The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (18 page)

By 1969 Sindona was the most powerful financier in Italy and the
perfect person to address the Vatican's problems with the Italian government. The "Gruppo Sindona" included six banks in six countries,
the international CIGA Hotel chain, Libby Foods, and five hundred
other companies. He controlled the stock market in Milan where 40
percent of the shares traded on any given day were under his control.
His ability to influence Italy's financial condition was so profound
that former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti proclaimed him as "the
savior of the lire. 1116

Sindona was now a "man of honor" in the Sicilian and American
Cosa Nostra. For this reason he received an invitation to join the
highly secret Masonic society called "Propaganda Due." Its grand
master was the most skilled practitioner of the art of blackmail in
Italy: Licio "the Puppet Master" Gelli.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in
the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of light
consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and
find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do
with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose
them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.

Eph. 5:8-12

icio Gelli once declared that "the doors of all bank vaults open
to the right," a metaphorical claim about the willingness of
big-moneyed concerns to fund the types of right-wing activities that
he, the Puppet Master, orchestrated. Gelli had been a leader of the
Blackshirts Battalion during the Spanish Civil War, when aristocrats
and the Catholic Church provided ongoing support to General
Franco. During World War II, Gelli served as a key liaison officer to the elite German SS Division under Field Marshall Hermann Goring.
His work involved spying on the Italian partisans and reporting their
actions to his German masters.I

Gelli accumulated a great deal of wealth while stationed in the
Italian town of Cattaro, where the national treasures of Yugoslavia
were hidden. The treasures in the form of gold bars never made it back
to Yugoslavia. In 1999 Italian police authorities stumbled upon 150
of these gold bars, worth more than $2 million, in patio flowerpots
and between the begonias that decorated Gelli's villa in Tuscany.2

Additional wealth came from Gelli's involvement in operating the
Vatican "ratlines" with Fr. Krujoslav Dragonovic. Gelli's fee was 40
percent of the total cash on hand from each fleeing "rat." This
demand, coupled with the Vatican's take of 40 to 50 percent, left the
Nazis penniless when they arrived in Argentina and other neutral
countries. One of the most notable rats helped by Gelli was Klaus
Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyons." The Vatican sheltered the Gestapo
chief for several months before placing him under the care of Gelli.
Barbie was not obliged to pay the Vatican or Gelli. The cost was
borne by the United States Counterintelligence Corps that kept
Barbie in its employ until 1951.3

During the Cold War, Gelli became a commander of "Operation
Glaudio," a CIA undertaking that sought to establish networks
throughout Europe to thwart the spread of Communism. By 1972,
when Gelli established friendships with White House Chief of Staff
and former NATO Supreme Commander Alexander Haig, the
Glaudio network had mushroomed to over 15,000 operatives
throughout the world. Haig, according to secret service sources, had
approved the release of millions to support Gelli's operations to
thwart Communism.4

To realize his dream of a resurrected Fascist order in modern
Italy, Gelli turned to the rehabilitated Masonic movement. Ironically,
his beloved leader Benito Mussolini had banned Freemasonry as a
"state within a state." But the democratic Italian government had
permitted the Masons to resume their activities, and lodges began to
pop up throughout the country.

Gelli joined a conventional Masonic lodge in November 1963. He rapidly rose to third-degree membership-a status that permitted
him to lead a lodge. Grand Master Giordano Gamberini urged Gelli
to form a circle of influential Masons who could promote the growth
of Freemasonry throughout Italy. Gelli responded with the creation
of "Propaganda 2" (P-2) also known as "Raggruppamento Gelli."s
The goal of this ultrasecret society within a secret society became
more grandiose than the return of a fascist form of government in
Italy. It sought the establishment of extreme right-wing governments
throughout the world.

Gelli's plan reads like the scenario of a madman in an espionage
thriller, if not an Austin Powers spoof. But the plan was well funded
and enormously successful. And in a short period of time, Gelli
became richer and more powerful than the fictitious Blofeld and his
organization, more elaborate and sinister than Ian Fleming's criminal
network of Specter in James Bond novels.

By 1969, when Sindona joined the order, P-2 boasted members
such as Italy's Armed Forces Commander Giovanni Torrisi, Secret Service chiefs Giuseppe Santovito and Giulio Grassini, the head of Italy's
financial police Orazio Giannini, Chief Surgeon Dr. Joseph Michell
Crimi of the Palermo Police Department, General Vito Micili of the
SID, General Raffaele Giudice of the Finance Guard, Supreme Council
Magistrate Ugo Zilletti, cabinet ministers, politicians of every political
ilk except Communists, thirty generals, eight admirals, newspaper editors, television executives, and top business executives.6

One of Gelli's greatest recruiting victories was the enrollment of
Carmelo Spagnuolo into his secret society. Spagnuolo was the chief
public defender in Milan and later the president of the Italian
Supreme Court.7 This was to ensure that P-2 would have justice on
its side.

Gelli employed a variety of techniques to attract new members to
his organization. One was the standard method of personal contact
and introduction to the order from already existing members.
Another was more sinister. When a recruit joined P-2, he was obliged
to demonstrate his loyalty by conveying to Gelli documents that
would compromise not only himself but other candidates. When candidates were confronted with the evidence of their misdeeds, they generally caved in and joined the order. This proved to be the case of
Giorgio Mazzanti, the president of ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi), the Italian oil company. Faced with incriminating evidence of
his acceptance of huge bribes and payoffs from a pending Saudi oil
deal, Mazzanti took the vow of secrecy, joined the elite Masonic
order, and conveyed to Gelli even more compromising information.8

Within ten years of its creation, P-2 established branches in
Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal,
Nicaragua, West Germany, and England. In the United States its
members came from the Gambino and Luchesse Crime Families.
Looking into the relationship between the Mafia and the garbage
industry, investigative reporters discovered in 1996 that several
owners of leading landfills and waste-hauling businesses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey had ties not only to the New York crime families but also to P-2.

Gelli was responsible for Juan Peron's return to power, the reign
of General Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, and the Triple-A death
squads in Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil. In South America, Gelli
maintained close relations with Klaus Barbie and worked with the exGestapo chief to establish the "Fiances of Death" in Bolivia-a group
responsible for the assassination of Socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga
and the rise to power of General Garcia Meza. With the blessings of
the Bolivian junta, Gelli and Barbie set about to regulate the cocaine
industry, destroying the small dealers so that that the big drug traffickers-those who cooperated with the Sicilian Mafia-would be
transformed into mighty crime lords with private armies.9

Gelli and Barbie also began to sell arms to Bolivia and other
right-wing South American regimes. They even managed-incredibly
enough-to sell an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry to Israel.'0

According to the CIA, P-2 remained busy in Italy, wreaking
havoc to prevent what the group saw as the ultimate disaster: a Communist government elected to power by the democratic process.
Recently released CIA documents link Gelli's Masonic group to acts
of terrorism, including the bombing of the Rome-Munich express
train-the Italicus-in 1969 that killed 12 people and injured 48; the
1969 bombing of Milan's Piazza Fontana that killed 16 and injured 88; and the 1980 bombing of a train station in Bologna that killed
85 and injured 182. P-2 has also been implicated in the Red
Brigade's murder of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 and
the gruesome assassination of Magistrate Vittoria Occorsio.ll This
"strategy of terror" was hugely successful. Blame for these acts was
placed on the Red Brigade and other left-wing organizations, and,
moreover, the attempts to bring about a "historic compromise"
between the Communists and Christian Democrats came to an
abrupt halt.

Meanwhile, Gelli continued to expand his circle of friendship. In
1981 the Grand Master of P-2 was so well connected that he received
a special invitation to attend the inauguration of President Ronald
Reagan.12 He also developed friends within the Roman Catholic
Church, including Cardinal Paolo Bertoli, a fellow Tuscan. Through
Bertoli, Gelli came to know Cardinals Sebastiano Baggio, Agostino
Casaroli, Ugo Poletti, and Jean Villot. Through these princes of Holy
Mother Church, Gelli obtained a series of private audiences with
Pope Paul VI, who was so enchanted with his new acquaintance that
he dubbed Gelli a Knight of Malta and a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher. 1 a Such knights are supposed to serve as papal protectors. Obviously, the Holy Father was unaware that Gelli was not a Roman
Catholic, let alone a Mason.

Freemasonry is anathema to Roman Catholicism. The 1917
Code of Canon Law applied the censure of excommunication to all
individuals who joined a Masonic lodge. This ruling was upheld by
the 1983 code that declares: "The Church's negative position on
Masonic associations remains unaltered since their principles have
always been regarded as irreconcilable with the Church's doctrine."
It goes on to say: "Catholics enrolled in Masonic associations are
involved in serious sin and may not approach Holy Communion."
Despite this adamant condemnation, the overwhelming majority of
members of P-2 were Roman Catholics, who saw in the organization
an opportunity to oppose the spread of Socialism and Communism
as well as a means to make powerful connections.

Nonetheless, investigators probing into the spread of P-2 were
shocked to discover that leading Vatican officials (including cardinals) and Roman Catholic hierarchs (including prominent bishops and
archbishops) were members of Masonic lodges-many with ties to P2. The names became available when the Italian government upheld
its ruling that the names of all individuals belonging to secret societies, such as Masonic lodges, be made public. In 1976 the Bulletin
de l'Occident Chretien published a list of alleged Masons with prominent positions within the Roman Catholic Church, along with the
dates of their initiation, their Masonic code numbers, and when
known, their Masonic names. A sampling of names (as reprinted by
the Catholic Apologetic End Times Ministry) is as follows: