’s Fasco. “Sindona Speaks,” The Economist, September 16, 1972, 100. See also Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 123–24, 126; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 145–47; Raw, The Moneychangers, 84–86, 94–95.

10 Sindona interviewed in Manny Topol and Adrian Peracchi, Newsday, October 17, 1982, 1

11 H. Erich Heinemann, “Roth Asks Inquiry on Bank-Stock Sale,” The New York Times, July 18, 1972, 41.

12 Ibid.; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 148–49. Tisch ignored Roth’s campaign to further question Sindona. Six years later (1978), the FDIC, in its role then as a receiver of a bankrupt Franklin, filed a federal lawsuit against Tisch, charging that he failed to thoroughly investigate Sindona’s bona fides. The FDIC asked in its complaint for Tisch to return the profit he had made by selling his Franklin shares to Sindona. The lawsuit was settled out of court. See Max H. Seigel, “F.D.I.C. Suit Against Franklin National Head,” The New York Times, July 13, 1978, D6.

13 John V. Conti, “Oxford Electric, Interphoto Data Show Tangled Debts and Conflict of Interest,” The Wall Street Journal, January 17, 1972, 10; see also Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

14 Kessler, “Italy’s ‘Howard Hughes’ Said to Prepare for Sizable Increase in His U.S. Investments,” 12.

15 Federal regulatory authorities deferred usually to the classifications given the buyers by state regulators. When Sindona used Fasco to buy Franklin, since he was Fasco’s sole owner, for New York State banking rules he was considered an “individual purchaser.” That meant he was not subject to the scrutiny to which a company would have undergone. “Sindona Speaks,” The Economist, 100.

New York’s Superintendent of Banks proposed a change to state law so that after Franklin, all individuals were subject to the same rigorous examination as companies. See also Heinemann, “A Question of Control,” F5.

16 Bordoni had been dismissed from Citibank in 1965, allegedly for having exceeded the trading limits set by the bank. Against the advice of David Kennedy, the respected chairman of Continental Illinois, Sindona had picked Bordoni to run Moneyrex. Bordoni was later a director of Sindona’s Banca Unione. See Raw, The Moneychangers, 58.

Sindona was appointed to a specially created executive board, a technical distinction that allowed him, despite being an Italian citizen, to perform all the duties of any normal director at a U.S. financial institution. At the time, foreigners were not allowed to serve directly on U.S. bank boards: “Sindona Is Named to Bank’s Board,” The New York Times, August 18, 1972, 45.

17 That money came from part of a $24 million loan from the IOR; Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 22; Raw, The Moneychangers, 98.

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

19 David Burnham, “Sindona Discusses Issuing Role with U.S. Controller,” The New York Times, May 15, 1974, 61; Robert E. Bedingfield, “Franklin Bank Solvency Reiterated by Controller,” The New York Times, May 23, 1974, 59. Kennedy and Sindona had met when Continental Illinois Bank bought a minority interest in Banca Privata, the Sindona-IOR-owned institution; see Farnsworth, “Michele Sindona, the Outsider as Insider.”

20 Tosches, Power on Earth, 77. Kennedy and Sindona are at the center of a long-standing conspiracy theory that has Continental Bank transferring $4 million in 1967 to Sindona’s PBF, which he in turn loaned to a right-wing Greek army colonel, Georgios Papadopoulos. In April of that year Papadopoulos led a coup d’état in his native country. Conspiracy theorists believe it was all part of a P2 subplot to topple Greece with the hope it would encourage the Italian military to do the same in Italy. Although the plot was reprinted in one book as fact (DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker), the author is unable to find any credible evidence of it.

21 Lucinda Franks, “Sindona’s $1-Million Offer to Nixon Group Examined,” The New York Times, July 15, 1974, 1. Foreigners are not allowed to contribute to U.S. elections unless they have a so-called green card, a permanent resident’s permit. Stans later said he was not certain if the banker had a green card or merely a work visa that allowed him to temporarily conduct business in the country.

22 Tosches, Power on Earth, 134; “Hambros in Italy,” The Economist, October 16, 1971, 100, 103; Raw, The Moneychangers, 79–80, 91–93. Calvi bought Hambros Bank’s share in Le Centrale (the IOR had historically owned a substantial minority share in Hambros). Calvi took a share in the Le Centrale interests held by Credito Varesino and the Pacchetti Group, both of which were consolidated under a Sindona holding company, Zitropo. And as a final element in the deal, Sindona gave Calvi the first option he owned to purchase Invest, a trading company. Marcinkus stayed involved by authorizing a short-term $43.5 million loan to Cisalpine on November 30, 1972. That money was used by Calvi to pay Sindona what he still owed on Varesino, Pacchetti, and Zitropo. Marcinkus also helped the sellers of the Varesino shares transfer part of their profits to a Lugano holding company, and earned for the IOR an additional $930,000 in the conversion of those funds from lire to Swiss francs. See also Cornwell, God’s Banker, 62–63.

23 Raw, The Moneychangers, 134.

24 In 1978, Italy’s banking regulators discovered that the IOR’s accountant, Pellegrino de Strobel, had written a 1975 letter to the Ambrosiano in a clumsy effort to mask Calvi’s ownership share in Suprafin S.p.A. The plan to secretly accumulate the Ambrosiano shares also involved two Swiss banks, Zurich’s Credit Suisse and Chiasso’s Union de Banques Suisses, as well as an Ambrosiano holding company in Lausanne, Banca del Gottardo. Two offshore accounts were also used, Ehrenkreuz Anstalt and Radowal Financial Etablissement. Calvi’s wife, Clara, held an undisclosed power of attorney in each offshore company. Benton E. Gup, Bank Failures in the Major Trading Countries of the World: Causes and Remedies (Westport, CT: Greenwood/Quorum, 1998), 31–32; Tosches, Power on Earth, 135.

25 Tosches, Power on Earth, 131.

26 During World War II, the Banca Cattolica had come under Mussolini’s state ownership, but in 1946 the Vatican reclaimed private control. See Raw, The Moneychangers, 56.

27 Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” G15–16.

28 Raw, The Moneychangers, 70.

29 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 19.

30 Calvi quoted in ibid.

31 According to Pollard, “It was Spada who masterminded the passage of the majority share-holding of the Banca Cattolica to the IOR.” Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 207; Tosches, Power on Earth, 135. Calvi used his Le Centrale holding company for the Cattolica purchase. Raw, The Moneychangers, 77–78.

32 Raw, The Moneychangers, 77–78.

33 Ibid., 70.

34 The initial $12 million was paid by the Swiss holding company Lovelok to the IOR, and then deposited by Marcinkus that same day into Cisalpine. Each subsequent installment involved an extra step of obfuscation. Calvi formed Vertlac, another Liechtenstein holding company. Cisalpine made loans to Vertlac in the exact amount of each installment due to the IOR. Vertlac then wired the money to the Vatican Bank, which in turn deposited it into six-month certificates of deposit at Cisalpine. The IOR even managed to squeeze $2.5 million in profit by getting an artificially high exchange rate at Cisalpine when converting the U.S. dollars used in the installment payments into lire. Raw, The Moneychangers, 70, 74, 78; see also Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 19.

35 Raw, The Moneychangers, 110.

36 Marcinkus’s reported dismissal of Luciani is cited. in Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 20–21.

37 See generally Gallagher, “The Pope’s Banker,” 20.

38 “A Pontiff from Cicero?,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1972, A6.

39 As for the directors’ meeting, see generally Raw, The Moneychangers, 89.

40 Securities and Exchange Commission, 39th Annual Report, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1973, U.S. Government Printing Office, 73–74.

41 SEC News Digest, A Daily Summary from the Securities and Exchange Commission, “Irving Eisenberger, Able Associates Enjoined; Trading Suspended in Vetco Offshore Industries Stock,” Issue No. 73-42, March 2, 1973, Court Enforcement Actions, 1; see also Felix Belair Jr., “Court Bars Sale of Vetco Stock,” The New York Times, March 2, 1973, 47.

42 Everett Hollis, “Vatican Refund Sought by Vetco,” The New York Times, March 5, 1973, 43; see also Belair Jr., “Court Bars Sale of Vetco Stock,” 47. See “Statement on Behalf of Ragnar Option Co. and Victor Sperandeo,” included as an attachment in an unsigned letter from Willkie Farr & Gallagher to Richard Kraut, Harold Halperin, and Charles Lerner, all of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Re: Vetco Offshore Industries—Ragnar Option Co., October 31, 1973, copy in possession of author.

43 Fiduciary Investment Services was owned by Sindona. It is not clear who introduced Marcinkus and Eisenberger. Much later, Sindona told author Charles Raw that he was not responsible for the link between the IOR and Eisenberger, and moreover said that he repeatedly warned Marcinkus against doing business with small advisors. Raw, The Moneychangers, 101; Hollis, “Vatican Refund Sought by Vetco,” 43.

44 Hollis, “Vatican Refund Sought by Vetco,” 43.

45 Raw, The Moneychangers, 101; see also Thomas and Morgan-Witts, Pontiff, 149; and Martin, The Final Conclave, 30.

46 Belair Jr., “Court Bars Sale of Vetco Stock,” 47. For later Vetco legal problems with a Swiss subsidiary and U.S. tax laws, see United States v. Vetco, Inc., 691 Federal Reporter, 2d Series, 1981, 1282–91.

47 Paul VI elevated Luciani to a cardinal on March 5, 1973.

48 Robert J. Cole, “U.S. Inquiry in 1973 at Vatican Bank Is Disclosed,” The New York Times, August 7, 1982, 34.

49 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; Richard Hammer, The Vatican Connection (New York: Charter, 1983), 150–53. Hammer’s book is about Operation Fraulein. It won a 1982 Edgar Award for the year’s best true crime book. Aronwald and Tamarro told me that the book’s factual errors are because it relied too much on Coffey’s version of events. “That book is a story as told to the author by Joe Coffey,” says Aronwald. “Neither Dick Tamarro or I were interviewed for the book.”

“Coffey and I never spoke after that pulp fiction book was published,” Tamarro told me. Newsweek, in a September 13, 1982, review of The Vatican Connection, noted that while Coffey was a “key source for the book,” Hammer “bases his case chiefly on a far-from impeccable source: the unsworn testimony of two convicted con men and an accomplice.”

50 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 51–52.

51 Ibid., 64–70.

52 Jane Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” The Wall Street Journal, August 6, 1982, 2.

53 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 100.

54 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; see also Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 76–98.

55 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 77–78.

56 Ibid., 210–11.

57 Alfred Scotti, Deputy District Attorney, New York, quoted in Arnold H. Lubasch, “Disposal of Illicit Paper Is Charged Here,” The New York Times, July 12, 1973, 1.

58 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007. Aronwald’s Strike Force was a specially formed group inside the Organized Crime and Racketeering Division, assigned to the Southern District of New York.

59 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; see also Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” 2.

60 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 154–55.

61 Ibid., 144, 158–59.

62 Ibid., 210–12.

63 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007. Before Tamarro’s trip to Germany, the FBI had relied exclusively on its legal attachés in U.S. embassies when it came to any foreign case.

64 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

65 Ibid.

66 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 219.

67 Cole, “U.S. Inquiry in 1973 at Vatican Bank Is Disclosed,” 34.

68 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; see also DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 108–14; “Hambros in Italy,” The Economist, October 16, 1971, 100, 103; “The End: Bastogi,” The Economist, October 23, 1971, 103, 104; “End of the Italian Affair,” The Economist, January 8, 1972, 72–73; see also Simoni and Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 122.

69 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

70 Ibid.

71 In 1946, Cardinal Tisserant—a French intelligence agent during World War I—met with Argentine Cardinal Antonio Caggiano at the Vatican. The two prelates facilitated the flight of French war criminals to Argentina. Since that information was made public in 2003, the Vatican has refused to release any files about the matter. The Argentine Catholic Church claimed to the author that the relevant records were destroyed in a 1955 fire. Kevin G. Hall, “Argentina’s New President Pressured to Open Perón Files on Nazis,” Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, International News, June 1, 2003.

72 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007; author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 235–38.

73 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; see also Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” 2.

74 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 216.

75 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

76 Lubasch, “Disposal of Illicit Paper Is Charged Here.”

77 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

78 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 249–50.

79 Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” 2; also author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

80 James Bacque, “How a Manhattan Detective Trailed a Small-Time Hood and Ended Up Investigating Some Strange and Possibly Illegal Dealings of the Vatican Bank,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), January 15, 1983.

81 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 215–16.

82 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007; see also Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 241–45.

83 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

84 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

85 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

88 Seymour had recently announced his resignation for personal reasons. Nixon had announced his replacement, Paul Curran, the Chairman of the New York State Commission of Investigation, but the Senate had not yet approved him. Aronwald fully briefed Curran on the meeting and the investigation once he took charge later that month (April 1973).

89 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

90 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 301–2. Aronwald told the author: “Sure he [Coffey] was upset, but it was simply our jurisdiction at that stage. The meeting at the Vatican was super sensitive, and we didn’t want to mess it up by taking a large group there. There were plenty of people besides Coffey who wanted to go. My biggest concern was that if we started to get too large on our side, the Vatican might change its mind and cancel.” Years later, Coffey speculated to author Richard Hammer that the Nixon administration had sidetracked a harder investigation because the President feared upsetting Catholic voters before the reelection. Aronwald insists, however, “No one ever pressured me and I was running the case.”

91 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

92 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007. Tom Biamonte, the FBI liaison officer at the American embassy in Rome, had lobbied Marcinkus to speak to the Justice Department trio. “We had no right to enter the Vatican unless specifically invited,” Biamonte later said. “But out of courtesy to us at the embassy, he [Marcinkus] agreed to answer any questions they wanted to throw at him.” Biamonte interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 172.

97 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

98 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

99 Biamonte interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 172.

100 Monsignor Fornasari was a well-known Vatican attorney who practiced before the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota, the church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court. He also had a side business in manufacturing rosaries and crucifixes.

101 Hammer, The Vatican Connection, 305–6.

102 FBI File summary of the interview with Marcinkus, quoted and cited in Raw, The Moneychangers, 102.

103 Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” 2.

104 Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 172.

105 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007; author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

106 Jane Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” The Wall Street Journal, August 6, 1982, 2.

107 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

108 Author interview with Richard Tamarro, February 28, 2007.

109 Interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

110 Lubasch, “Disposal of Illicit Paper Is Charged Here,” 1; Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” 2.

111 Lubasch, “Disposal of Illicit Paper Is Charged Here,” 1; the case, U.S. v. Amato, et al., is on Pacer, the legal database, at 1:73-cr00672-MGC, filing date of July 10, 1973.

112 Rizzo pled guilty and was given a five-year sentence to serve concurrently with his drug trafficking conviction. The government never pursued extradition requests against either Ledl or Foligni, both of whom were never tried.

113 Mayer, “Vatican Bank’s Marcinkus Was Queried in U.S. Counterfeiting Case 9 Years Ago,” 2; author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

114 Author interview with William Aronwald, February 16, 2007.

Chapter 17: Il Crack Sindona

1 Paul Hofmann, “War Raids Incite Anti-U.S. Feelings in Italy,” The New York Times, January 3, 1973, 8. In the State Department that year, 1973, there was a flurry of diplomatic cable traffic over the “Vatican’s ‘contacts’ with Communists” in Vietnam. It was about fears the Pope might reach out to the Vietcong. See generally 09-25-73 WikiLeaks Vatican “Contacts” with Communists Cable: 1973ROME10199_b; https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1973ROME10199_b.html; also 09-28-73 WikiLeaks Audience with Pope Paul VI (Held at Vatican Suggestion) Cable: 1973ROME10410_b; https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1973ROME10410_b.html.

2 “Two Bombings in Milan,” The New York Times, January 16, 1973, 14.

3 Paul Hofmann, “El Al Employe [sic] in Rome Is Shot to Death by an Arab: 3 Seized at Beirut Airport,” The New York Times, April 28, 1973, 6.

4 Paul Hofmann, “Italian Neo-Fascists Are Linked to a Synagogue Fire in Padua,” The New York Times, April 30, 1973, 3.

5 “Anarchist Seized in Blast in Milan,” The New York Times, May 18, 1972, 7.

6 Paul Hofmann, “If Surge of Gunfire Is a Sign, Sicilian Mafia Is in Trouble,” The New York Times, May 15, 1973, 41.

7 Paul Hofmann, “Italians Suspect Violence Is Plot: International Police Aid Is Asked After Milan Blast,” The New York Times, May 21, 1973, 9.

8 “Again Italy’s Premier: Mariano Rumor,” The New York Times, July 9, 1973, 3.

9 Ibid.

10 “Milan Offices Bombed,” The New York Times, July 29, 1973, 3.

11 “Libyan Jets Attack an Italian Warship off African Coast,” The New York Times, September 22, 1973, 2.

12 William D. Smith, “The Arab Oil Weapon Comes into Play,” The New York Times, October 21, 1973, 185; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 194–95.

13 Robert D. Hershey Jr., “10 Years After Oil Crisis: Lessons Still Uncertain,” The New York Times, September 25, 1983, 1.

14 “Europeans Move to Conserve Oil,” The New York Times, November 8, 1973, 71.

15 Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Oil: Alarms Growing in Europe and U.S.: Continent Worries About a Possible ’74 Recession,” The New York Times, November 21, 1973, 51; “Deep Recession Seen for Europe,” The New York Times, December 1, 1973, 47; “Oil Shortage Abroad Puts Stocks in Different Light,” The New York Times, December 3, 1973, 63.

16 Terry Robards, “Oil-Short Europe Is Facing Hardest Winter Since War,” The New York Times, December 11, 1973, 1.

17 “Kuwait Considers Giving Hijackers to Guerrilla Group for Trial,” The New York Times, December 21, 1973, 14.

18 “Pope Urges Italians to Shun A ‘Mafia-Style Mentality,’ ” The New York Times, January 2, 1974, 13.

19 Martin Andersen, “Argentina Can’t Exorcise Fascination with Perón,” The Miami Herald, July 3, 1987, Q17; Martin Andersen, “$10 Million Demanded for Return of the Hands Cut from Perón’s Body,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), July 3, 1987; Susana Viau and Eduardo Tagliaferro, “Carlos Bartffeld, Mason y Amigo de Massera,” December 14, 1998, 12.

20 Tosches, Power on Earth, 169–71.

21 There are conflicting accounts of precisely when Calvi and Gelli met, but the best evidence is that it was sometime in 1974, although they did not do regular business together until the following year. Calvi’s wife, Clara, thought it could have been as early as 1973, but she was not present. Willan, The Last Supper, 112–13. See also Raw, The Moneychangers, 139.

22 Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 171

23 Calvi quoted in Willan, The Last Supper, 112.

24 Gelli interviewed in ibid., 126–27.

25 When the police eventually seized Gelli’s P2 records, it showed Calvi was initiated into the Rome branch in 1974, and became a member of a Geneva lodge the following year. See Willan, The Last Supper, 111–12. Some publications also link Calvi to a London Masonic lodge, but there is no evidence he was a member there. It appears that P2 had an affiliation to a London lodge, and that was sufficient for Calvi in case he needed to call upon one of its British members.

26 Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 172.

27 Ibid., 172–73.

28 Bastogi had large interests in Italian utility, mining, and cement industries. Count Giuseppe Volpi owned it during World War II. Sindona secretly acquired some shares starting in the late 1960s. In 1971, he enlisted Calvi and the British merchant bank Hambros to quietly accumulate more of Bastogi, using Ultrafin, a Swiss holding company that could not easily be traced to them. When Bastogi’s board learned of Sindona and Calvi’s takeover interest, they put up a fierce battle—much of which played out publicly—to successfully retain control. Hostile takeovers were unheard of in Italy at the time, and in its aftermath Sindona was the public relations loser, seeming by Italian business standards too hungry a predator. See Galli, Finanza bianca, 82.

29 The Pierre was best known as a five-star luxury hotel, but it also had seventy-seven condominium apartments that were maintained under the hotel’s general management. Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, n. 315 (citing Exhibit Carli, January 28, 1981 Mec. I/5), 18.

30 Affidavit of John McCaffrey, February 3, 1981, quoted at length in DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 1046; see also Willan, The Last Supper, 86–87.

31 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 132.

32 Tosches, Power on Earth, 149.

33 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 20–22.

34 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57. Sindona’s merged bank had no assets: see Lai, Finanze vaticane, 53.

35 The Bank of Italy conducted four investigations of Sindona’s businesses, dating back to his failed attempt to take over Bastogi. Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57. See also Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 122; and “Hambros in Italy,” The Economist, October 16, 1971, 100. As for the questions over the Bank of Italy’s failure to find evidence during its regularly scheduled annual reviews, see Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 19–20; Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 40.

36 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 182–83. Some published reports assert that in exchange for his donation, Sindona demanded and got his friend Mario Barone appointed as the chief of the Bank of Rome (Willan, The Last Supper, 81). The author was unable to confirm this was a quid pro quo for the Sindona contribution to the anti-divorce battle. See also William Tuohy, “Italy Retains Divorce, 3–2; Rebuff to Vatican, State,” The Boston Globe, May 14 1974, 1.

37 John O’Neill, “ ‘Coition Death’: Are Only the Famous Prone to Final Fun?” Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), July 1, 1987, 21; Alexander Chancellor, “Long Life,” The Spectator, July 27, 2013; author interview with a priest recounting a personal conversation with Sindona, September 21, 2013.

38 Robert E. Bedingfield, “Strains at Bank Multiplied in Big-City Competition,” The New York Times, May 18, 1974, 39; “Banking, A Shocking Drama,” Time, May 27, 1974.

39 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 163–65. This trade was a staple of Sindona financial institutions: see Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 28–30.

40 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

41 Harold Gleason quoted in DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 191.

42 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 14.

43 John A. Allan, “Lag at Franklin Cited,” The New York Times, May 2, 1974, 75.

44 Richard E. Mooney, “When a Big Bank Stumbles,” The New York Times, June 9, 1974, 164.

45 Tosches, Power on Earth, 152.

46 “Sindona, Self-Made Man of 53, Rules Vast Industrial Empire,” The New York Times, May 13, 1974, 48.

47 John H. Allan, “Franklin National Bank Dismisses Its President,” The New York Times, May 14, 1974, 1; see also Robert E. Bedingfield, “Franklin Urged to Omit Payment,” The New York Times, May 11, 1974, 39; “Banking: A Shocking Drama,” Time; “Poor Sindona,” The Economist, May 18, 1974, 126.

48 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 198.

49 John H. Allan, “10-Day Ban Intended to Allow Bank to Arrange Affairs,” The New York Times, May 15, 1974, 61.

50 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

51 Robert D. Hershey Jr., “Tremors in the Banking System,” The New York Times, May 19, 1974, 159.

52 “Poor Sindona,” The Economist, 126.

53 Sindona interviewed in Tosches, Power on Earth, 170–71.

54 Ibid.,171.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid., 172.

57 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 158.

58 Raw, The Moneychangers, 111.

59 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57; Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 42–43.

60 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 33–35; see also “Loan to Sindona by Rome Bank Is Not Expected to Aid Franklin,” The New York Times, July 12, 1974, 55.

61 Paul Hofmann, “Italian Financier Said to Make Concessions for $100-Million Loan,” The New York Times, July 10, 1974, 51; Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

62 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

63 “Sindona: A £100m Loss?,” The Economist, September 21, 1974, 119.

64 “Franklin Fizzles Out,” Time, October 21, 1974; see generally Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 120–22.

65 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 206.

66 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57; “More Collateral Put Up by Sindona,” The New York Times, July 16, 1974, 51. As for how Sindona tried to insulate SGI from being infected by losses in his other financial companies, see generally Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, n. 315, 35–36.

67 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57. See also advertisement, “A Great Bank Is Born, Banca Privata Italiana,” The Economist, July 6, 1974, 121. Sindona’s streak of bad luck continued in Italian courts that month, when shareholders of his financing company, Finambro, prevailed in their lawsuit to stop him from raising more capital.

68 John H. Allan, “63-Million Lost by Franklin Bank in 5 Months of ’74,” The New York Times, June 21, 1974, 1.

69 John H. Allan, “Sindona Associate Leaving Franklin,” The New York Times, June 24, 1974, 43.

70 Tosches, Power on Earth, 153; DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 206.

71 “Franklin Fizzles Out,” Time.

72 Michael C. Jensen, “S.E.C. Said to Be Investigating Franklin Bank’s Sindona Deals,” The New York Times, July 18, 1974, 49; Robert J. Cole, “S.E.C. Files Fraud Charges Against Nine Once at Franklin,” The New York Times, October 18, 1974, 57. Sindona was in fact involved in shuffling money between Franklin and his other businesses in an effort to minimize the bank’s trading losses and artificially increase paper profits. See generally DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 192–94.

73 “Sindona Said to Vow to Save Franklin,” The New York Times, July 2, 1974, 54. “After so many Italians who have come here to trade in vegetables or enroll with the gangsters, here’s now someone who has Wall Street listening to him, but instead of assisting me, they [his Italian critics] attack me,” Sindona told Corriere della Sera. He was angry at the widespread commercial success of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 The Godfather. Sindona told friends and business colleagues that the film reinforced the worst stereotypes of Italians in America and made it more difficult for businessmen to work with him. Meanwhile, Sindona’s former partner, Calvi, did not worry about how Americans judged him since he did so little business in the U.S. Calvi loved the film; he told a fellow financier, “Do you know The Godfather? It’s a masterpiece, because everything is in it.” Calvi quoted in Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 36.

74 “Sindona, Big Franklin Holder, Reported Selling a Bank in Italy,” The New York Times, September 5, 1974, 62; Raw, The Moneychangers, 119.

75 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 175–77.

76 Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Bank Closes in Germany; Sindona Owned Half of It,” The New York Times, August 24, 1974, 31.

77 “Vatican Denies Report of Big Banking Losses,” The New York Times, August 28, 1974, 39.

78 Herbert Koshetz, “Sindona Unit Selling 53% of Talcott for 5.6-Million,” The New York Times, September 28, 1974, 35; “The American Connection,” The Economist, October 5, 1974, 106.

79 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 22, 37–42.

80 See Raw, The Moneychangers, 119–20.

81 Although Italian authorities closed Finabank’s Italian branch that September, Switzerland did not shutter its headquarters until the following January; see Turone, Il caffè di Sindona, 41–42.

82 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 89.

83 Tosches, Power on Earth, 171–72.

84 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

85 Ibid.; Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Italy Is Making Good on the Failure of Sindona’s Bank: $500-Million in Losses Books Examined,” The New York Times, September 20, 1974, 51.

86 “Sindona Reported in a Court Inquiry,” The New York Times, September 16, 1974, 54.

87 In just one instance, Sindona arranged for some customer deposits at the Banca Privata Finanziaria to serve as collateral for debt issues at one of his holding companies, Moizzi & Co. Those funds were sometimes transferred to the IOR, which in turn made them available to a Finabank account in Geneva. That account, nicknamed MANI, after the first two letters of Sindona’s sons’ names (Marco and Nino), served as collateral for foreign currency speculation. See generally DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 91.

88 Farnsworth, “Sindona’s Empire: Sharp Trading, Big Losses,” 57.

89 Ibid.

90 John A. Allan, “Sindona Resigns His Post as Franklin Bank Director,” The New York Times, September 22, 1974, 1.

91 John A. Allan, “F.D.I.C. Rejects Franklin’s Plan,” The New York Times, October 4, 1974, 1.

92 For a full background of the criminal charges filed against Sindona, see M. De Luca, ed., Sindona. The Indictments of the Courts of Milan (Rome: Riuniti, 1986); and Israel Shenker, “Warrant Seeks Sindona Arrest,” The New York Times, October 10, 1974, 81.

93 Martin, The Final Conclave, 30.

94 European-American Bank bought what was left of Franklin for $125 million, outbidding Manufacturers Hanover by $2 million. DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 213-14.

95 Patrick J. Sloyan, “Franklin Failure Almost Caused World Panic, Burns Says,” The New York Times, December 22, 1974, 58; “Franklin Fizzles Out,” Time.

96 “Italy Is Liquidating Bank in the Group Headed by Sindona,” The New York Times, September 29, 1974, 4. “Sindona: Worse and Worse,” The Economist, October 5, 1974, 106.

97 Generale Immobiliare, Revealing All,” The Economist, April 5, 1975, 84.

98 See generally Untitled, Associated Press, Rome, A.M. cycle, August 8, 1979.

99 Sindona quoted in “Sindona Declares He Can Incriminate Leading Italians,” The New York Times, April 7, 1975, 33.

100 Cole, “S.E.C. Files Fraud Charges On Nine Formerly at Franklin,” 57. Although the SEC described the action as “one of the biggest actions ever brought against a bank and its officers,” it admitted that its investigation had not found any “evidence of looting.”

101 Ibid., 57, 68.

102 Israel Shenker, “Warrant Seeks Sindona Arrest,” The New York Times, October 10, 1974, 81; “Sindona Picks Defense Lawyers,” The New York Times, October 16, 1974, 67.

103 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 214.

104 Gelli quoted in Ibid., 215.

105 Ibid., 218–19; Sindona’s mistress had been married to an American, but was divorced by the time she met Sindona at a Lehman Brothers reception in New York in 1960. Although he was married, he had had several mistresses over the years. He had a longer relationship with her than with any other woman.

106 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 219.

107 Leonard Sloane, “Sindona Appears in Public to Address College Group,” The New York Times, April 16, 1997, 51; Terry Robards, “Sindona Says He Lives on Help,” The New York Times, November 27, 1975, 55. Sindona told friends and colleagues that although he was still living in his condominium at the Pierre, he had sold it to raise money and was now renting it by the day from an undisclosed buyer. In fact, Sindona still owned it. That woud be disclosed when the following year he posted its deed to help make bail.

108 Sindona quoted in DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 220.

109 The New York Times, January 8, 1975, 51 (no article title or byline).

110 Lloyd Shearer, “Intelligence Report,” The Boston Globe, Parade supplement, titled “The Vatican Takes a Bath,” March 23, 1975, H16, referring to how Pope Paul VI “also brought in his old friend, Michele Sindona [to the IOR].” See also “Allah Be Praised,” Forbes, February 15, 1975, 8; “Vatican’s Budget Is Vetoed by Pope,” The New York Times, January 23, 1975, 14. No article title for the statement by Vatican spokesman, Federico Alessandrini, about the church’s limited losses, The New York Times, February 1, 1975, 4. See also The New York Times, January 23, 1975, 14 (no title to article and no byline). And see also Raw, The Moneychangers, 120.

111 Italian magazine Panorama, cited in “Report Chicagoan Out as Vatican Bank Head,” Chicago Tribune, November 22, 1974, 1.

112 Italian magazine Panorama, cited in Andrew Blake, “Financier’s Fall Costly to Vatican,” The Boston Globe, February 2, 1975, 21.

113 Kay Withers, “Vatican Aide Denies Pope May Fire Him,” Chicago Tribune, November 23, 1974, D11.

114 Kay Withers, “Vatican Wealth: The Bottom Line Isn’t Too Blessed,” Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1975, A1.

115 “Vatican’s Finances: Paul’s Pence,” The Economist, February 8, 1975, 71.

116 “Vatican’s Budget Is Vetoed by Pope,” The New York Times, January 23, 1975, 14; “Vatican Finances; Paul’s Pence,” The Economist, 71.

117 Edward Magri, “Vatican Reportedly Lost $56m in Bank Scandal,” The Boston Globe, January 31, 1975, 40.

118 “Vatican’s Finances; Paul’s Pence,” The Economist, 71.

119 Cornwell, God’s Banker, 131–34.

120 Sindona quoted in Tosches, Power on Earth, 173; see also Brendan Jones, no title to article, The New York Times, February 21, 1975, 41.

121 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 222.

122 “People and Business: Problems as Banks Flee Saigon,” The New York Times, April 10, 1975, 62.

123 Sloane, “Sindona Appears in Public to Address College Group,” 51. The article is one of the few that mentions that Sindona’s English was not good, describing him as “Speaking in a heavily accented English.” New York criminal defense attorney Ivan Fisher told me that when he first met Sindona, “One of my biggest problems representing him was how poorly he spoke English. He told me in our first meeting that I should contact A, to see if he might be able to help. He said it with such respect that I didn’t want to admit I didn’t know who A was. It took until our third meeting before I realized he was saying Haig (then the Supreme Commander of NATO, and someone Sindona knew from Haig’s tenure as chief of staff for Nixon). I could not get close to him in the way I am most comfortable because it was so difficult to understand him. I suggested an interpreter. He was really offended because he thought his English was magnificent.” Author interview with Ivan Fisher, June 19, 2013.

124 DiFonzo, St. Peter’s Banker, 222.

125 “An Unlikelääy Lecturer,” Time, December 8, 1975. Between 1975 and 1977, Sindona spoke at sixteen university business schools.

126 Michael C. Jensen, “Sindona Assails Governmental Bailouts,” The New York Times, June 13, 1975, 51.

127 Prosecutors were particularly incensed by photos in the New York Post of Sindona partying with New York Mayor Abraham Beame.

128 “Carli and Others Are Investigated,” The New York Times, June 27, 1975, 47.

129 Arnold H. Lubasch, “8 Former Aides of Franklin Bank Indicted by U.S.,” The New York Times, April 13, 1975, 1.

130 Kay Withers, “Legendary Vatican Wealth May Be Just a Myth,” The Boston Globe, May 11, 1975, B2.

131 Horne, “How the Vatican Manages Its Money.”

132 Withers, “Vatican Wealth: The Bottom Line Isn’t Too Blessed,” A1; Kay Withers, “Legendary Vatican Wealth May Be Just a Myth,” B2.

133 Vagnozzi revealed that salaries consumed 10 percent of the Holy See’s budget. Their employment included a generous health plan and pension coverage, and some fifteen hundred retired lay employees received their full salaries for the rest of their life. “A trend to internationalization” meant there were “many [lay] non-Italians now in the Curia.” That meant “considerably” increased costs since they brought their families to Rome at church expense.

134 Withers, “Vatican Wealth: The Bottom Line Isn’t Too Blessed,” A1.

135 “Milan’s Prosecutor Visiting U.S. to Ask Sindona Extradition,” The New York Times, November 25, 1975.

136 “An Unlikely Lecturer,” Time.

137 Robards, “Sindona Says He Lives on Help,” The New York Times 55. Sindona claimed he had received anonymous telephone calls and letters urging him to commit suicide.

138 Enrico Cuccia quoted in Tosches, Power on Earth, 167.

139 Lubasch, “Ex-Franklin Bank Aide Pleads Guilty,” 43.

140 Raw, The Moneychangers, 119.

141 Tosches, Power on Earth, 120; Raw, The Moneychangers, 138–39.

142 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 28.

143 Willan, The Last Supper, 36–37; see Calvi statement to judicial magistrates in July 1981, quoted in Raw, The Moneychangers, 146.

144 Willan, The Last Supper, 113.

145 Raw, The Moneychangers, 145, 149. Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 134.

146 Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 31; Willan, The Last Supper, 36–37.

147 Handwritten notes by Philip Willan of audiotaped interviews between John Cornwell and Marcinkus, February 8, 1988, 4b, 5a, 9b, provided to author courtesy of Willan.

148 Ibid., 4b.

149 Raw, The Moneychangers, 119, 125–26, 129–31.

150 Ibid., 124–25.

151 Laura Colby, “Vatican Bank Played a Central Role in Fall of Banco Ambrosiano,” Wall Street Journal, April 27, 1987, 1.

152 Raw, The Moneychangers, 135–36.

153 Ibid., 137.

154 The dollar and Swiss franc back-to-back schemes were so useful for Calvi and profitable for Marcinkus that by December 1975 the duo also began back-to-back lira transfers. Raw, The Moneychangers, 161–72, 176, 184–94, 209–12, 247–49, 365–66.

155 Based on Calvi’s new advice, Marcinkus made substantial investments into United Trading Corporation, a Panamanian holding company with nominee subsidiaries (Teclefin and Imparfin) based in Liechtenstein. Cornwell, God’s Banker, 71; see also Raw, The Moneychangers, 49, 95, 108–9. In December 1974, the IOR had made its first installment payment to United Trading, sending the funds through Cisalpine in Nassau. The IOR had also made a $43.5 million loan in May 1972 to Radowal, a Liechtenstein company that later became United Trading. Marcinkus had also approved in late 1973 a Vatican Bank loan of $45 million to Manic, the newly formed Calvi holding company headquartered in Luxembourg. In each case, the IOR got above-market interest rates on its money, as well as lump-sum commission payments of nearly $4 million for the loans. Criminal investigators later examined those commissions, scattered across the books of banks and holding companies in several countries, to determine if they constituted bribes to Marcinkus for the use of the church’s money. Although the prosecutors suspected they were, they never developed enough evidence to make a criminal case.

By 1978, the IOR secretly owned United Trading, although Vatican Bank attorneys later contended the IOR “did not control” it. This was in reference to what the lawyers considered administrative control exerted by Calvi, that United Trading “was directly managed by the [Ambrosiano] Group in its own sole interest.” See generally Colby, “Vatican Bank Played a Central Role in Fall of Banco Ambrosiano,” 1; see also “Memo prepared by IOR’s lawyers re Laura Colby’s article,” reproduced in its entirety in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 354–58.

Chapter 18: The Battle of Two Scorpions

1 Raw, The Moneychangers, 177. Some of the companies that owed the IOR money, such as Zitropo with a $12 million loan, were essentially bankrupt. But Calvi kept shuffling money disguised as “dividends” to Zitropo so it could at least make its interest payments to the Vatican Bank. It is not clear if Marcinkus was aware of the dire state of Zitropo, although he agreed to a reduction of the loan’s interest rate from 11 percent to 2 percent at the close of 1975.

2 Bafisud was the acronym for Banco Financiero Sudamericano. Not only did Calvi direct the Ambrosiano and the IOR to invest in Bafisud, but he also persuaded Italy’s then largest bank, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), to become an equity partner. The top five BNL executives were all P2 members. See Gurwin, The Calvi Affair, 56.

3 Minutes of Cisalpine shareholders meeting of February 4, 1976, in Geneva, cited in Raw, The Moneychangers, 177.

4 Ibid., 177–78.

5 Law 159 is still on the books in Italy. See generally Cornwell, God’s Banker, 81.

6 Raw, The Moneychangers, 178–79.

7 Ibid., 183–94.

8 Ibid., 197. Marcinkus and Calvi attended a Cisalpine board meeting at the Bristol Hotel in Paris on October 20, 1977, and in Zurich on March 2, 1978. At neither meeting did Marcinkus mention that Calvi was using Cisalpine’s cash—with the IOR’s assistance—to buy the nonpublic shares of United Trading, Cisalpine’s parent. Instead, Calvi showed the money as being on deposit at the IOR, something that he and Marcinkus knew to be false.

9 Calvi to Marcinkus, letter, July 26, 1977, cited in Raw, The Moneychangers, 198.

10 Colby, “Vatican Bank Played a Central Role in Fall of Banco Ambrosiano,” 1; Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, citing “Marcinkus Replies to the Wall Street Journal,” 354–58; Raw, The Moneychangers, 358–62, 373.

11 Raw, The Moneychangers, 62, 126–29. And despite its management contracts with some of the offshore companies, the IOR later contended through its Italian attorneys that none of its “executives were aware of the existence and unethical nature of Calvi’s schemes.” Anything to the contrary, said the attorneys, was based on “conjectures and hypotheses that are not supported by any evidence.” “Memo prepared by IOR’s lawyers re Laura Colby’s article,” reproduced in its entirety in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 354–58.

12 That November, Calvi put into writing a confirmation of the back-to-back arrangements that had existed for several years between Cisalpine, the Vatican Bank, and United Trading. A separate letter did the same for the Gottardo-IOR back-to-back deposits. It is not clear what prompted the duo to commit this part of their dealings to writing. See generally Raw, The Moneychangers, 132.

13 Marcinkus interviewed in Cornwell, A Thief in the Night, 131.

14 “Milan’s Prosecutor Visiting U.S. to Ask Sindona Extradition,” The New York Times, November 25, 1975; Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It, 122–32.

15 “Sindona Is Sentenced to Prison in Italy,” The New York Times, June 26, 1976, 34.

16 Although Sindona was disappointed by Carter’s election, that a former peanut farmer could become president reinforced for him the idea that in America anything is possible: Tosches, Power on Earth, 181. See generally Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Case of Sindona and Responsibilities and the Political and Administrative Connected To It.

17 “Sindona Bail $3m,” The Boston Globe, September 9, 1976, 27. In October 1976, the Italian government expanded its charges against Sindona with a detailed filing that compiled some of his efforts to evade the country’s currency laws; see Robert J. Cole, “Italians Amplify Looting Charges Against Sindona,” The New York Times, October 27, 1976, 72.

18 Gelli convinced Spagnuolo that the case against Sindona was a leftist smear plot. Robert J. Cole, “Court Papers Filed by Sindona in Fight to Bar Extradition,” The New York Times, December 14, 1976, 66.

19 Terry Robards, “Sindona to Face Charges in Italy After Surrender,” The New York Times, September 9, 1976, 57; “Ex-Franklin Aides File Guilty Pleas,” The New York Times, January 21, 1976, 76.

20 Lubasch, “Ex-Franklin Bank Aide Pleads Guilty,” 43.

21 Robards, “Sindona to Face Charges in Italy After Surrender,” 57; Raw, The Moneychangers, 205, puts the amount at $334 million, which it did eventually reach.

22 Robert Lenzner, “Mario Barone: Muscle at the Banco,” The Boston Globe, July 30, 1976, 33. Barone was a power in Italy’s banking industry, having run the Bank of Italy for decades. The following year he stepped down from his post after an internal review found that he refused to fully cooperate with prosecutors trying to find the names of up to five hundred Italian businessmen and politicians who had deposited money into Sindona-controlled Swiss bank accounts. Barone had been the chief official responsible for approving the Bank of Rome’s $200 million in loans shortly before Sindona’s empire collapsed.