Those who
in their lives follow this path of evil, as mafiosi do, are not in communion
with God. They are excommunicated.
–-Pope
Francis, June 25, 2014
He told the crowd: "This evil must be fought against,
it must be pushed aside. We must say no to it."
He branded the 'Ndrangheta as the "adoration
of evil and contempt of the common good" and said the Church would exert
its full force in efforts to combat organised crime.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mafiosi-excommunicated-pope-says-151122053.html
The sensation of this "informal
excommunication" of the Sicilian mafia by Francis has now abated in the
normal news cycle. But while it was “hot,” it was getting more publicity than
the vindication of Galileo by John Paul II on November 4, 1992.
Despite it's not even being “latae
sentitiae," the “excommunication” Francis forthrightly declared is being
reported out of context. For instance, the media ignore that Francis had words
for the mafioso earlier in March, 2014 [see March, 2014, in the timeline below].
And even the June confrontation of the mafioso
by Francis is part of larger campaign for justice. In a larger world-wide
context, Francis’ words for the mafia are a call to all institutions who use
intimidation for the exercise of power, even the Church.
On the other hand, commentators haven’t
picked up on the point of interest to most history buffs. Francis's
condemnation of the mafia this month is but one small vignette of a long series
of events stretching over the pontificate of at least five popes. These events
reflect the love-hate relationship of the Vatican with those who would use the
Instituto per le Opere di Religione, the formal name
of the Vatican Bank, for money laundering by mafia and others.
I.
THE GOOD
THE GOOD WORKS OF THE IOR
At the outset, this “Spat” goes contrary
to its normal attitude by making clear this is some good in all this. Despite
the sordid history outlined in the chronology below, the history of the good
works carried out through the Institute for the Works of Religion shows
all is not so black. For instance, in July, 2012, one report states that $70 million
dollars was donated to various causes:
The
Vatican Bank, officially called the Institute for the Works of Religion,
distributed its charitable funds among the Amazon Fund; the Pro-Orantibus Fund,
which supports cloistered monasteries; the San Sergio Fund, which supports the
Church in the former Soviet Union; and the Commission for Latin America, as
well as other Catholic charities.
That being stated, we continue
II.
THE BAD
A CHRONOLOGY OF THE IOR and THE ROLE OF THE MAFIA
The second point can be put in
perspective by a review of history of the
Istituto per le Opere di Religione
[IOR or Institute for Religious Works], the formal
name of the Vatican Bank. One new report cites some of that history:
The Vatican Bank was established with a massive sum provided by the
dictator Benito Mussolini in “payment” for the loss of Papal-owned territories
60 years earlier, when the inhabitants of those territories decided they would
rather be part of a united Italy than continue to be ruled directly by the
Pope. Its first director, a brilliant but unscrupulous financier named
Bernardino Nogara, used those funds and others to control a substantial portion
of Italian economic life, including the ownership of several banks, munitions
factories, and Italy’s largest manufacturer of the contraceptive devices that
were officially banned by the Church. The Church’s insatiable demand for
funds, particularly to finance its attempts to influence European politics in
the postwar era, led the Bank to seek even greater profits by plunging into
organized crime: evading Italian currency laws, laundering Mafia drug profits,
and serving as a front for fraudulent securities schemes.
A little research yielded this sketchy
timeline to illustrate the connection between the recent condemnation of the
mafia by Francis and the machinations of the
mafia with the Vatican Bank:
June 27, 1942 - Pius XII founds the
Istituto per le Opere di Religione.
The present website states:
Our mission is to serve the universal Church throughout the
entire world, helping the Holy See, religious congregations and Catholic
institutions in their works of charity and evangelization.
More about the purpose of the IOR and
its ongoing process of reform started in 2012 [the Church hurries slowly, you
know] in a letter at the home page of the IOR website [launched in June ,
2012]:
1948: A Vatican
official named Monsignor Edoardo Cippico was arrested and imprisoned for
evading Italian currency controls through money-laundering operations at the
Vatican Bank.
October 28, 1958: Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli elected
pope, taking the name John XXIII.
Since his prime objective was a more
ecumenical, in the fullest sense of world-wide, resulting in Vatican II, there’s
no indication found about John XXIII dealing with the Vatican Bank. There is,
however, a connection with its future president:
In December 1959, he [Msgr. Paul Marcincus]
returned to Rome to work in the office of the secretariat of state, by which
time he had learned enough Italian to serve as an occasional interpreter for Pope John XXIII.
Marcinkus was toserve as president of
the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989.
1968: In 1968 Pope
Paul VI selected as the Vatican’s chief financial advisor a man named Michele
Sindona, a well-known Mafia banker who was later convicted of fraud, theft,
perjury, and murder. In 1973, Sindona engineered the sale of the Banco
Cattolica del Veneto, which had previously been owned by the Vatican, to the
Banco Ambrosiano of Milan.
1971 - 1989: American-Born President of the Vatican Bank
Cicero-born, Msgr. Paul Marcinkus was the president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, also known as the Vatican Bank,
from 1971 to 1989. As early as April 24, 1973, Marcinkus was questioned in his
Vatican office by federal prosecutor William Aronwald and Bill Lynch, head of
the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the United States Department of Justice, about his involvement in the
delivery of $14.5 million US worth of counterfeit bonds to the Vatican in July
1971, part of a total request of $950 million US worth stated in a letter on
Vatican notepaper.
"You can’t run a Church on Hail Marys", he [Marcinkas] used to
say; he certainly ran the bank – and a good many quite unrelated companies as
well, one of which made the contraceptive pill – with firm efficiency.
He also maintained close contacts with Sicilian Mafioso banker Michele
Sindona – with whom he was fellow director of a bank in the Bahamas, and who in
1980 was sentenced in New York to 25 years’ imprisonment on 65 counts,
including fraud – and the chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano (the ‘Priests’
Bank’) Roberto Calvi, whose body was found in June 1982 hanging under
Blackfriars Bridge.
[See item below, 1982]
August 26, 1978: Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected Pope and
takes the name John Paul I.
Luciani was known as a kindly man, but he was not a
forgetful man. Even if he had been, his memory might have been jogged
when immediately after taking office he received a circular from Italy’s Office
of Exchange Control warning of illegal activities involving transfers to the
“foreign” Vatican Bank to violate the nation’s currency laws. According to
David Yallop’s book In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I,
Luciani
quickly ordered an investigation of the Vatican Bank, and on the evening of
September 28, 1978, after only 33 days on the job, he reviewed final drafts of
documents approving sweeping changes, including the immediate replacement of
Marcinkus. The next morning, Luciani was found dead. The changes at the Vatican
Bank did not happen.
September 27, 1978: John Paul I dies 33 days after
election
Many will be familiar with the
conspiracy theories surrounding JP I's death:
In short, there was
plenty of motive for murder; plenty of opportunity; and plenty of suspicious
circumstances. That is all we can say. There is absolutely no conclusive
proof of anything untoward, and John Paul I may have died a perfectly natural
death.
Those wishing to know
more are referred to two remarkable books: In God’s Name by
David Yallop, who believes the worst, and A Thief in the Night by John
Cornwell, for whom this is all just another baseless conspiracy
theory. Both are the results of deep and
meticulous research, yet they reach diametrically opposite conclusions.
The mystery remains.
1982: The most infamous publicity surrounded
revelations about the Vatican bank’s dealings with Milan’s Banco Ambrosiano,
one of the most high-profile bank collapses in Italy’s history. The Vatican
bank was Banco Ambrosiano’s main shareholder. After its demise in 1982, Banco
Ambrosiano’s chairman, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged under London’s
Blackfriars Bridge. Prosecutors in Rome concluded that he was killed by the
Sicilian Mafia but no one has ever been convicted of his murder.
Ocotober 16, 1978: Karol Wojtyla elected pope, taking the name John Paul II.
May, 1993: During a visit to Sicily in May 1993, Pope John Paul II urged
Roman Catholics, who make up the vast majority of Sicily's five million people,
to rise up against the Mafia.
Mr. Coiro
said the Pope's appeals were evidently viewed by the Mafia as breaching a kind
of "non-belligerence accord" between Mafia and church. He said that
in an apparent reprisal last September, the Rev. Giuseppe Puglisi, a priest in
Palermo who was an outspoken opponent of organized crime, was shot and killed
in what investigators believe was a Mafia operation.
And another retaliation is reported:
La Cosa Nostra didn't try to kill John Paul II —
though Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Ağca did try in 1981 — but it did apparently
respond to his admonition by bombing several Roman churches a few months later,
including the Basilica of St. John
Lateran — the pope's home church, in his role as Bishop of Rome.
June 4, 2009: An AlterNet report cites:
The Vatican appears to have an enduring vocation for Italian political
and financial scandal. Secrecy and intrigue were the order of the day when
American archbishop Paul Marcinkus held sway in the Bastion of Nicholas V, the
medieval tower housing the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the
Vatican's central bank.
More at:
June 12, 2012: An online new commentary states:
The Vatican Bank is under media fire as reports emerge that Italian
prosecutors suspect it of laundering Sicilian mafia bosses’ riches.
The Institute for Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican
Bank, has so far refused to disclose details of an account held by a priest in
connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation.
More at
June, 2013: A news outlet, little noticed in the world media,
reported:
On June 28 this year, Italian police arrested a
silver-haired priest, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, in Rome. The cleric, nicknamed
Monsignor Cinquecento after the €500 bills he habitually carried around with
him, was charged with fraud and corruption, together with a former secret
service agent and a financial broker. All three were suspected of attempting
to smuggle €20m by private plane across the border from Switzerland.
Prosecutors alleged that the priest, a former banker, was using the
Institute for Religious Works – the formal name for the Vatican’s bank – to
move money for businessmen based in the Naples region, widely regarded in Italy
as a haven of organised crime. Worse still, Scarano (who, together with the
other men, has denied any wrongdoing) had until only a month earlier been head of
the accounting department at the Administration of the Patrimony of the
Apostolic See, the treasury of the Vatican.
October 1, 2013: Vatican Bank [IOR] opens its books
for the first time, According to a Reuters report:
The IOR said that
in 2012 it had a net profit of 86.6 million euro ($117.23 million), more than
four times greater than the 20.2 million euro profit in 2011.
The report, whose figures were audited by KPMG, said the
huge increase in net profit was due mainly favorable trading results and higher
bond values.
It said 54.7 million euro of the profit was transferred to
the budget of the Holy See to help the pope carry out the Church's mission
around the world. It also revealed the extent of the IOR's holdings in gold,
coins and other precious metals (41.3 million euros), that it had a stake in an
Italian real estate company, and received two inheritance properties worth
about 2 million euros in 2012.
The bank's stated aim is to hold and manage money for
Vatican departments, orders of priests and nuns, Catholic institutions and
related entities, clergy and Vatican employees.
November 14, 2013: Money Laundering Crackdown
Pope Francis' crusade against corruption in the Catholic Church,
including an overhaul of the scandal-scarred Vatican Bank, has put the new
pontiff in the Italian mafia's crosshairs, according to two organized crime
experts.
In May, the Vatican Bank, officially known as the Institute for
Religious Works, issued its first-ever report on money laundering, an apparent
attempt to improve
its financial transparency.
The 64-page report details the Vatican's efforts to crack down on money
laundering in particular, though it made
no mention of mafia connections. The report found six charges of
"suspicious activity" within the past year.
March 21, 2014: Pope Francis takes part in the annual vigil in Rome where families
whose members’ lives have been taken by mafia violence.
The Pope thanked the victims for their testimonies
and expressed his solidarity with them. He asked them to never stop fighting against
corruption. After his speech, he spent several minutes greeting some of them
personally.
About 700 people attended the
gathering, on behalf of more than 15,000 victims killed by the mafia.
At that time, he
addressed his words to the mafia:
"We pray for
you to change. We are asking you, on our knees. It's for your own good. This
life you live now will not give you pleasure, it will not give you joy, it will
not give you happiness. The power, the money you have now, from dirty
deeds, from many
mafia crimes, this blood money, you can't take it with you to the next life.
Change. You still have time to not end up in hell. That is what awaits you, if
you continue down this path.”
See the three minute video of the
actual context at
June 25, 2014: Pope Francis’ condemnation of mafia
mobsters and presence at the prayer vigil goes beyond the perpetrators
themselves and was also intended as a
message to the Church ranks, as well as organized crime [emphasis mine]. Some priests in southern Italy
are still accused of turning a blind eye to the crimes of devout Roman Catholic
mobsters, who contribute handsomely to Church coffers for the maintenance of
churches and often place themselves at the head of religious parades in small
towns. Father Don Ciotti, who is the head of the Libera organization, which
combats organized crime and has organized the prayer vigil on an annual basis, stated
that the Roman Catholic Church has not always given attention to the victims of
the mafia and the presence of organized crime. However, many perceive the
pontiff’s presence at the ceremony and stern warning as an extraordinary
message to his priests in the south of Italy in encouraging them to choose a
courageous path of opposition to the mafia.
Read more at http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/pope-francis-condemns-mafia/#77tIYPhbVXhB4zDm.99
The condemnation of the mafia by Francis, while nothing new,
carries with it a number of implications apparently ignored by commentators.
What’s new and not to be minimized is the risk of violence against him, not for
just this “excommunication” statement, but for his whole approach in the reform
of the Vatican Bank.
This is not just an “Italian Affair.” A corollary of the
choice of Francis to attend this vigil at this time—on the 19th
annual event—can be seen in a context of papal calls to the world and Church
about money and justice. True, attending the vigil in March, 2013, in Rome,
Francis must have been moved by listening to the reading aloud of the names of
842 who have suffered violent deaths since 1893 at the hands of the mafia. The
suffering of those families of victims in March, 2013, no doubt, prepared him
to make an even bolder statement in Sibari in June, 2014.
III.
THE UGLY
SOME CORROLARIES:
WORLD-WIDE CONDEMNATION OF USE OF POWER
But the vision of Francis is more world-wide and his message
is too. He is saying “Using power for violence is ‘excommunicable’! Such
actions cut one off from the community of Jesus.” If the priests of Italy have
turned a blind eye to wealthy mafia contributors to the maintenance of their
churches, what of those in other parts of the First World who temper their
messages to what will be palatable by their wealthy parishioners? The question
that remains is whether the message of Francis about “excommunication” sinks in
globally.
THE PARISH AND THE USE OF POWER
And what of the Church’s own use of power to suppress
discussion of topics people want to address in the Church? How many parishioners,
moved by the treasure of Church social teaching, are met with the cautionary
words of parish officials: “We wouldn’t want to get people upset with us, would
we?” And even social-justice-minded
parish staff find themselves confronted by well-to-do parishioners who object
to “too much of this social justice stuff” or “stick to the preaching the Gospel,
Father!”
One wonders what would happen if the world’s population of
Catholics—both conservative and progressive—might be moved to withhold the
percentage of donations going to the Vatican Bank through their parishes. Could
good people be upset to that extent at the injustice of “their” bank being used
for laundering mafia money?
THREAT TO THE POPE
Pope Francis’ statements against the mafia may be cause to
fear a local threat on the pope. His courage in making statements like this has
brought the threat of violence against his predecessors.
NOW WHAT?
No Eli Wallach’s Tuco teetering on a stool with rope around his
neck as Clint Eastwood’s Blondie riding off into the sunset with the bags of
treasure in his saddle bags.
The conclusion
of this present epic makes one wonder how the early Church communities would have
looked on all this. Perhaps the best conclusion is the one made by one commentator
who put it this way:
Well, since we are talking about the
church, here is the apostle Paul writing to his acolyte Timothy (1 Timothy
6:10): "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some
people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves
with many sorrows."
