The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (12 page)

Archbishop Stepinac also sent regular reports to the Vatican. In
an official document dated May 8, 1944, the archbishop took delight
in informing the Holy Father that to date "244,000 Orthodox
Serbs" had been converted to the "Church of God."25

Pius XII had alternative personal means of information on conditions in Croatia, including broadcasts of the BBC that were faithfully
monitored and translated for him by Francis D'Arcy Osborne,
London's minister to the Vatican. The broadcast of February 16,
1942, was as follows: "The worst atrocities are being committed in
the environs of the Archbishop of Zagreb [Stepinac]. The blood of
brothers is flowing in streams. The Orthodox are being forcibly con verted to Catholicism and we do not hear the archbishop's voice
preaching revolt. Instead it is reported that he is taking part in Nazi
and Fascist parades."26

Eight days prior to this broadcast, on February 8, 1942, Prvislav
Grizogono, the former minister of the I ingdom of Yugoslavia, sent
an official letter to Pius XII in which he outlined the atrocities that
had been committed by the Ustashi throughout New Croatia. He
concluded the letter with this plea:

Why do I write this to you, Here is why: In all these unprecedented
Crimes, worse than pagan, our Catholic Church has also participated in two ways. First, a large number of priests, clerics, friars, and
organized Catholic youth actively participated in all these crimes,
but more terrible, even Catholic priests became camp and group
commanders, and, as such, ordered or tolerated the horrible tortures, murders and massacres of a baptized people. None of this
could have been done without the permission of their bishops, and,
if it was done, they should have been brought to the Ecclesiastical
Court and unfrocked. Since this did not happen, then ostensibly the
bishops gave their consent by acquiescence at least."

Despite such reports, Pius XII never uttered one word of censure
against the Ustashi. Even after the war, when documented reports of
Franciscan priests taking part in mass executions appeared in the international press, the pope remained silent. He never called to account
one member of the clergy, not even Fr. Miroslav Filipovic, Fr. Zvonko
Brekalo, and other commandants of the death camps. He censored no
one, not even Fr. Bozidar Bralow, who organized the mass executions,
or Fr. G. Casimir, who supervised the slaughter at Glina.

At the end of the war Archbishop Stepinac was arrested for war
crimes by the Yugoslav government. A parade of prosecution witnesses testified at Zagreb on October 5, 1945, that Catholic priests
armed with machine guns went out to convert Orthodox Serbs and
massacred them.2 Most of the witnesses were Croat Catholic peasants and laborers. The archbishop was found guilty and sentenced to
sixteen years in prison.

Upon hearing the verdict Pius XII uttered a cry of outrage and ordered the excommunication of everyone who had taken part in the
trial. In the Catholic press, Archbishop Stepinac was presented as a
champion of religious freedom who opposed the godless forces of
Communism. Reports of the atrocities in Catholic Croatia were dismissed as either "Communist propaganda" or "Gestapo-cooked"
inventions. A worldwide movement was orchestrated by the Vatican to
save the "martyred Stepinac." The campaign succeeded. In 1951
Stepinac was released from prison after an appeal had been issued by
the United Nations. The triumphant archbishop returned to Rome
where he was embraced by the pope and elevated in status to a cardinal.

On October 4, 1998, Pope John Paul II traveled to the Republic
of Croatia to announce the beatification of Archbishop Stepinac.
Beatification is the first step toward sainthood. It pronounces that the
deceased is "beloved by Christ" and "worthy of veneration." At the
ceremony in the Cathedral of Marija Bistrica, the pope said: "Blessed
Stepinac did not shed his blood in the strict sense of the word. His
death was caused by the long suffering he endured: the last fifteen
years of his life were a continual succession of trials, amid which he
courageously endangered his own life in order to bear witness to the
Gospel and the unity of the Church."29

The events in Croatia were glossed over by news of Nazi horrors
in Europe. But the statistics of the Ustashi reign almost defy belief.
Between 1941 and 1945, over 500,000 Orthodox Serbs were massacred in the Independent State of Croatia, along with 80,000 Jews
and 30,000 Gypsies. On a per capita basis, it represented the greatest
incident of mass murder in the annals of the twentieth century.

But few in the Vatican could argue that the political experiment
in Croatia had not been profitable.

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was
condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned
the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders.
"I have sinned," he said, `for I have betrayed innocent
blood." "What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your
responsibility." So Judas threw the money into the
temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

Matt. 27:3-5

fter signing the Faustian agreements with Hitler and Mus_solini, the Church became charmed in all its worldly undertakings. As it prospered from its prewar alliances, it also prospered
from the demise of the Fascist regime in Italy, the fall of the Third
Reich, and the collapse of New Croatia.

By the end of February 1945 the Yugoslav troops, with the help of the Communist forces, managed to liberate Zagreb, the Croatian
capital. The Ustashi scrambled to save as much of their loot as possible. In the Franciscan monastery within the center of Zagreb, Ante
Pavelic, with the full consent of Archbishop Stepinac, buried thirtysix chests of plundered gold-gold rings, gold jewelry, gold watches,
gold dentures, and gold fillings that had been wrenched from the
jaws of the Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs they had massacred-and two
truckloads of silver.'

While the Yugoslavs hunted down the Ustashi officials responsible for the genocide, Pavelic fled to Austria where he was captured
by American forces and imprisoned near Salzburg.

As arrangements got underway for Pavelic to appear before the
Nuremberg tribunal, a "mysterious intervention" occurred and the
proceedings came to a grinding halt. Pius XII, through the intervention of the archbishop of Salzburg, arranged for Pavelic to be transported to Vatican City where the Ustashi dictator was granted sovereign protection.

Several weeks later, to avoid scandal, the pope made arrangemerits for Pavelic to leave Vatican City in the dead of night. For the
next three years the Ustachi leader traveled from one monastery to
another in the guise of a Franciscan monk and under various aliases,
including Father Benares and Father Gomez.' U.S. Army Intelligence was informed of Pavelic's identities and his whereabouts but
remained reluctant to arrest him. In a confidential report dated September 12, 1947, William Gowen and Louis Caniglia, special agents
of the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, wrote: "Pavelic's
contacts are so high and his present position so compromising to the
Vatican that any extradition of the subject would deal a staggering
blow to the Roman Catholic Church."3

During this time the buried Ustashi treasure was removed from
the monastery in Zagreb to Rome and from Rome to Naples, where
the gold and silver were melted into bars under the supervision of the
Mafia. From Naples the bars of pure gold and silver reportedly were
transferred by the Mafiosi to Vatican City for deposit in Franciscan
accounts within the Vatican Bank where the fortune, valued in excess
of $80 million, disappeared within its vast vault.4

More money came to the Vatican from Croatia. On May 7, 1945,
288 kilograms of gold was removed from the Croatian National Bank
and the state treasury. According to a report filed by Office of
Strategic Services (OSS) agent Emerson Bigelow on October 21,
1946, British soldiers managed to confiscate 150 kilograms of gold at
the Italian border, but the remaining money made its way to the Holy
See, where it was stored away in the Vatican Bank for "safe keeping."5

In addition to the Croatian Nazi gold, the Vatican amassed millions from the sale of false passports to fleeing war criminals and the
establishment of the infamous "ratline." The "ratline" was the name
for an underground railroad by which Nazi officials escaped from justice for their war crimes. Through the Vatican ratline, the Ustashi
high command moved from Trieste, to Rome, to Geneva, and on to
neutral countries, primarily Argentina, where they could spend their
days unpunished and unnoticcd.6

A key figure in these nefarious activities was Fr. Krunoslav Dragonovic, a Franciscan monk who became a member of the Ustashi high
command. On one occasion, Father Dragonovic smuggled fifty kilograms of gold from Croatia to Rome in two shipping crates.7 After
supervising the massacre of thousands of Serbs in New Croatia, Father
Dragonovic was recalled to Rome in 1943, where he was appointed
head of the College of San Girolamo degli Illirici. Located in Rome,
the Vatican-sponsored seminary became a center for Croats seeking
religious instruction and ordination to the priesthood. Later, San
Girolamo came to serve as the headquarters for the postwar Ustashi
underground.' In a report of February 12, 1947, U.S. Army Counter
Intelligence Corps Agent Gowan wrote: "San Girolamo is honeycombed with cells of Ustasha operatives. In order to enter the
monastery, one must submit to a personal search for weapons and
identification.... The whole area is guarded by armed Ustasha youths
in civilian clothes, and the Ustashi salute is exchanged constantly."9

Father Dragonovic presented himself as a Red Cross worker, but
according to U.S. intelligence, his real role was to provide an escape
route for Nazis to South America. A CIC confidential report of July
27, 1950, shows that the United States was willing to give Dragonovic free reign over the ratline because of the Vatican official's will ingness to arrange the escape of anti-Communist informants,
including Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyons who had
tortured and killed thousands of Jews and members of the French
Resistance.10 From 1946 to 1947 Dragonovic kept Barbie under his
protective care at San Girolamo where the two regularly dined
together. CIA records show that Dragonovic remained on the payroll
of the U.S. Army throughout the 1950s. In 1958, after the death of
Pius XII, his papal protector, Dragonovic was expelled from the College of San Girolamo by orders of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Despite the expulsion, he continued to serve the CIA by recruiting
Ustashi mercenaries to help the Dominican Republic in its fight
against Castro.

The Vatican ratline, under Father Dragonovic's supervision,
became incredibly efficient and highly elaborate. Fleeing war criminals were sheltered within Vatican City and granted new identities.
Birth certificates, visas, passports, and other documentation were
manufactured, prepared, and delivered with amazing proficiency by a
small army of Vatican bureaucrats." Members of the Sicilian Mafia,
skilled in the subtle art of falsification, were recruited to lend their
expertise to the venture. One of the most notable of the mafiosi was
Lucio Gelli, who served as an Oberleutnant for the SS in Italy and a
liaison officer to the elite SS Hermann Goring Division. After the war
he became not only a director of the Vatican "ratline" but also a key
member of "Operation Glaudio," a secret operation funded by
NATO and the CIA to establish "stay behind" networks throughout
Europe to thwart the spread of Communism.12