Authors: David Yallop
Returning to Chicago he worked as a parish priest, then became a member of the Ecclesiastical Court of the Diocese. One of the first to be impressed with Marcinkus was the then Head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal Samuel Stritch. After a recommendation from the Cardinal, Marcinkus was transferred to the English section of the Vatican Secretary of State’s office in 1952. Tours of duty attached to the Papal Nuncios of Bolivia and Canada followed, then in 1959 he returned to Rome and the Secretary of State’s Department. His fluency in Spanish and Italian ensured his constant employment as an interpreter.
In 1963 the Cardinal of New York, Francis Spellman, advised Pope Paul during one of his frequent trips to Rome that Marcinkus was a priest with an excellent potential. In view of the fact that Spellman headed the wealthiest diocese in the world at that time, and was frequently referred to as ‘Cardinal Moneybags’ – a tribute to his financial genius – the Pope began quietly to monitor Paul Marcinkus.
In 1964, during a visit to down-town Rome, the over-enthusiastic crowds were in danger of trampling the Vicar of Christ underfoot. Suddenly Marcinkus appeared. Using shoulders, elbows and hands he physically clove a path through the crowds for the frightened Pope.
The following day the Pope summoned him for personal thanks. From then on he became the unofficial bodyguard to the Pope and his nickname, The Gorilla, was born.
In December 1964 he accompanied Pope Paul to India; the following year to the United Nations. By now Marcinkus had taken over the duties of security adviser on such trips. Personal bodyguard. Personal security adviser. Personal translator. The boy from Cicero had come far. He was by now a close friend of the Pope’s personal secretary, Father Pasquale Macchi. Macchi was a key member of the Papal entourage, which the Roman Curia referred to as ‘The Milan Mafia’. When the Archbishop of Milan, Montini, was elected Pope in 1963 he had brought with him a whole train of advisers, financiers, clerics. Macchi was one of the entourage. All roads may lead to Rome; a number go via Milan. The dependence that the Pope placed upon men like Macchi was out of all proportion to their official positions. Macchi would berate the Pope when he considered him morbid or depressed. He would tell him when to go to bed, who should be promoted, who should be punished with an uncomfortable transfer. Having tucked His Holiness up at nights Macchi could invariably be found in an excellent restaurant just off the Piazza Gregono Settimo. His usual companion for dinner was Marcinkus.
Further trips abroad with ‘The Pilgrim Pope’ to Portugal in May 1967 and to Turkey in July of the same year cemented the friendship of Pope Paul and Marcinkus. Later that year Pope Paul VI created a Department called the Prefecture of the Economic Affairs of the Holy See. A more comprehensible title would have been Chancellor of the Exchequer or Auditor General. What the Pope sought was a department that would be able to produce an annual summary of the exact state of Vatican wealth and the progress of all assets and liabilities of every Administration of the Holy See, with a view to obtaining figures in black and white which would give a final balance or estimate for each year. From its creation the Department has struggled under two very serious handicaps. Firstly, on Pope Paul’s express instructions the Vatican Bank was specifically excluded from the economic exercise. Secondly, there was Vatican paranoia.
After the Department had been established by a trio of cardinals, the man subsequently appointed to run it was Cardinal Egidio Vagnozzi. In theory he should have been able after a maximum of one year in the job to provide the Pope with the exact state of Vatican finances. In practice Vagnozzi found that the manic desire for financial secrecy which the various Vatican departments frequently demonstrate to enquiring
journalists, was extended to him. The Congregation of the Clergy wanted to keep its figures to itself. So did the APSA. So did they all. In 1969 Cardinal Vagnozzi observed to a colleague: ‘It would take a combination of the KGB, the CIA and Interpol to obtain just an inkling of how much and where the monies are.’
To assist Bernardino Nogara’s aging colleague, the 84-year-old Cardinal Alberto di Jono, who was still functioning as Head of the Vatican Bank, Pope Paul consecrated as bishop, Paul Marcinkus. The morning after Marcinkus had prostrated himself at the feet of the Pope he took over as the Vatican Bank’s Secretary. For all practical purposes he was now running the Bank. Interpreting for President Johnson when he talked to the Pope had been relatively easy but, as Marcinkus freely admitted, ‘I have no banking experience’. The virgin banker had arrived. From being an obscure priest in Cicero, Paul Marcinkus had risen higher and further in terms of real power than any American before him.
One of the men who had assisted the rise of Paul Marcinkus was Giovanni Benelli. His initial assessment to Pope Paul of the golf-playing, cigar-chewing, extrovert from Cicero was that Marcinkus would be a valuable asset to the Vatican Bank. Within two years Benelli concluded that he had made a disastrous misjudgement and that Marcinkus should be removed immediately. He discovered that in that brief period Marcinkus had built himself a power base stronger than his own. When the final showdown came in 1977 it was Benelli who left the Vatican.
The extraordinary promotion of Marcinkus was part of a carefully planned change of Vatican policy. Paying large amounts of tax on share profits and having a high profile as an owner of countless Italian companies was now decidedly passé for Vatican Incorporated, particularly when those companies made embarrassing little items such as the contraceptive pill, on which Pope Paul had just invoked the wrath of God. The Pope and his advisers had taken the decision to reduce their commitments in the Italian money markets and transfer the bulk of Vatican wealth to the foreign markets, particularly the USA. They also wished to move into the highly lucrative world of Eurodollar blue chips and off-shore profits.
Marcinkus was selected as an essential component in this strategy. The Pope used another part of his ‘Milan Mafia’ to complete the team. He chose a man who actually was Mafia, not from Milan, which was merely his adopted city. ‘The Shark’ was born in Patti near Messina, Sicily. His name – Michele Sindona.
Like Albino Luciani, Michele Sindona knew poverty as a child and like Luciani he was deeply affected and influenced by that environment. While the former grew to manhood determined to relieve the poverty of others, the latter resolved to relieve others of their wealth.
Born on May 8th, 1920 and educated by the Jesuits, Sindona demonstrated early in life a marked proclivity for mathematics and economics. Having graduated from Messina University with an excellent Law degree, in 1942 he avoided conscription in Mussolini’s armed forces with the aid of a distant relation of his fiancée who worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State, one Monsignor Amleto Tondini.
During the last three years of the Second World War, Sindona put his Law degree to one side and earned a very lucrative living doing what he would ultimately become world famous for: buying and selling. He bought food on the Black Market in Palermo and smuggled it with the aid of the Mafia to Messina, where it was sold to the starving population.
After June 1943 and the Allied landings, Sindona turned to the American Forces for his supplies. As business expanded so did his Mafia connections. In 1946 he left Sicily for Milan, taking with him his young wife Rina, invaluable lessons in the law of supply and demand, and a number of even more invaluable letters of introduction from the Archbishop of Messina, whose friendship Sindona had carefully cultivated.
In Milan he lived in the suburbs at Affori, and worked for a business consultancy and accounting firm. Sindona’s speciality, as American capital began to flow into Italy, was to show would-be investors how to dance their way through Italy’s complex tax laws. His Mafia associates were suitably impressed with his progress. He was talented, ambitious, and, more important in the eyes of the Mafia, he was also ruthless, totally corruptible and one of their own. He knew the importance of Mafia traditions like ‘omertá’, the rule of silence. He was Sicilian.
The Mafia family Gambino were particularly taken with the young Sindona and his dexterity at placing dollar investments without reference to tiresome tax regulations. The Gambino family has global interests but its two main power centres are New York and Palermo. The former is controlled by the Gambinos, the latter by their Sicilian cousins the Inzerillos. On November 2nd, 1957 there was a ‘family’ reunion in the Grand Hotel des Palmes, Palermo. Also invited to enjoy the wine and food was Michele Sindona.
The Gambino family made Sindona an offer he accepted with enthusiasm. They wanted him to manage the family’s re-investment of the huge profits just beginning to accrue from the sales of heroin. They needed a laundryman. Sindona, with his proven abilities at moving amounts of money in and out of Italy without disturbing the tranquillity of the Government’s taxation departments, was an ideal choice. Added to this ability was the fact that he was by the time of this Mafia summit conference already a director of an increasing number of companies. He frequently said to grateful clients, ‘No, I’ll take payment in some shares in your company’. He had also begun to perfect the technique of acquiring troubled companies, dividing them up, selling off pieces, merging other pieces, shuffling everything sideways and then selling at a large profit. It was dazzling to behold, particularly if you were not paying the conjuror.
Within seventeen months of the Mafia summit conference Sindona bought his first bank, aided by Mafia funding. Sindona had already discovered one of the cardinal rules of theft: the best way to steal from a bank is to buy one.
Sindona created a Liechtenstein holding company, Fasco AG. Shortly afterwards Fasco acquired the Milanese Banca Privata Finanziaria, usually called BPF. Founded in 1930 by a Fascist ideologist, the BPF was a small, very private, exclusive institution which served as a conduit for the illegal transfer of funds from Italy on behalf of a favoured few. It was doubtless this proud heritage that won Sindona’s heart. Though disdaining to fight for Mussolini Michele Sindona was a natural Fascist. It would have appealed to him to acquire such a bank.
In 1959, the same year in which he acquired BPF, Sindona made another very shrewd investment. The Archbishop of Milan was trying to raise money for an old people’s home. Sindona stepped in and raised the entire amount: 2.4 million dollars. When Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini opened the Casa della Madonnina, Sindona was by his side. The two men became firm friends, with Montini relying more and more on Sindona’s advice on problems other than diocesan investments.
What Cardinal Montini may not have known is that the 2.4 million dollars were supplied to Sindona very largely from two sources: the Mafia and the CIA. Former CIA agent Victor Marchetti was later to reveal:
In the 1950s and the 1960s the CIA gave economic support to many activities promoted by the Catholic Church, from orphanages to the missions. Millions of dollars each year were given to
a great number of Bishops and Monsignors. One of them was Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini. It is possible that Cardinal Montini did not know where the money was coming from. He may have thought it was coming from friends.
‘Friends’, who as part of their determination to stop Italy voting into power a Communist Government, not only poured many millions of dollars into the country but were also prepared to smile benignly upon men like Michele Sindona. He might well be a criminal of growing significance but at least he was a right-wing criminal.
The Shark began to swim faster. The Milanese, who as a breed are inclined to be dismissive about the Romans, let alone the Sicilians, had initially disregarded this quietly spoken, polite man from the South. After a while the financial circles of the city which is the financial capital of Italy conceded that Sindona was a fairly bright tax consultant. When he began to acquire a company here and there they put it down to beginner’s luck. By the time he had become a bank owner and confidant of the man many were tipping as the next Pope, it was too late to stop him. His progress was irresistible. Again through his holding company, Fasco, he acquired the Banca di Messina. This move particularly pleased the Mafia families Gambino and Inzerillo, giving them as it did, unlimited access to a bank in Sicily, in Sindona’s own home province.
Sindona forged close links with Massimo Spada, one of the Vatican’s trusted men, Administrative Secretary of the Vatican Bank and on the Board of twenty-four companies including Banca Cattolica del Veneto on behalf of the Vatican. Luigi Mennini, another top Vatican bank official, also became a close friend. Father Macchi, Montini’s secretary, yet another. Banca Privata began to flower. In March 1965, Sindona sold 22 per cent to Hambros Bank of London. Hambros, with their long-standing close links with Vatican finances, considered Sindona’s direction of the funds flowing into BPF ‘brilliant’. So did the Gambino and Inzerillo families. So did Continental Bank of Illinois, who also bought 22 per cent of the bank from Sindona. Continental were by now the major conduit for all USA investment by the Vatican. The bonds Sindona was placing around himself and the various Vatican elements were now multi-layered. He became a close friend of Monsignor Sergio Guerri. Guerri had taken over the responsibility of running Nogara’s monolithic creation, The Special Administration.
In 1964, Sindona had acquired yet another bank, this time in
Switzerland, the Banque de Financement in Geneva, Finabank. Largely owned by the Vatican it was, like his first bank, little more than an illegal conduit for the flight of money from Italy. After Sindona’s purchase of the controlling block of shares the Vatican still retained a 29 per cent share of the bank. Hambros of London and Continental Illinois of Chicago also had a stake in Finabank.