As the world waits for the Vatican’s conclave to select a new pope to
lead 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, and the church’s sex abuse scandals
dominate discourse on the incoming pontiff’s priorities, another
decidedly worldly issue is also poised to take an immediate toll on the
new Holy Father: money.
The public and private woes of the Vatican bank, long shrouded in
secrets and whispers, might well prove to be just as challenging, if not
as draining, as the lurid, faith-shaking damage of the clergy abuse
scandal.
With a two-year probe by Italian authorities into money laundering,
poor transparency, inadequate adherence to standards for guarding
against criminal and terrorist financing, and questions over sudden
changes in its leadership, the bank represents another crisis of morals,
legalities and perception.
The importance of the Vatican bank in Pope Benedict XVI’s grand
vision can be assumed from the urgency it held with the outgoing
pontiff: among the last official acts before his shock retirement was
overhauling financial leadership and church oversight.
On Feb. 15, Benedict XVI approved the appointment of Ernst von
Freyberg as the new president of the supervisory board of the Institute
for Works of Religion, the church agency widely known as the Vatican
bank.
The appointment of the German lawyer and businessman came after
assessing “a number of candidates of professional and moral excellence,”
the Vatican said in a statement.
“The Holy Father has closely followed the entire selection process …
and he has expressed his full consent to the choice made by the
Commission of Cardinals.”
While the appointment drew immediate criticism over the involvement
of Mr. von Freyberg’s Blohm+Voss, an industrial group, in manufacturing
German warships, including during the Nazi era, it also raised eyebrows
for its timing. Putting money under the baton of a German is not out of
step with European policy these days, but for an institution already
rife with conspiracy theories the sudden shuffle could not go unnoticed.
“[Benedict’s] decision to retire was so unprecedented, you would
think that he would have other things on his mind than replacing the
head of the Vatican bank,” said Carlo Calvi, son of Roberto Calvi, who
was known as “God’s Banker” because of his close ties to the Vatican
before his outlandish death more than 30 years ago.
“However, I am more surprised by the sackings — the people who were let go — rather than the appointments,” he said.
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was chairman of the Vatican bank until he was
pushed out in May with a withering assessment of not being up for the
job. He had been trying to get the Vatican onto the international
banking “white list” of virtuous countries.
Then, on Feb. 22, Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, a key church official
pushing for better regulation and controls on the Vatican bank, was
suddenly transferred from Rome to Colombia.
That transfer followed the moving of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano,
who was credited with turning a deficit for the Vatican into a large
surplus through greater accountability and controls, from the Vatican to
the United States.
One of the leaked documents in the “Vatileaks” scandal was a letter
from Archbishop Vigano to Pope Benedict begging he remain in Rome to
continue his financial crusade. The Pope was unmoved.
The transfers suggest change is not always welcome.
“Change under the new pope will be easier said than done because they
make money on this, it is a source of income that has been used for a
lot of purposes,” said Mr. Calvi. To address the problems, “They need,
essentially, to do a very drastic reform that would almost certainly
mean foregoing a considerable source of revenue.”
The Vatican bank has not always shown such virtuous strength, as Mr.
Calvi knows better than most. Few outside the Vatican’s inner circle eye
church finance as closely as Mr. Calvi, who now lives in Montreal.
Watching the Vatican bank has consumed Mr. Calvi’s adult life and the Calvi name almost consumed the Vatican bank.
His father was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian Catholic bank closely linked to the Vatican.
The shadowy operations of Vatican finance forced its way into the
public’s consciousness when Roberto Calvi was found dead, just as the
scandalous operation of church finance was being revealed amid the
collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy’s largest private bank, with
$1-billion missing.
Since then, his unsolved death, first declared a suicide, then
reclassified as a murder, and the cast of powerful figures and secretive
organizations linked to it — from the Mafia and the Masonic lodge P2 to
the powerful conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei and the
Vatican itself — make it one of modern history’s enduring mysteries,
Europe’s equal to the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance.
The case was also said to be linked to landmark Cold War politics,
with claims Banco Ambrosiano was used by those close to John Paul II,
the Polish pope, to fund the anti-Communist Solidarity movement in
Poland and by those close to U.S. president Ronald Reagan to fund the
Contra rebels of Central America.
The raw puzzle and quirks of Mr. Calvi’s death compel conspiracy
theories and befuddlement, with small details that seem to mean much,
but with no answer to exactly what.
The banker’s body was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge, his
feet dangling in the River Thames in the heart of London, on June 18,
1982; he wore two pairs of underwear, had five bricks in his pockets,
about $14,00-worth of three different currencies and the business card
of a Mafia figure.
It was a death shouting in the symbolic language of Italy’s underworld.
“I am more of the idea that there are theatrical elements and not
necessarily symbolic aspects to it,” said his son. “Hundreds and
hundreds of millions of dollars were involved — if that is not a motive
for murder, I don’t know what is.”
After all, any Catholic cleric would know: Radix malorum est
cupiditas, the Latin Biblical quotation meaning greed is the root of
evil.
The very notion of a church bank speaks to the awkward interface
between the spiritual and temporal, represented by the pope being both
leader of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City state.
Unlike many Vatican institutions, the Vatican bank is not of antique
origin, having been formed in 1942 by Pius XII, although it had older
antecedents. Its purpose is to protect and administer the property and
funds intended for the church’s works.