Roberto Calvi, the man once dubbed "God's Banker," was murdered according to new autopsy results. Will the finding put the spotlight back on a decades-old financial scandal involving the Vatican bank, or end up as the most "under-reported" story for 2002?

n investigation into a man linked to a decades-old Vatican bank scandal reveals that he was murdered, and did not commit suicide as earlier claimed.

   Roberto Calvi, a leading Italian financier, was found suspended from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. He was chairman of the powerful Banco Ambrosiano, and had close ties with top-ranking Vatican officials as well as organized crime. His death came amidst revelations that the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Holy See's financial arm, was involved in money laundering and other suspect activities. Principals in the story were linked to fascist groups including a renegade Masonic lodge that was working to overthrow the Italian government, Mafia operatives and foreign intelligence services.

   An initial investigation concluded that Calvi had somehow managed to commit suicide. His body was disinterred in 1998 and a new probe revealed that he had been strangled, and his body then suspended from beneath the London bridge and weighed-down with bricks. One theory investigators have operated on is that Calvi, who was intimately involved with money laundering and other suspect financial activities with the Vatican, may have been murdered for not repaying loans to organized crime, or was silenced for complicity and what he knew about the unravelling Ambrosiano-Vatican scandal.

   There was no official explanation of why it took four years to perform the new autopsy and release the results.

   The latest report notes that Calvi's neck bones did not show the kind of damage that would have been caused by suicide through hanging, and that his hands and fingernails were clean. "If he had stuffed bits of brick in his own pockets and climbed a rusty scaffolding to hang himself, there would have been traces," noted a Reuters news report.

   Three men are awaiting trial in Rome accused of conspiring to murder the prominent financier. The accused -- Francesco DiCarlo, Flavio Carboni and Pippo Calo -- all have ties to organized crime groups. Prosecutors are expected to examine the results of the new evidence in Calvi's autopsy and possibly use it in forthcoming trials.

   But the background of Calvi's mysterious death is part of a larger tapestry of events which includes the collapse of banks in Europe and the United States, the role played by the Vatican in laundering money and stealing assets of Jews and other refugees from the World War II period, and even efforts to stage political coups and shelter former Nazis and fascists from being brought to justice. Calvi's links to the Vatican bank/IOR have resulted in books, and even a recent movie -- "God's Banker" -- which has played throughout Italy, much to the consternation of the Holy See. The Church has even tried to have posters and other advertisements for the film censored.

   "The Vatican is reported to be furious over the film," noted a BBC story last March, "and the Holy See's press office said it had 'absolutely no comment' when asked for their reaction."

   The Calvi story touches on persons and developments going back to the time when the Vatican Bank was first chartered by the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Throughout the 19th century, the holdings of what was originally considered "the Papal State" were confiscated thanks to the unification of Italy. With an ear to the interests of the Vatican, Mussolini proposed in 1929 a Concordant which formally recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See as a geopolitical institution. The equivalent of approximately 85$ million was granted to "actualize" a banking institution under the control of the papacy, known benignly as the Institute for Religious Works.

   The IOR was more than a simple internal banking system for the relatively small "government" of the Catholic Church. It benefited from shrewd investments, and eventually would become a haven for "offshore" funds secreted by corporations, organized crime, intelligence services and other groups. During World War II, over $100 million flowed into the IOR coffers thanks to the imposition of the notorious "kirchensteur" or "church tax" imposed by the Nazis in Germany and occupied countries. Other assets, believed confiscated from Jews, Serbs and other nationalities were also safely smuggled into the Vatican treasure chest where they found safe haven and legal immunity.

   In 1969, the Vatican brought into its inner financial circle Michael Sindona, a man with ties to the Mafia dating to the 1940s. Using various "letters of introduction" from key Catholic officials, Sindona had risen rapidly in the world of Italian banking, and was described as "Uomini Di Fiducia," a Man of Confidence in the eyes of the Holy See. Sindona established his own investment empire, and worked closely with Vatican officials to invest in other banks and financial holdings.

   In the United States, Sindona was prominent inside the hierarchy of the Illinois Republican Party. He was also working with the Inzerillo crime family (cousins of the New York Gambino family), and used their funds to invest in private banks and holding companies such as the Liechtenstein-based Fasco AG to the Banca Privata Finanziaria, which had been founded in 1930 by a fascist ideologue.

   Among Sindona's contacts and close associates were Roberto Calvi (Banco Ambrosiano) and an American Bishop, Paul Marcinkus, who would later rise to the position of Archbishop and head of the Institute for Religious Works.

   ¶       Another curious thread of the tapestry involving the Vatican Bank was Liccio Gelli.

   Gelli was welcome in the homes of Italy's leading bankers, industrialists and church officials. He had been a member of the Black Shirts Battalion in Italy, and served with the fascists during the Spanish civil war. With the advent of WW II, he became oberleutnant in the Nazi SS assigned as liaison with the elite Herman Goring Division, and developed close ties to the OVRA, or Italian Secret Service.

   Gelli was also involved with a Croatian priest, Krujoslav Dragonovic, a man instrumental in operating a smuggling service known as the "Vatican ratline." Hundreds of ex-Nazis and clerical fascists were successfully smuggled out of Europe using Vatican passports and other transit instruments. Funds from the IOR often helped in the re-settlement of the war criminals, and spoils from the Third Reich looting spree were sequestered in the untouchable vaults of the Vatican bank.

   Gelli went on to establish an impressive list of international contacts. He was instrumental in bringing Juan Person to power in Argentina, and years later brokered an agreement between French arms manufacturers and the Argentine military for the acquisition of Exocet missiles used during the Falklands war. His penchant for supporting authoritarian, neo-fascist clerical regimes was best articulated by his frequently-mentioned homily, "The doors of all bank vaults open to the right..."

   With his background in fascist movements and ties to intelligence services, Gelli also presided over a secret "lodge" known as Propaganda Due, or P-2. It was structured along the lines of traditional Masonic groups (although the fraternity did not officially recognize P-2 or Gelli), with Gelli as the Grand Master. Its ranks included leading industrialists and financiers, the heads of various intelligence and police services, gangsters and individuals with close ties to the Vatican. In Italy, Sindona and Calvi were both linked to P-2, as was Klaus Barbi, the notorious "Butcher of Lyon."

   Branches of P-2 were established in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal and Nicaragua. The Latin American lodges included junta and death squad leaders, such as Jose Lopez Rega, head of an Argentina-based murder-for-hire intelligence apparatus which also ran a cocaine smuggling operation on the side.

   In Italy, a likely member of P-2 was Cardinal Paolo Bertoli, an official with the church's diplomatic corps. It was Bertoli who introduced Liccio Gelli to the head of the Vatican Bank, Paul Marcinkus. Another entree for both Gelli and Calvi into the Vatican was Italian lawyer and businessman Umberto Ortolani, who in WWII served in the intelligence corps. Ortolani, another P-2 member, was also a enrolled in the Catholic Knights of Malta -- a group which included leading American and European business and intelligence community leaders -- and was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the official status of "Gentleman of His Holiness" within the Holy See.

   A number of developments occurred which brought down Calvi, Gelli, and others tied to the Vatican Bank. Throughout the 1970s, the IOR had served as a shelter for "hot money" and stolen assets, and under the directorship of Marcinkus and others, had guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans connected to Banco Ambrosiano.

   ¶       Sindona fell first, when in April, 1974 his Franklin National Bank collapsed. Banca Privata disintegrated six months later, with the Vatican's loss pegged at about $27 million. The following month news about Sindona's speculative and illegal offshore capital flight ventures leaked, and Liccio Gelli tipped off the wanted banker to a police arrest warrant. By the time Sindona surfaced in Switzerland, Franklin Bank had collapsed, and Vatican exposure on the debacle reached $240 million.

   ¶       Calvi was also overextended, and some Ambrosiano-Vatican ventures were in serious trouble. Marcinkus, in September, 1981, steps in with "letters of patronage" with the IOR seal to seek more financing. The IOR later admits that its partnership with Banco Ambrosiano in the control of eleven ghost companies based in Panama adds up to a debt of about $1 billion.

   ¶       Word breaks in the news media that Liccio Gelli and his P-2 lodge had created a virtual "state within a state" with the intent of overthrowing the Italian government and establishing a clerical-fascist regime. The membership rolls of P-2 are made public. Also exposed is Flavio Carboni, a "fixer" with ties to the Holy See, various political groups, Propaganda Due and the Vatican -- and a recipient of cash from Banco Ambrosiano for construction projects in Sardinia. Calvi boasts, "Behind those loans is the Vatican, the Pope."

   ¶       In England and elsewhere, investigations into Sindona have widened to include Roberto Calvi and the Vatican Bank. One group being mentioned is Opus Dei, the semi-secret Catholic "prelature" founded by Jose Escriva de Balaguer (recently elevated to sainthood by Pope John Paul II). A powerful financial backer of Opus Dei, Spanish industrialist Jose Mateos, was also treasurer of Propaganda Due and a close associate of Roberto Calvi. Prior to his disappearance, Calvi revealed to associates that in exchange for 16% of Banco Ambrosiano, Opus Dei would help close the institutions $1.3 billion debt. Marcinkus opposed the plan, though, fearing that it would require him to be replaced with a representative of Opus Dei.

   On June 18, 1982, Calvi's body was discovered dangling from Blackfriars Bridge in London. Sindona had gone down, P-2 was exposed -- with Gelli fleeing to Switzerland and later literally "disappearing" from a Swiss prison -- and more questions were being asked about the Vatican's complicity in the Ambrosiano affair, as well as the failed Propaganda Due coup.

   Sworn depositions from members of the Calvi family reflect that he blamed "the priests," men like Marcinkus and Ortolani, and possibly Opus Dei. By this theory, the Vatican reaped huge sums of money through participation in illegal offshore banking schemes, "peekaboo finance," and other questionable financial devices. It is also intriguing to consider the political clout the Vatican purchased, especially with Banco Ambrosiano making huge loans to Italy's major political parties, from the Christian Democrats and Socialists to even the Communist Party.

   The Vatican emerged relatively untouched by the Calvi affair despite the many links between it and principals like Gelli, Carboni, and others. In 1984, the Italian Government guaranteed the return of about $600 million to those who had loaned money to the Ambrosiano-IOR group. Nearly $400 million still remains missing, unaccounted for in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

   Flavio Carboni, one of the men possibly implicated in the murder of Calvi, has also been under investigation for his involvement in a scheme to sell contents of Calvi's missing briefcase to Czechoslovakian Bishop Paolo Hillica. Hillica had been wiretapped by Italian authorities while in conversation with Carboni negotiating for the briefcase, believed to contain documents embarrassing to the Vatican. Hillica, in turn, is linked to another bizarre story, the "miracles on demand" industry centered around alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugore.

   Calvi's body was exhumed on Wednesday, December 16, 1998. News stories suggested that the autopsy results would be release the following year. Now, nearly four years later, comes word that Roberto Calvi did not load his clothing up with bricks and broken mortar and climb to the underside of Blackfriars Bridge to commit suicide, but was killed elsewhere to become a prop in a staged suicide.

   Carlo Calvi, his son told the Toronto Star in December, 1998, "My father had many enemies within the Vatican... The Vatican was at the time effectively selling its extra-territoriality for profit."

   For the Holy See, the outcome was different. There was the mysterious death of one pope, and the rise of a new pontiff who, despite his avuncular public style, has done little to bring transparency to the Vatican Bank. The United States extended official diplomatic recognition to the Holy See, making Catholicism the only world religion which enjoys such a unique governmental status. It was no secret by Reagan-era strategists that one reason for the diplomatic gesture was to tap into the extensive intelligence and organizational resources the Church possessed, particularly in Eastern Europe. With the "fall of the wall," the Church moved aggressively to try and replace the hegemony of fragmented Communist parties throughout the region with its own vision of stern clerical control using the facade of a limited democracy. Soon, as the Stalinist regimes disintegrated, the Holy See was denouncing new secular governments and the prospect of "too much freedom" and the rejection of spiritual values.

   Calvi's death, and the revelation that it was the result of murder, may turn public attention toward a financial scandal that vanished from the media radar screen without being fully resolved. Despite its ramifications, it is a story which so far is under-reported, and may still have significant consequences. For a church besieged by revelations of priestly pedophile abuse and complicity in the looting of personal property from victims of the Holocaust, it is a story best left ignored.

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