The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (13 page)

Several prominent Nazi criminals, including Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, were granted living quarters within the confines of Vatican City and at the pope's summer residence at Castel
Gandolfo. 13 Others were lodged with Catholic families, who were
pleased to open their doors to Vatican "guests" for a small stipend.
Still other criminals were sheltered in monasteries under the guise of
friars, monks, and religious brothers. By 1946 these facilities were
filled to capacity and scores of fugitive Nazis were housed in convents
where they were dressed in full habit as nuns. Several observers noted
the sudden increase of strange-looking religious sisters with mascu line demeanors and rough mannerisms, some of whom were badly in
need of a shave. They further observed that from 1945 to 1948 the
nunnish populations in convents throughout Rome increased and
declined at regular intervals.14 A senior British political advisor
reported that it was "becoming increasingly clear that many of the
more important quislings are taking refuge under the wing of the
Roman Catholic Church." The advisor predicted that little could be
done "unless the Vatican can be persuaded into open cooperation."1'

The price demanded for such shelter was high. The fleeing Nazis
were usually obliged to relinquish 40 to 50 percent of their complete
savings, including the goods they had looted from their victims, to
the Vatican. Yet the price was readily paid. Any "refugees" who
aroused suspicion could retreat within the corridors of the Vatican
where they remained safe from arrest and prosecution. The Allied
forces and the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, in their
search for war criminals, were unwilling to challenge the sovereignty
of the State of Vatican City. For this reason, the papal coffers continued to be filled to overflowing by newly arrived "guests."

And the guest list was most impressive. In addition to Klaus
Barbie and Franz Stangl, the Church sheltered such luminaries as
Adolph Eichmann, Hitler's top henchman and director of the genocide program; Eduard Roschmann, the "Butcher of Roga"; SS General Walter Rauff, inventor of the mobile gas truck; Gutav Wagner,
commandant of the Soribibor Camp; and Dr. Joseph Mengele, the
"angel of death" at Auschwitz. With their Vatican-produced passports, such "guests" were granted safe passage to South America,
Australia, and the United States. In all, more than 30,000 Nazis
escaped justice, thanks to Holy Mother Church. "All these people
were escaping," Agent Gowan later recalled, "and this at a time when
just getting a meal in Rome was a major accomplishment. 1116

Father Dragonovic, according to documents unclassified by the
U.S. State Department in 1998, may have personally profited from
his illegal activities by charging refugees as much as $1,500 for false
documents and $650 for each refuge in addition to the amount
charged by the Vatican.'7

Reports circulated that Nazi sympathizers, including members of ODESSA (Organization of Former Officers of the SS) and "The
Spider," provided ongoing financial support for the Vatican ratline.

Pavelic, as a favored son of Holy Mother Church, was placed under
the special care and protection of Father Draganovic, who not only provided the Fascist dictator with a counterfeit International Red Cross
passport but also accompanied him and over two hundred senior
Ustashi officers to Buenos Aires. Before returning to Rome, Draganovic
placed Pavelic under the care of the Argentine hierarchy and introduced
him to top Argentine officials, including Juan Peron. Within a year
Pavelic gathered together his fellow Ustashi expatriates and formed
Hrvatska Drzavotvorna Stranka to keep alive the dream of Catholic
Croatia. In 1959 Pavelic suffered a heart attack while visiting Spain. The
"Butcher of the Balkans" received a special blessing and the sacrament
of extreme unction from Pope John XXIII on his deathbed.'s

On November 23, 1999, survivors of the Catholic-supported
atrocities in Croatia filed a lawsuit against the Vatican for hoarding
gold stolen by the Ustashi and for helping Nazi war criminals escape
from justice by establishing ratlines to South America. The suit,
which seeks more than $1 billion in damages, received the support of
the Ukrainian Union of Nazi Victims and Prisoners and the Organization of Antifascist Resistance Fighters. "The Vatican Bank claim
may turn out to be as large as claims against Swiss banks," attorney
Jonathan Levy told the press. "In fact, the figures may be much
higher." 19

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples: "How
hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!"
The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said
again: "Children, how hard it is to enter the Kingdom
of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom
of God." The disciples were even more amazed, and
said to each other: "Who then can be saved?" Jesus
looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible,
but not with God; all things are possible with God."

Mark 10:23-27

t the end of World War II, Italy was "one extended poor-house."' The Allied invasion, the German defense, and the
destruction wrought by the Italian partisans had resulted in the devastation of roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, industrial plants, city streets,
marketplaces, and apartment buildings. This posed economic ruin for the Vatican since it had invested the donation of Mussolini almost solely
in Italian business and industry. But now many of the businesses were
closed and the industries tottered on the edge of bankruptcy.

To compound the problem, the Communists remained the only
well-funded, well-organized, and politically aggressive party in Italy.
The leader of the party was Palmiro Togliatti, who had spent most of
the war in Moscow as a houseguest of Joseph Stalin.2 His platform
called for the socialization of industrial firms that had been financed
by the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IIR) during the Great
Depression, the very firms in which Nogara invested most of the
Church's holdings. Pius XII blanched at the prospects.

To ward off the Communist menace, the Holy Father provided
full funding to activate the Christian Democracy Party under the
leadership of Alcide Dc Gasperi. Dc Gasperi upheld as his personal
motto: "Catholic, Italian, and democratic, in that order."
Throughout his life he attended mass and received Holy Communion on a daily basis. In a letter in which he proposed marriage to his
future wife, Francesca Romani, De Gasperi wrote: "The personality
of the living Christ pulls me, enslaves me, and comforts me as though
I were a child. Come, I want you with me to be drawn to that same
attraction, as though to an abyss of light."3

In his early years, De Gasperi, as a staunch opponent of Fascism,
had gained the enmity of Mussolini. Hauled before a fascist tribunal,
he said: "It is the very concept of a Fascist state that I cannot accept.
For there are natural rights that the state cannot trample upon."4
Mussolini threw him into the Regina Coeli prison in 1927. De
Gasperi, like his friend Antonio Gramschi, would not have survived
the long stay in prison until the collapse of the Fascist regime. But
Mussolini's signature on the Lateran Treaty in 1929 enabled Pius XI
to have De Gasperi released into papal custody. For the next fifteen
years he remained sequestered within the Vatican library.

In 1946 Pius XII would have been hard-pressed to find a more
suitable candidate to serve as the leader of the Christian Democracy
Party. At sixty-five, Dc Gasperi was dignified, well spoken, and
fiercely devoted to his papal protector. He was also, thanks to his long
stay in the library, politically unsullied.

The Vatican channeled millions of lire to the Christian Democrats
through a lay agency called Catholic Action under the management
of Bernardino Nogara.s In this way, the Vatican could not be charged
with violating the terms of the 1929 concordat by direct involvement
in Italy's affairs of state. With the money, the Catholic Democracy
Party established twenty thousand comitati civici-modeled after
Communist cells-throughout Italy.' The "civil committees" served
as recruiting agencies for new party members.

In the twelve months before the election, the United States
poured $350 million into Italy for relief and political purposes. A
sizeable portion of this amount, approximately $30 million, was
channeled into Catholic Action to ward off the threat of a Communist government in Italy.' Cardinal Spellman spearheaded the Vatican-sponsored campaign to encourage Italian Americans to urge
their relatives in the old country to vote against Togliatti and the
other Communists. "The fate of Italy depends upon the forthcoming
election and the conflict between Communism and Christianity,
between slavery and freedom," Spellman wrote in a pamphlet that
was distributed in Catholic parishes throughout the United States.8
Several days before the election Italians were bombarded with radio
messages from such American celebrities as Frank Sinatra, Bing
Crosby, and Gary Cooper, urging them to support the Christian
Democrats and to stop the spread of Communism.9

In Sicily the Christian Democrats used the funding from the Vatican to forge an alliance with the Mafia. In return for the right to
appoint Mafiosi as leading members of the party and the payment of
blood money, the Mafia agreed to teach the Communists a lesson.
Mafia chieftain Salvatore Giuliano and his cousin Gaspere Pisciotta led
a group of assassins into Porta della Ginestra, where the Communists
had registered a political victory. Without prejudice the mobsters shot
and killed a dozen people and wounded more than fifty others. New
elections were held and the Christian Democrats, surrounded by their
newly "made" friends, won a resounding victory. Years later Gaspare
Pisciotta received orders to murder his own cousin Salvatore Guiliano.
At his trial Piscotta said of the earlier massacre: "We were a single body:
bandits, police and Mafia, like the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."10

Ultimately, this union between the Christian Democrats and the
Mafia would give rise to the "High Mafia," or the political Mafia.
From that time onward, Mafia-connected politicians would control
the right-wing of the Christian Democracy Party. This control would
result in the corruption of Italian politics, the infiltration of well-educated Mafiosi-such as Michele Sindona-in business and industry,
and the further contamination of the Holy See."

On the eve of the 1948 election, three hundred bishops
throughout Italy denounced Togliatti and the other Communists
from the pulpit. Archbishop Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, for example,
told his dioceses that it was a "mortal sin" not to vote; that voting for
a Communist was irreconcilable with being a Catholic; and that confessors "should withdraw absolution from any who have failed to
heed his instruction."12 At the same time, twenty-five thousand
priests went door to door to visit their parishioners and recruit new
members to Catholic Action. Membership in the organization
swelled from three million to five million.