Karol Wojtyla and the secrets of Vatican finances. The Pope is the CEO of the largest bank in the world, the Vatican Bank and the Swiss Banks
Updated August 18, 2012
Pope John Paul II the Great not only proved how immoral he was as a “Holy Father” because for 27 years he had neither heart nor conscience for hundreds of thousands of little boys sodomized by his JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army named aptly after him, but he also left an amoral Vatican Titanic sinking in moral bankruptcy and a an "Unholy Mess" financial empire that serves more Mammon by using God’s name in vain. Today the Economist revealed that the Catholic Church has spent $171,600,000,000 in 2010, that's ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY ONE BILLION AND SIX HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS read news updates below. As the Vatican Bank was given a passing grade to avoid an economic crisis in austerity struck Italy, read our related article “Obama admin versus Vatican Bank: A compilation. USA government lists Vatican as 'potential money-launderingcenter'” http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2012/03/obama-admin-list-vatican-as-potential.html the news of Vatican financial mess can only confirm the Vatican Titanic sinking in moral bankruptcy as it serves money more than Christ and it uses the Eucharist as its magic wand to make 1.2 Catholics “Pray,Pay”Obey” to satisfy the whims of the last Tsars of the Vatican, the Pope and the Opus Dei who are controllers worse than the Pharisees whom Christ condemned as “White Sepulchres” inspite of their repetitive prayers in Latin each day.
Read our related articles
Obama admin versus Vatican Bank: A compilation.
NCAA & Penn State more moral than
VATICAN HENCHMAN Bill Donohue
In our new blog, Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils...Benedict XVI Ratzinger Crimes Against Humanity at The Hague http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/ we prove that the Vatican is the most evil power in the world and that the Pope is being used by multinational corporations and despots of poor countries to hoard their ill-gotten wealth. John Paul II traveled around the world where he courted criminals like Pinochet and used his papal diplomatic immunity to carry and hide these dictators ill-gotten wealth at the Vatican Bank, read our related article Holy Heist! John Paul II WYD had no role with Arab youths who liberated Egypt from Mubarak who stole then deposited billions into Vatican Swiss Banks http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/02/holy-heist-john-paul-ii-wyd-had-no-role.html
Read our related article Benedict used Hitler as mask at German Parliament. Nazis and Vatican are a “band of robbers” http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/09/benedict-xvi-uses-hitler-to-divert.html
As long as the Pope is treated like a demi-god as if he is representing God Jesus Christ and as long as Benedict XVI is treated like a ruler of state, there will never be justice for poor peoples and poor countries like El Salvador and no justice to the hundreds of thousands of children who were sexulaly abused by the Priestly Sodomy of Biblical Proportions committed by the JP2 Army John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army commited in the last half and last quarter of the 20th century during the longest pontificate in history of John Paul II which was controlled by the Opus Dei.
But God, if he or she is a true god, has enough and Our Lady of Fatima in her Third Secret of Fatima predicted the total demise of the Vatican because she has enough seeing the crimes and sins of Popes not only against poor peoples by stealing thier moneys and hoarding them in Vatican Swiss Banks but against the least of Christ's brethren, the voiceless and helpless children. Hence the Vatican will be destryed like the wealthy Temple of Solomon and not one pillar will be left standing. And all the wealth of Opus Dei and those despots will also disappear like smoke. We are in the 21st century where the Arab Spring is happenning and there is no mention of religion or Jesus Christ because their freedom has nothing to do with Christianity or the Bible but with basic secular human needs of food, shelther, and clthing which the despots ahve hoarded safely in the Vatican Swiss Banks.
Let's see Libya's example, Mummoar Gadhafi has stolen more than 70 billion dollars, but only 2 billion is found in England, 1.2 billion in the USA, so where are the rest of the 70 billion dollars? In the Vatican Swiss Banks, safe with the Pope.
The rulers of this world have their legal interest in seeing the Vatican as a state and the Pope as the Head of state because they can count on him to always have the diplomatic immunity to hoard their ill-gotten wealth. Hence Benedict XVI is now in Germany and the German Chancellor is protecting him, read our related blog Benedict XVI Ratzinger, God's Rottweiler http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/
Read our related articles
OPUS DEI: THE VATICAN-PENTAGON CONNECTION. How Opus Dei controls the USA, the multinational corporations & the Vatican Swiss Banks http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/09/opus-dei-vatican-pentagon-connection.html
Opus Dei World Domination Agenda: more informations about the secretive ways of Opus Dei the real controller of the Vatican Swiss Banks http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/03/opus-dei-world-domination-agenda-more.html
Hague Is Asked to Investigate Vatican Over Child Abuse. Bravo to SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights!! Court Filing details http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/09/hague-is-asked-to-investigate-vatican.html
Protest Benedict XVI's German trip: Banners to use. 86 percent of Germans think Benedict's four-day trip “totally unimportant” http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2011/09/protest-benedict-xvis-german-trip.html
Amnesty International names Vatican in 2011 report on human rights violations - it's time the UN end the Vatican status as a "secular" state http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2011/05/amnesty-international-names-vatican-in.html
John Paul smelled Devil`s Bowels as roses for 27 years as he deified Father Marcial Maciel and deified Cardinal Bernard Law http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-paul-smelled-devils-bowels-as.html
Fr. Marcial Maciel's Swiss Bank accounts: Angelo Sodano with Carlos Slim´s help has set his nephew up in business with a swiss registered company http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/fr-marcial-maciels-swiss-bank-accounts.html
Prayer to John Paul II: the saint of pedophiles and pederasts, rapists and abusers of children http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/prayer-to-john-paul-ii-saint-of.html
Diamond bride Mother Angelica’s EWTN acquires Fr. Marcial Maciel’s National Catholic Register: same God and Mammon, same hypocrisy http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/01/diamond-bride-mother-angelicas-ewtn.html
The 9/11 Decade and the JP2 Millstone 9th anniversary of Paris Arrow's vision of the death of John Paul II at the World Youth Day
WYD & America, wake up and see the Victims in USA - Attackers - Responsible Leaders
Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto
WTC & 9/11 attacks - 3,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden
JP2 Army - 15,736 victims - 6,000 pedophile priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity
Opus Dei controlled the 27 years papacy of John Paul II and is therefore the foremost guilty party who aided and abetted and covered-up the John Paul II Pedophiles Rapists-Priests Army. Opus Dei wrote most of John Paul II’s books and writings and to ensure their perpetuity as “All things Catholic”, they want JP2 to be beatified and canonized now by Benedict XVI so as not to take any chances on other future popes. The FACE of Opus Dei is John Paul II and the PHANTOM Spirit of Opus Dei is their founder St. Josemaria Escriva, read our related article John Paul II, Patron of Pederasts and Opus Dei – analysis of Joaquin Navarro-Valls’ reasons for JP2 beatification at Opus Dei conference in Rome http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-paul-ii-patron-of-pederasts-and.html
The 15,736 victims is from the recent report of the US Catholic Bishops Conference harmed by almost 6,000 pedophile priests. Note that the victims of the JP2 Army are 5 times those of Osama bin Laden's 9-11, read more http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/05/911-victims-5000-jp2-army-100000s-may.html
JP2 Army John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/
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Karol Wojtyla and the secrets of Vatican finances
Saint Peter's Basilica
Giacomo Galeazzi
Rome
In the controversial history of the Vatican's finances under the pontificate of John Paul II, the page that is less known is that in which Karol Wojtyla replaces the plenipotentiary Marcinkus with the less exposed Donato De Bonis. This happens not, by chance, in 1989. The Cold War is won, so there is no longer an external enemy to justify the ruthlessness of the Lithuanian-American archbishop in the management of the IOR. From the fall of the Berlin Wall onwards, the financial scandals on the other side of the Tiber are no longer the side effects of the Catholic Church’s epoch-making efforts to have Christianity survive in Eastern Europe, but the result of power struggles between the different strings of the Curia that vie for positions of power to the sound of funds raised.
In May 2009, for the first time in the history of the Vatican, thousands of documents on the financial affairs of the Institute for religious works filter through the leonine walls, the impenetrable bank of the Holy See which each year offers its profits for direct management by the Pope. Letters, reports, budgets, minutes, accounting notes, money transfers, letters between the highest authorities from across the Tiber river on how the money is sometimes managed by unscrupulous prelates, bishops and cardinals. Over 4 thousand documents that make up the archive of a privileged witness: Monsignor Renato Dardozzi from Parma, born in 1922, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and, above all, for twenty years one of the few advisors of the cardinals who succeeded to the Secretary of State, from Agostino Casaroli to Angelo Sodano. Dardozzi wanted that after his death, in 2003, his endless archives be made public.
So, after years of research, the investigative book Vatican spa (Chiarelettere) by Gianluigi Nuzzi, is published containing some passages from the Vatican papers that were crucial for those years: from the bribes of the First Republic to the money for Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano (Massimo Ciancimino, son of Vito, former mayor of Palermo, in an interview published in «Vatican spa» points out the existence at the IOR of a system of accounts, opened in the name of his father’s figureheads and from which came funds intended for the two bosses of the Mafia ). From the Ambrosiano to Enimont, from bribes to threats: Dardozzi kept documents and notes on all issues, he stored them in yellow classified folders in the archives. In this way a vast historical memory was formed which now reveals how a sort of "private affairs office" inside the Vatican had worked to straighten or silence the most embarrassing and troubled financial affairs in the years of Karol Wojtyla, just after plots by Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus and the Ambrosiano of Roberto Calvi had been appeased. «In 1989, Marcinkus is now indefensible – explains Nuzzi -. To remove him a reform of the IOR is needed in order to set up a commission of cardinals to supervise the Vatican bank and create the figure of Prelate of the IOR. The choice for the new assignment does not fall on an ecclesiastic outside the Curia, but on Monsignor De Bonis who, for a quarter of a century, had worked at the IOR and was the shadow of Marcinkus. At the same time Angelo Caloia, a laic and a decent person, was appointed President. It is Dardozzi himself who goes to Milan to offer Caloia the presidency». In practice, the post-Marcinkus designation of De Bonis is a Solomonic solution.
«The prelate of the IOR is selected from inside the institute and he was already in charge of illegal operations with Marcinkus- points out Nuzzi-. De Bonis was in Geneva with Marcinkus to sign $230 million in checks to liquidate creditors involved in the collapse of the Ambrosiano. When in 1989 Marcinkus falls into disgrace, De Bonis releases an interview to mark his distance from his boss, but in reality it was he who was the "black box" of the IOR». After the fall of the Berlin Wall, therefore, everything changes so that nothing changes in the «holy business».
«The massive mobilization of resources and energy during the Cold War mortgaged the post-Wall for Karol Wojtyla - underlines Nuzzi -. The choices of John Paul II will be affected. The fall of communism leaves the Pope with a series of debts, because in the crucial struggle for the survival of the Church of the East Wojtyla had moved immense resources, through monetary triangular movements especially with the United States, according to the principle of the "lesser evil". Moreover, the Marcinkus system is not dismantled until after the end of the Cold War, also because it represents a powerful tool for feeding channels towards political and business areas». In short, even after 1989, the critical issues within the IOR are too many to eliminate old methods of management and turn it into a normal bank. «This is a unique “off shore” corridor for politicians around the world who want to keep their money away from legal controls - specifies Nuzzi-. The IOR is like a credit card that ensures privileges to be granted in exchange for political backing, legal provisions and, business support». From the archives of Dardozzi emerges that a flow of money, including cash and bonds, was conveyed into a kind of parallel IOR, an off-shore web of screen deposits made out to charities and non-existent beneficial foundations with cynical names ("Foundation for poor children”, "Fight against Leukemi”), a spider web built in secret for years by Bishop Donato De Bonis, former secretary and successor Marcinkus, appointed prelate of the IOR by Casaroli.
The system is started in 1987 to ensure a fair handover from Marcinkus, now on on his way down, to De Bonis, who had to be negotiate past experiences with the more private needs of the customers of the nineties. And so the hidden IOR continued to prosper for years, escaping even the current president of the IOR, Angelo Caloia, an expression of white finance from the North. There are 17 main accounts on which De Bonis «works for both by formal delegation", says the report sent by Caloia to Wojtyla in August 1992, when the parallel bank begins to emerge, "and by longstanding practice". Between 1989 and 1993 transactions are conducted on these deposits for more than 310 billion lire, about €275.2 million in present value. But the surprise is with cash movements: according to a conservative estimate, these exceeds 110 billion (€97.6 million in present value).
Then there is the intense trading of government securities: in just two years between 135 and 200 billion cct have transited on these reserved accounts. And these are just estimates made by bank management. Even today there is no certainty about how much De Bonis was able to actually move, since he often resorted to off-the-books administration that left no traces. In this manner the parallel IOR not only administered savings but also bribes to third parties in the nineties, checks for Vatican buildings that ended up with Cardinal Rosalio José Castillo Lara, Wojtyla’s plenipotentiary of Economics, money deducted from donations made by the faithful for Masses for the deceased, deposits for 30-40 billion of the nuns who worked in asylums, to the encrypted bank accounts of contractors such as Ferruzzi, secretaries of the popes such as Archbishop Pasquale Macchi, and especially politicians, starting with the then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and the first politician convicted in Italy for association with the Mafia, Vito Ciancimino. It is July 15, 1987 when De Bonis duly signs a request and opens the first account of the newborn off-shore system, Number 001-3-14774-C, with a cash deposit of 494,400,000 Lire and a guaranteed high interest rate of 9 per cent per annum. To ward off even the shadow of suspicion Monsignor abuts the deposit to the Cardinal Francis Spellman Foundation. The choice of name is not accidental: it is that of the powerful and feared cardinal, military ordinariate for the United States, who after the war funded the Democrats from the United States with money that may have been stolen from the Jews by the Nazis.
It was Spellman who accredited Marcinkus with the then Pope Paul VI. If an official of the IOR had wanted to look into the files of the Spellman account, he would have discovered that the files contain no trace of the founding document, nor a memorandum or letter on letterhead. He would have concluded that the choice of foundation was a simple but effective expedient. But no officials in the IOR had similar curiosity. The prelate of the Vatican bank was too powerful and protected by the Cardinals for someone to look into his business. So why all the secrecy? When turning around the classic card for depositing signatures of those who can operate on that account, together with De Bonis there is the name of Andreotti. "I do not remember this account" says today Andreotti in an interview by Gianluigi Nuzzi. The persons (almost all prelates and cardinals) who open an account at the IOR are asked to leave their will and testament in an envelope.
The file of the Spellman Foundation account, photocopied by Monsignor Renato Dardozzi and secured in his archives, shows that of the "operator", in fact De Bonis, who with the medium point black marker which he preferred, wrote on lined paper those illuminating instructions: "Whatever is left after my death, in account 001-3-14774-C, is to be given to His Excellency Giulio Andreotti for charitable works and assistance according to his discretion. With grateful thanks in the blessed name of God. Donato De Bonis, Vatican 15.7.87?. It is not only the documents that say that this is one of Andreotti’s secret accounts administered by De Bonis. The former president of the IOR Angelo Caloia was also convinced of this. In a series of confidential letters on the affairs of the prelate sent periodically to the Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and reproduced in the book Vatican spa, Caloia says that he’s certain. In the letter dated June 21, 1994, seven years after the Spellman Foundation account was opened, Caloia takes for granted that "the account of the Cardinal Spellman Foundation which the former prelate administered on behalf of Omission contains figures .... ".
"Omission", as emerges from the convergent documents stored in the archives of Monsignor Dardozzi, was the conventional word used by Caloia and other managers of the IOR to encrypt the name of Andreotti. For De Bonis, however, the code selected was "Rome”. For other account holders, who are still in the shadows, other names of cities were agreed upon, such as "Ancona" or "Siena", to be used in written communications. Only a few had to understand. For example the identity of Ancona is still unknown. When questioned by Panorama, Angelo Caloia preferred not to make statements on this issue. A flood of money flows into the account administered by the prelate of the IOR on behalf of Andreotti. Millions of banknotes, billions in cash. The accounting notes kept in the archives of Dardozzi reconstruct all the movements in detail. The account was credited with cct and cash.
From 1987 to 1992 De Bonis physically introduces more than 26 billion into the Vatican and deposits everything in the Spellman Foundation account. At current value the amount corresponds to € 26.4 million. An amount that must be added to the large number of government bonds deposited and withdrawn, for a total of 42 billion Lire, equal to an additional €32.5 million. All in all, in just a few years 46 billion Lire enter the account. But where does all this money come from and who is it for? In "Vatican spa” there is a list of all the beneficiaries who fall into two categories: religious and laic. The first of which are a multitude. If "charity covers a multitude of sins", as stated in the first letter of St. Peter, it is true that alms and donations are periodically distributed from the Spellman account to hundreds of nuns, mothers superior, monks and abbots, institutions, orders and missions. The list of beneficiaries is endless: Hospital Sisters of Mercy, Adorers of the Eucharist, the Ursulines of Cortina d'Ampezzo, Benedictine Oblates of Priscilla, Carmelites of Arezzo. Charity therefore, but not only. The apparent charitable administration of assets remains marginal.
For the cashier of the DC Severino Citaristi, with multiple sentences for the “Tangentopoli” affair, there appears a check for 60 million. Between 1990 and 1991 400 million are withdrawn from the Spellman account at the IOR for the lawyer Edward Ascari, Andreotti’s lawyer in the proceedings initiated in Palermo for association with the mafia. Then 1.563 billion go to a mysterious Spellman Committee with cash withdrawals or parcels of bank drafts of different denominations (from 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 million). Many beneficiaries. A million dollars to the Brazilian Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, who until 2000 was the prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, while other subsidies are addressed to the then Archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O'Connor, the Croatian Cardinal Franjo Kuharic Archdiocese of Zagreb, up to the auxiliary of Skopje Prizren Monsignor Nike Prela "for Albanian-speaking faithful". Also present were diplomats like Marino Fleri, when he was in Jerusalem ($30,000), Ambassador Stefano Falez, who in 1992 receives sums for the "Slovenian Catholic press”, and Honorary Vice-Consul in New York Armando Tancredi. Money is removed from the fund also for conferences, like the one held in New York in April 1991 for studies on Cicero.
From the " President Andreotti Memorandum" attached to the transfer instructions and from the accounts of the IOR it can be deduced that the account paid out $100,000 for 182 guest rooms at the Plaza and the Sheraton hotel, 225 million for airline tickets, guided tours and transfers. Savings books to the bearer were also deposited with work liquidation and personal savings. There is no reference to politics. A deposit of $40 million contains instructions on Palazzo Montecitorio letterhead, “transfer into Spellman”. On another sheet there is a note "Sen. Lavezzari" in conjunction with the deposit of checks for 590 million lire. Carlo Lavezzari, steel entrepreneur in Lombardy, was a personal friend of Andreotti. Former Democrat Senator, he had his office in Rome on the same floor of the former Prime Minister, in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. Difficult, however, to identify the beneficiaries of the amounts frenetically withdrawn in cash almost every day. The briefcases full of money carried by De Bonis were a habit for employees of the IOR. Each week the monsignor delivered thousands of wads of 100 thousand lire banknotes, with deposits of up to half a billion in cash at a time. He did not disdain cashier checks (from 4 to 500 million), nor foreign transfers, especially from Switzerland. The reports are in Geneva with the Union Bancaire Privée, in Lugano with the Bank of Credit and Commerce SA and Banque Indosuez, while for transactions with the Bank of Lugano account 101-7-13907 opened by the IOR in that Swiss institute for convenience. The turning point of 1992. From the archive of Dardozzi, as told in the book Vatican spa, it emerges that Caloia, who arrived in 1989, begins to suspect the existence of this parallel structure only in the spring of 1992.
He sets up a secret committee and arranges for controls with alarming results which he sends to the special secretary to Pope John Paul II , the most faithful Don Stanislaw Dziwisz, today archbishop of Krakow, for the Pope’s action. But nothing happens. The breakthrough will come only in October 1993 with the explosion of the Enimont issue, a maxi bribe paid to the leader of the First Republic to break the Italian chemistry merger between Eni and Montedison. The “Mani Pulite” pool will knock at the bronze door, obtaining only partial and misleading responses.
Dardozzi writes to the lawyer Franzo Grande Stevens, legal advisor of the IOR: "Do not tempt" the judges who want to shed light on the money that passed through the Vatican for politicians. In this manner, half of the cct of the parallel IOR will remain well outside the range of investigators. Of course without hesitation because, as Marcinkus used to repeat, you do not administer the Church with Hail Marys.
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06/ 9/2011
Paul Marcinku’s trajectory from the land of Al Capone to the Vatican Bank scandal
Paul Marcinkus
ANDREA TORNIELLI
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/marcinkus-ior-chink-banco-ambrosiano-281/
VATICAN CITY
Paul Casimir Marcinkus, nicknamed “Chink,” never looked the part of the pious priest. Archbishop and president of the Vatican Bank, the Italian magistracy tried in vain to put him behind bars for the Banco Ambrosiano crash. The archbishop at the center of one of the most clamorous Vatican scandals died in February 2006 in Arizona, where he had retired as a curate.
Born in 1922 to a family of Lithuanian immigrants in Cicero, the suburb of Chicago noted for producing Al Capone, Paul Casimir had five siblings, and his father earned a living washing office building windows. His calling arose quickly enough - at thirteen years of age, he enrolled in a Diocesan school, and at eighteen transferred to the major seminary of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, where he studied philosophy and theology. In ‘47 he was ordained and sent to a neighborhood parish, serving young families on the southwest side of Chicago. Just one year later, Marcinkus was transferred to the Diocesan tribunal, and two years later to Rome to study canon law. In 1952, while in London for research, he received a letter from the Vatican inviting him to spend two months at the English branch of the Secretary of State. In fact, the professors from Gregorian University had brought Paul’s name up to Pius XII’s factotum, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Paul VI. That trial period became definitive - little by little, Marcinkus became the Roman point of reference for all Americans.
During the Second Vatican Council, he worked to secure the best prices on transoceanic flights for bishops and arranged their stays in Roman hotels In ‘63 he built Villa Stritch (dedicated to a cardinal in Chicago), a million-dollar complex designed to host American prelates. He became its first rector.
His true career coincides with the Pope’s first apostolic travels. In 1964 Paul VI, whom Marcinkus had helped to learn English, asked him to arrange the trip to India for the Eucharistic Congress. His organizing abilities were shown to be formidable, so much so that from then on he organized all of the pontiff’s travels - from New York to Fatima, from Uganda to Chile. Everyone began to call him “the Pope’s Faithful Servant,” and his work as bodyguard to Paul VI earned him the nickname “Gorilla” - a fitting one, given the American prelate’s hulking stature. In 1969 the Pope consecrated him bishop and sent him to run the Vatican Bank, despite the fact that Marcinkus had no knowledge of banks or finance. A few years later, in 1972, his name was brought up in relation to the scandal over forged securities the Vatican had acquired from the mafia. The FBI conducted an investigation into the Vatican connection. The agents entered the sacred rooms and interrogated the closest colleagues of the then-Substitute Secretary of State, Monsignor Giovanni Benelli, who from then on would become an enemy of Marcinkus.
The prelate from Cicero was cleared of the accusation, but the event marks the start of his bad reputation. These are the years when, because of his powerful supporters, Michele Sindona has easy access to the Vatican, as does his protégé, Roberto Calvi, oft-mentioned president of Banco Ambrosiano, who quickly enters into business with the Vatican Bank under Marcinkus. With the growth of his power, “Chink” also sees an increasing number of enemies. For example, Patriarch of Venice Albino Luciani was deeply indignant about the rather too-detached ways of the Vatican Bank president. In the mid-seventies, he had some disagreements with Marcinkus related to Banco San Marco and the sale of the Catholic Bank of Veneto to Banco Ambrosiano. It is said that he came to Rome to demand an explanation for the action taken without the knowledge of the Venetian bishops, and was unceremoniously shown the door by “Chink”. Monsignor Marcinkus would deny the event.
In fact, according to many reputable sources, Pope Luciani made it known immediately after his election that he intended to remove the American prelate from management of the Vatican Bank “because a bishop should not be running a bank.” Certain unscrupulous transactions at Ambrosiano were well-known even before the election of Karol Wojtyla. But John Paul II took a liking to Marcinkus, promoting him to Archbishop (1981) and naming him Pro-President of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State. In addition to finance, the American prelate busied himself with the trivialities of life in the smallest state in the world. Both blue-collar workers and professionals still remember him with great affection - he would climb scaffolding to bring a bricklayer something to drink, sensitive to their needs, ready to help anybody in trouble.
News Updates August 18, 2012
Where does it all come from? Offering plates, donations, tuition money, Medicare/Medicaid payments, and other investments.
I thought that the sexual abuse scandal payouts would at least put a dent in their budget. Turns out it’s only a small fraction of it and most of the payments are made by local dioceses and not the Vatican:
There’s only one thing left to do:
Pope John Paul II the Great not only proved how immoral he was as a “Holy Father” because for 27 years he had neither heart nor conscience for hundreds of thousands of little boys sodomized by his JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army named aptly after him, but he also left an amoral Vatican Titanic sinking in moral bankruptcy and a an "Unholy Mess" financial empire that serves more Mammon by using God’s name in vain. Today the Economist revealed that the Catholic Church has spent $171,600,000,000 in 2010, that's ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY ONE BILLION AND SIX HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS read news updates below. As the Vatican Bank was given a passing grade to avoid an economic crisis in austerity struck Italy, read our related article “Obama admin versus Vatican Bank: A compilation. USA government lists Vatican as 'potential money-launderingcenter'” http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2012/03/obama-admin-list-vatican-as-potential.html the news of Vatican financial mess can only confirm the Vatican Titanic sinking in moral bankruptcy as it serves money more than Christ and it uses the Eucharist as its magic wand to make 1.2 Catholics “Pray,Pay”Obey” to satisfy the whims of the last Tsars of the Vatican, the Pope and the Opus Dei who are controllers worse than the Pharisees whom Christ condemned as “White Sepulchres” inspite of their repetitive prayers in Latin each day.
Read our related articles
Obama admin versus Vatican Bank: A compilation. USA government lists Vatican
NCAA & Penn State more moral than Vatican
May 1 & September 11 anniversaries for SNAP and JP2 Army victims. SNAP ad in New York Times should be framed and permanently exhibited in all churches, schools and children venues: U.S. Catholic Bishops and Child Sex Crimes http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2012/07/may-1-september-11-anniversaries-for.html
Vatican USA nuns live Gospel, serve the poor and sick...while Benedict XVI lives in luxury out-of-touch-with-reality in Vatican Bank Tower http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2012/04/vatican-attacks-american-nuns.html
Goliath-bully Bill Donohue attacks David & SNAP & JP2 Army victims: A compilation. Being Anti-Catholic is necessary for justice, protection of children, women, the poor http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2012/03/goliath-bully-bill-donohue-attacks.html
In our new blog, Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils...Benedict XVI Ratzinger Crimes Against Humanity at The Hague http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/ we prove that the Vatican is the most evil power in the world and that the Pope is being used by multinational corporations and despots of poor countries to hoard their ill-gotten wealth. John Paul II traveled around the world where he courted criminals like Pinochet and used his papal diplomatic immunity to carry and hide these dictators ill-gotten wealth at the Vatican Bank, read our related article Holy Heist! John Paul II WYD had no role with Arab youths who liberated Egypt from Mubarak who stole then deposited billions into Vatican Swiss Banks http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/02/holy-heist-john-paul-ii-wyd-had-no-role.html
Read our related article Benedict used Hitler as mask at German Parliament. Nazis and Vatican are a “band of robbers” http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/09/benedict-xvi-uses-hitler-to-divert.html
As long as the Pope is treated like a demi-god as if he is representing God Jesus Christ and as long as Benedict XVI is treated like a ruler of state, there will never be justice for poor peoples and poor countries like El Salvador and no justice to the hundreds of thousands of children who were sexulaly abused by the Priestly Sodomy of Biblical Proportions committed by the JP2 Army John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army commited in the last half and last quarter of the 20th century during the longest pontificate in history of John Paul II which was controlled by the Opus Dei.
But God, if he or she is a true god, has enough and Our Lady of Fatima in her Third Secret of Fatima predicted the total demise of the Vatican because she has enough seeing the crimes and sins of Popes not only against poor peoples by stealing thier moneys and hoarding them in Vatican Swiss Banks but against the least of Christ's brethren, the voiceless and helpless children. Hence the Vatican will be destryed like the wealthy Temple of Solomon and not one pillar will be left standing. And all the wealth of Opus Dei and those despots will also disappear like smoke. We are in the 21st century where the Arab Spring is happenning and there is no mention of religion or Jesus Christ because their freedom has nothing to do with Christianity or the Bible but with basic secular human needs of food, shelther, and clthing which the despots ahve hoarded safely in the Vatican Swiss Banks.
Let's see Libya's example, Mummoar Gadhafi has stolen more than 70 billion dollars, but only 2 billion is found in England, 1.2 billion in the USA, so where are the rest of the 70 billion dollars? In the Vatican Swiss Banks, safe with the Pope.
The rulers of this world have their legal interest in seeing the Vatican as a state and the Pope as the Head of state because they can count on him to always have the diplomatic immunity to hoard their ill-gotten wealth. Hence Benedict XVI is now in Germany and the German Chancellor is protecting him, read our related blog Benedict XVI Ratzinger, God's Rottweiler http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/
Read our related articles
OPUS DEI: THE VATICAN-PENTAGON CONNECTION. How Opus Dei controls the USA, the multinational corporations & the Vatican Swiss Banks http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/09/opus-dei-vatican-pentagon-connection.html
Opus Dei World Domination Agenda: more informations about the secretive ways of Opus Dei the real controller of the Vatican Swiss Banks http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/03/opus-dei-world-domination-agenda-more.html
Hague Is Asked to Investigate Vatican Over Child Abuse. Bravo to SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights!! Court Filing details http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/09/hague-is-asked-to-investigate-vatican.html
Protest Benedict XVI's German trip: Banners to use. 86 percent of Germans think Benedict's four-day trip “totally unimportant” http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2011/09/protest-benedict-xvis-german-trip.html
Amnesty International names Vatican in 2011 report on human rights violations - it's time the UN end the Vatican status as a "secular" state http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/2011/05/amnesty-international-names-vatican-in.html
John Paul smelled Devil`s Bowels as roses for 27 years as he deified Father Marcial Maciel and deified Cardinal Bernard Law http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-paul-smelled-devils-bowels-as.html
Fr. Marcial Maciel's Swiss Bank accounts: Angelo Sodano with Carlos Slim´s help has set his nephew up in business with a swiss registered company http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/fr-marcial-maciels-swiss-bank-accounts.html
Prayer to John Paul II: the saint of pedophiles and pederasts, rapists and abusers of children http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/prayer-to-john-paul-ii-saint-of.html
Diamond bride Mother Angelica’s EWTN acquires Fr. Marcial Maciel’s National Catholic Register: same God and Mammon, same hypocrisy http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/01/diamond-bride-mother-angelicas-ewtn.html
The 9/11 Decade and the JP2 Millstone 9th anniversary of Paris Arrow's vision of the death of John Paul II at the World Youth Day
WYD & America, wake up and see the Victims in USA - Attackers - Responsible Leaders
Pearl Harbor - 3,000 victims - 170 planes - Admiral Yamamoto
WTC & 9/11 attacks - 3,000 victims - 19 Muslims - Osama bin Laden
JP2 Army - 15,736 victims - 6,000 pedophile priests - John Paul II & Benedict XVI & Opus Dei, the new Vatican Trinity
Opus Dei controlled the 27 years papacy of John Paul II and is therefore the foremost guilty party who aided and abetted and covered-up the John Paul II Pedophiles Rapists-Priests Army. Opus Dei wrote most of John Paul II’s books and writings and to ensure their perpetuity as “All things Catholic”, they want JP2 to be beatified and canonized now by Benedict XVI so as not to take any chances on other future popes. The FACE of Opus Dei is John Paul II and the PHANTOM Spirit of Opus Dei is their founder St. Josemaria Escriva, read our related article John Paul II, Patron of Pederasts and Opus Dei – analysis of Joaquin Navarro-Valls’ reasons for JP2 beatification at Opus Dei conference in Rome http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-paul-ii-patron-of-pederasts-and.html
The 15,736 victims is from the recent report of the US Catholic Bishops Conference harmed by almost 6,000 pedophile priests. Note that the victims of the JP2 Army are 5 times those of Osama bin Laden's 9-11, read more http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2011/05/911-victims-5000-jp2-army-100000s-may.html
JP2 Army John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/
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Karol Wojtyla and the secrets of Vatican finances
Saint Peter's Basilica
Giacomo Galeazzi
Rome
In the controversial history of the Vatican's finances under the pontificate of John Paul II, the page that is less known is that in which Karol Wojtyla replaces the plenipotentiary Marcinkus with the less exposed Donato De Bonis. This happens not, by chance, in 1989. The Cold War is won, so there is no longer an external enemy to justify the ruthlessness of the Lithuanian-American archbishop in the management of the IOR. From the fall of the Berlin Wall onwards, the financial scandals on the other side of the Tiber are no longer the side effects of the Catholic Church’s epoch-making efforts to have Christianity survive in Eastern Europe, but the result of power struggles between the different strings of the Curia that vie for positions of power to the sound of funds raised.
In May 2009, for the first time in the history of the Vatican, thousands of documents on the financial affairs of the Institute for religious works filter through the leonine walls, the impenetrable bank of the Holy See which each year offers its profits for direct management by the Pope. Letters, reports, budgets, minutes, accounting notes, money transfers, letters between the highest authorities from across the Tiber river on how the money is sometimes managed by unscrupulous prelates, bishops and cardinals. Over 4 thousand documents that make up the archive of a privileged witness: Monsignor Renato Dardozzi from Parma, born in 1922, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and, above all, for twenty years one of the few advisors of the cardinals who succeeded to the Secretary of State, from Agostino Casaroli to Angelo Sodano. Dardozzi wanted that after his death, in 2003, his endless archives be made public.
So, after years of research, the investigative book Vatican spa (Chiarelettere) by Gianluigi Nuzzi, is published containing some passages from the Vatican papers that were crucial for those years: from the bribes of the First Republic to the money for Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano (Massimo Ciancimino, son of Vito, former mayor of Palermo, in an interview published in «Vatican spa» points out the existence at the IOR of a system of accounts, opened in the name of his father’s figureheads and from which came funds intended for the two bosses of the Mafia ). From the Ambrosiano to Enimont, from bribes to threats: Dardozzi kept documents and notes on all issues, he stored them in yellow classified folders in the archives. In this way a vast historical memory was formed which now reveals how a sort of "private affairs office" inside the Vatican had worked to straighten or silence the most embarrassing and troubled financial affairs in the years of Karol Wojtyla, just after plots by Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus and the Ambrosiano of Roberto Calvi had been appeased. «In 1989, Marcinkus is now indefensible – explains Nuzzi -. To remove him a reform of the IOR is needed in order to set up a commission of cardinals to supervise the Vatican bank and create the figure of Prelate of the IOR. The choice for the new assignment does not fall on an ecclesiastic outside the Curia, but on Monsignor De Bonis who, for a quarter of a century, had worked at the IOR and was the shadow of Marcinkus. At the same time Angelo Caloia, a laic and a decent person, was appointed President. It is Dardozzi himself who goes to Milan to offer Caloia the presidency». In practice, the post-Marcinkus designation of De Bonis is a Solomonic solution.
«The prelate of the IOR is selected from inside the institute and he was already in charge of illegal operations with Marcinkus- points out Nuzzi-. De Bonis was in Geneva with Marcinkus to sign $230 million in checks to liquidate creditors involved in the collapse of the Ambrosiano. When in 1989 Marcinkus falls into disgrace, De Bonis releases an interview to mark his distance from his boss, but in reality it was he who was the "black box" of the IOR». After the fall of the Berlin Wall, therefore, everything changes so that nothing changes in the «holy business».
«The massive mobilization of resources and energy during the Cold War mortgaged the post-Wall for Karol Wojtyla - underlines Nuzzi -. The choices of John Paul II will be affected. The fall of communism leaves the Pope with a series of debts, because in the crucial struggle for the survival of the Church of the East Wojtyla had moved immense resources, through monetary triangular movements especially with the United States, according to the principle of the "lesser evil". Moreover, the Marcinkus system is not dismantled until after the end of the Cold War, also because it represents a powerful tool for feeding channels towards political and business areas». In short, even after 1989, the critical issues within the IOR are too many to eliminate old methods of management and turn it into a normal bank. «This is a unique “off shore” corridor for politicians around the world who want to keep their money away from legal controls - specifies Nuzzi-. The IOR is like a credit card that ensures privileges to be granted in exchange for political backing, legal provisions and, business support». From the archives of Dardozzi emerges that a flow of money, including cash and bonds, was conveyed into a kind of parallel IOR, an off-shore web of screen deposits made out to charities and non-existent beneficial foundations with cynical names ("Foundation for poor children”, "Fight against Leukemi”), a spider web built in secret for years by Bishop Donato De Bonis, former secretary and successor Marcinkus, appointed prelate of the IOR by Casaroli.
The system is started in 1987 to ensure a fair handover from Marcinkus, now on on his way down, to De Bonis, who had to be negotiate past experiences with the more private needs of the customers of the nineties. And so the hidden IOR continued to prosper for years, escaping even the current president of the IOR, Angelo Caloia, an expression of white finance from the North. There are 17 main accounts on which De Bonis «works for both by formal delegation", says the report sent by Caloia to Wojtyla in August 1992, when the parallel bank begins to emerge, "and by longstanding practice". Between 1989 and 1993 transactions are conducted on these deposits for more than 310 billion lire, about €275.2 million in present value. But the surprise is with cash movements: according to a conservative estimate, these exceeds 110 billion (€97.6 million in present value).
Then there is the intense trading of government securities: in just two years between 135 and 200 billion cct have transited on these reserved accounts. And these are just estimates made by bank management. Even today there is no certainty about how much De Bonis was able to actually move, since he often resorted to off-the-books administration that left no traces. In this manner the parallel IOR not only administered savings but also bribes to third parties in the nineties, checks for Vatican buildings that ended up with Cardinal Rosalio José Castillo Lara, Wojtyla’s plenipotentiary of Economics, money deducted from donations made by the faithful for Masses for the deceased, deposits for 30-40 billion of the nuns who worked in asylums, to the encrypted bank accounts of contractors such as Ferruzzi, secretaries of the popes such as Archbishop Pasquale Macchi, and especially politicians, starting with the then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and the first politician convicted in Italy for association with the Mafia, Vito Ciancimino. It is July 15, 1987 when De Bonis duly signs a request and opens the first account of the newborn off-shore system, Number 001-3-14774-C, with a cash deposit of 494,400,000 Lire and a guaranteed high interest rate of 9 per cent per annum. To ward off even the shadow of suspicion Monsignor abuts the deposit to the Cardinal Francis Spellman Foundation. The choice of name is not accidental: it is that of the powerful and feared cardinal, military ordinariate for the United States, who after the war funded the Democrats from the United States with money that may have been stolen from the Jews by the Nazis.
It was Spellman who accredited Marcinkus with the then Pope Paul VI. If an official of the IOR had wanted to look into the files of the Spellman account, he would have discovered that the files contain no trace of the founding document, nor a memorandum or letter on letterhead. He would have concluded that the choice of foundation was a simple but effective expedient. But no officials in the IOR had similar curiosity. The prelate of the Vatican bank was too powerful and protected by the Cardinals for someone to look into his business. So why all the secrecy? When turning around the classic card for depositing signatures of those who can operate on that account, together with De Bonis there is the name of Andreotti. "I do not remember this account" says today Andreotti in an interview by Gianluigi Nuzzi. The persons (almost all prelates and cardinals) who open an account at the IOR are asked to leave their will and testament in an envelope.
The file of the Spellman Foundation account, photocopied by Monsignor Renato Dardozzi and secured in his archives, shows that of the "operator", in fact De Bonis, who with the medium point black marker which he preferred, wrote on lined paper those illuminating instructions: "Whatever is left after my death, in account 001-3-14774-C, is to be given to His Excellency Giulio Andreotti for charitable works and assistance according to his discretion. With grateful thanks in the blessed name of God. Donato De Bonis, Vatican 15.7.87?. It is not only the documents that say that this is one of Andreotti’s secret accounts administered by De Bonis. The former president of the IOR Angelo Caloia was also convinced of this. In a series of confidential letters on the affairs of the prelate sent periodically to the Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and reproduced in the book Vatican spa, Caloia says that he’s certain. In the letter dated June 21, 1994, seven years after the Spellman Foundation account was opened, Caloia takes for granted that "the account of the Cardinal Spellman Foundation which the former prelate administered on behalf of Omission contains figures .... ".
"Omission", as emerges from the convergent documents stored in the archives of Monsignor Dardozzi, was the conventional word used by Caloia and other managers of the IOR to encrypt the name of Andreotti. For De Bonis, however, the code selected was "Rome”. For other account holders, who are still in the shadows, other names of cities were agreed upon, such as "Ancona" or "Siena", to be used in written communications. Only a few had to understand. For example the identity of Ancona is still unknown. When questioned by Panorama, Angelo Caloia preferred not to make statements on this issue. A flood of money flows into the account administered by the prelate of the IOR on behalf of Andreotti. Millions of banknotes, billions in cash. The accounting notes kept in the archives of Dardozzi reconstruct all the movements in detail. The account was credited with cct and cash.
From 1987 to 1992 De Bonis physically introduces more than 26 billion into the Vatican and deposits everything in the Spellman Foundation account. At current value the amount corresponds to € 26.4 million. An amount that must be added to the large number of government bonds deposited and withdrawn, for a total of 42 billion Lire, equal to an additional €32.5 million. All in all, in just a few years 46 billion Lire enter the account. But where does all this money come from and who is it for? In "Vatican spa” there is a list of all the beneficiaries who fall into two categories: religious and laic. The first of which are a multitude. If "charity covers a multitude of sins", as stated in the first letter of St. Peter, it is true that alms and donations are periodically distributed from the Spellman account to hundreds of nuns, mothers superior, monks and abbots, institutions, orders and missions. The list of beneficiaries is endless: Hospital Sisters of Mercy, Adorers of the Eucharist, the Ursulines of Cortina d'Ampezzo, Benedictine Oblates of Priscilla, Carmelites of Arezzo. Charity therefore, but not only. The apparent charitable administration of assets remains marginal.
For the cashier of the DC Severino Citaristi, with multiple sentences for the “Tangentopoli” affair, there appears a check for 60 million. Between 1990 and 1991 400 million are withdrawn from the Spellman account at the IOR for the lawyer Edward Ascari, Andreotti’s lawyer in the proceedings initiated in Palermo for association with the mafia. Then 1.563 billion go to a mysterious Spellman Committee with cash withdrawals or parcels of bank drafts of different denominations (from 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 million). Many beneficiaries. A million dollars to the Brazilian Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, who until 2000 was the prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, while other subsidies are addressed to the then Archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O'Connor, the Croatian Cardinal Franjo Kuharic Archdiocese of Zagreb, up to the auxiliary of Skopje Prizren Monsignor Nike Prela "for Albanian-speaking faithful". Also present were diplomats like Marino Fleri, when he was in Jerusalem ($30,000), Ambassador Stefano Falez, who in 1992 receives sums for the "Slovenian Catholic press”, and Honorary Vice-Consul in New York Armando Tancredi. Money is removed from the fund also for conferences, like the one held in New York in April 1991 for studies on Cicero.
From the " President Andreotti Memorandum" attached to the transfer instructions and from the accounts of the IOR it can be deduced that the account paid out $100,000 for 182 guest rooms at the Plaza and the Sheraton hotel, 225 million for airline tickets, guided tours and transfers. Savings books to the bearer were also deposited with work liquidation and personal savings. There is no reference to politics. A deposit of $40 million contains instructions on Palazzo Montecitorio letterhead, “transfer into Spellman”. On another sheet there is a note "Sen. Lavezzari" in conjunction with the deposit of checks for 590 million lire. Carlo Lavezzari, steel entrepreneur in Lombardy, was a personal friend of Andreotti. Former Democrat Senator, he had his office in Rome on the same floor of the former Prime Minister, in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. Difficult, however, to identify the beneficiaries of the amounts frenetically withdrawn in cash almost every day. The briefcases full of money carried by De Bonis were a habit for employees of the IOR. Each week the monsignor delivered thousands of wads of 100 thousand lire banknotes, with deposits of up to half a billion in cash at a time. He did not disdain cashier checks (from 4 to 500 million), nor foreign transfers, especially from Switzerland. The reports are in Geneva with the Union Bancaire Privée, in Lugano with the Bank of Credit and Commerce SA and Banque Indosuez, while for transactions with the Bank of Lugano account 101-7-13907 opened by the IOR in that Swiss institute for convenience. The turning point of 1992. From the archive of Dardozzi, as told in the book Vatican spa, it emerges that Caloia, who arrived in 1989, begins to suspect the existence of this parallel structure only in the spring of 1992.
He sets up a secret committee and arranges for controls with alarming results which he sends to the special secretary to Pope John Paul II , the most faithful Don Stanislaw Dziwisz, today archbishop of Krakow, for the Pope’s action. But nothing happens. The breakthrough will come only in October 1993 with the explosion of the Enimont issue, a maxi bribe paid to the leader of the First Republic to break the Italian chemistry merger between Eni and Montedison. The “Mani Pulite” pool will knock at the bronze door, obtaining only partial and misleading responses.
Dardozzi writes to the lawyer Franzo Grande Stevens, legal advisor of the IOR: "Do not tempt" the judges who want to shed light on the money that passed through the Vatican for politicians. In this manner, half of the cct of the parallel IOR will remain well outside the range of investigators. Of course without hesitation because, as Marcinkus used to repeat, you do not administer the Church with Hail Marys.
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06/ 9/2011
Paul Marcinku’s trajectory from the land of Al Capone to the Vatican Bank scandal
Paul Marcinkus
ANDREA TORNIELLI
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/marcinkus-ior-chink-banco-ambrosiano-281/
VATICAN CITY
Paul Casimir Marcinkus, nicknamed “Chink,” never looked the part of the pious priest. Archbishop and president of the Vatican Bank, the Italian magistracy tried in vain to put him behind bars for the Banco Ambrosiano crash. The archbishop at the center of one of the most clamorous Vatican scandals died in February 2006 in Arizona, where he had retired as a curate.
Born in 1922 to a family of Lithuanian immigrants in Cicero, the suburb of Chicago noted for producing Al Capone, Paul Casimir had five siblings, and his father earned a living washing office building windows. His calling arose quickly enough - at thirteen years of age, he enrolled in a Diocesan school, and at eighteen transferred to the major seminary of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, where he studied philosophy and theology. In ‘47 he was ordained and sent to a neighborhood parish, serving young families on the southwest side of Chicago. Just one year later, Marcinkus was transferred to the Diocesan tribunal, and two years later to Rome to study canon law. In 1952, while in London for research, he received a letter from the Vatican inviting him to spend two months at the English branch of the Secretary of State. In fact, the professors from Gregorian University had brought Paul’s name up to Pius XII’s factotum, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Paul VI. That trial period became definitive - little by little, Marcinkus became the Roman point of reference for all Americans.
During the Second Vatican Council, he worked to secure the best prices on transoceanic flights for bishops and arranged their stays in Roman hotels In ‘63 he built Villa Stritch (dedicated to a cardinal in Chicago), a million-dollar complex designed to host American prelates. He became its first rector.
His true career coincides with the Pope’s first apostolic travels. In 1964 Paul VI, whom Marcinkus had helped to learn English, asked him to arrange the trip to India for the Eucharistic Congress. His organizing abilities were shown to be formidable, so much so that from then on he organized all of the pontiff’s travels - from New York to Fatima, from Uganda to Chile. Everyone began to call him “the Pope’s Faithful Servant,” and his work as bodyguard to Paul VI earned him the nickname “Gorilla” - a fitting one, given the American prelate’s hulking stature. In 1969 the Pope consecrated him bishop and sent him to run the Vatican Bank, despite the fact that Marcinkus had no knowledge of banks or finance. A few years later, in 1972, his name was brought up in relation to the scandal over forged securities the Vatican had acquired from the mafia. The FBI conducted an investigation into the Vatican connection. The agents entered the sacred rooms and interrogated the closest colleagues of the then-Substitute Secretary of State, Monsignor Giovanni Benelli, who from then on would become an enemy of Marcinkus.
The prelate from Cicero was cleared of the accusation, but the event marks the start of his bad reputation. These are the years when, because of his powerful supporters, Michele Sindona has easy access to the Vatican, as does his protégé, Roberto Calvi, oft-mentioned president of Banco Ambrosiano, who quickly enters into business with the Vatican Bank under Marcinkus. With the growth of his power, “Chink” also sees an increasing number of enemies. For example, Patriarch of Venice Albino Luciani was deeply indignant about the rather too-detached ways of the Vatican Bank president. In the mid-seventies, he had some disagreements with Marcinkus related to Banco San Marco and the sale of the Catholic Bank of Veneto to Banco Ambrosiano. It is said that he came to Rome to demand an explanation for the action taken without the knowledge of the Venetian bishops, and was unceremoniously shown the door by “Chink”. Monsignor Marcinkus would deny the event.
In fact, according to many reputable sources, Pope Luciani made it known immediately after his election that he intended to remove the American prelate from management of the Vatican Bank “because a bishop should not be running a bank.” Certain unscrupulous transactions at Ambrosiano were well-known even before the election of Karol Wojtyla. But John Paul II took a liking to Marcinkus, promoting him to Archbishop (1981) and naming him Pro-President of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State. In addition to finance, the American prelate busied himself with the trivialities of life in the smallest state in the world. Both blue-collar workers and professionals still remember him with great affection - he would climb scaffolding to bring a bricklayer something to drink, sensitive to their needs, ready to help anybody in trouble.
News Updates August 18, 2012
The Economist Estimates the Catholic Church Spent $171,600,000,000 in 2010
UNITED STATES
Friendly Atheist
Friendly Atheist
August 17, 2012 By Hemant Mehta
The Economist has attempted to paint a picture of what the Catholic Church’s finances look like, especially in light of the sexual abuse scandals. I’ll admit it. I may have salivated a bit at this paragraph:
By studying court documents in bankruptcy cases, examining public records, requesting documents from local, state and federal governments, as well as talking to priests and bishops confidentially, The Economist has sought to quantify the damage.
They estimate that the church spends about $171,600,000,000 a year.
They estimate that the church spends about $171,600,000,000 a year.
Not a typo.
The Economist estimates that annual spending by the church and entities owned by the church was around $170 billion in 2010 (the church does not release such figures). We think 57% of this goes on health-care networks, followed by 28% on colleges, with parish and diocesan day-to-day operations accounting for just 6% and national charitable activities just 2.7% (see chart). In total, Catholic institutions employ over 1m people, reckons Fred Gluck, a former McKinsey managing partner and co-founder of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, a lay organisation seeking to improve the way the church is run. For purposes of secular comparison, in 2010 General Electric’s revenue was $150 billion and Walmart employed roughly 2m people.Wow. You knew the Church had money… but that much?!
Where does it all come from? Offering plates, donations, tuition money, Medicare/Medicaid payments, and other investments.
I thought that the sexual abuse scandal payouts would at least put a dent in their budget. Turns out it’s only a small fraction of it and most of the payments are made by local dioceses and not the Vatican:
The molestation and rape of children by priests in America has resulted in more than $3.3 billion of settlements over the past 15 years, $1.3 billion of that in California. The total is likely to increase as more states follow California and Delaware in relaxing the statute of limitations on these crimes, most of which were reported long after they happened. For an organisation with revenues of $170 billion that might seem manageable. But settlements are made by individual dioceses and religious orders, whose pockets are less deep than those of the church as a whole.One of the consequences of the dioceses paying these costs is that some of them have gone out of business and more will likely follow:
Over the past eight years, a combination of these stresses has driven eight dioceses (including San Diego, Tucson and Milwaukee) to declare bankruptcy, as well as the American arm of the Irish Christian Brothers and a regional branch of the Jesuits. More of America’s 196 dioceses could be forced to do the same. Efforts are under way in the legislatures of Arizona, Illinois, New York, Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California (again) to extend statutes of limitations, according to Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who represents many victims of abuse. If any of these efforts succeeds, the expectation among lawyers like Mr Anderson is that some of the affected dioceses would seek Chapter 11 protection while they attempt to settle the cases. (Troubled dioceses generally settle suits just before the bishop is due in court.) The diocese of Honolulu could be the next to go bankrupt. In May it was hit by a pair of new lawsuits after the extension of Hawaii’s statute of limitations for victims of abuse.The article also notes that there isn’t a long line of future priests, donations are dropping, and pensions are underfunded. All of that means the future doesn’t look very good for the Church.
There’s only one thing left to do:
"An unholy mess"
UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by Heidi Schlumpf on Aug. 17, 2012 NCR Today
That's what an in-depth, investigative piece in the Economist called the state of finances in the Catholic Church in America: an unholy mess.
It's hard to decide what is most horrifying in this report of financial mismanagement, which looks at data made public through bankruptcy proceedings in several dioceses:
•Some dioceses have raided priests' pension funds to pay for sexual abuse damages and other costs. Under Cardinal Bernard Law, the archdiocese of Boston contributed nothing to its clergy retirement fund between 1986 and 2002, despite receiving an estimated $70 million to $90 million in Easter and Christmas offerings that many parishioners believed would benefit retired priests.
•The same is true for parish savings. A parish in Wilmington, Del., sent $1 million to be deposited in what it thought was a separate account, but was really a pooled, general cash account for the diocese. The parish lost the money when the diocese struck a sexual-abuse settlement.
•Cardinal Dolan and other New York bishops are spending an estimated $100,000 a year to well over $1 million, sources say, on lobbying the state assembly to prevent an extension of the statute of limitations on sexual abuse, which would result in more lawsuits and more dioceses declaring bankruptcy.
National Catholic Reporter
by Heidi Schlumpf on Aug. 17, 2012 NCR Today
That's what an in-depth, investigative piece in the Economist called the state of finances in the Catholic Church in America: an unholy mess.
It's hard to decide what is most horrifying in this report of financial mismanagement, which looks at data made public through bankruptcy proceedings in several dioceses:
•Some dioceses have raided priests' pension funds to pay for sexual abuse damages and other costs. Under Cardinal Bernard Law, the archdiocese of Boston contributed nothing to its clergy retirement fund between 1986 and 2002, despite receiving an estimated $70 million to $90 million in Easter and Christmas offerings that many parishioners believed would benefit retired priests.
•The same is true for parish savings. A parish in Wilmington, Del., sent $1 million to be deposited in what it thought was a separate account, but was really a pooled, general cash account for the diocese. The parish lost the money when the diocese struck a sexual-abuse settlement.
•Cardinal Dolan and other New York bishops are spending an estimated $100,000 a year to well over $1 million, sources say, on lobbying the state assembly to prevent an extension of the statute of limitations on sexual abuse, which would result in more lawsuits and more dioceses declaring bankruptcy.
posted by Paris Arrow | Thursday, September 22, 2011
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