JP2 and the secret Vatican finances

In the controversial history of the Vatican’s finances under the pontificate of John Paul II, the page that is less known in that in which Karol Wojtyla replaces the plenipotentiary Marcinkus with the less exposed Donato De Bonis.

This happens not, by chance, in 1989. The Cold War is won, so there is no longer an external enemy to justify the ruthlessness of the Lithuanian-American archbishop in the management of the IOR. From the fall of the Berlin Wall onwards, the financial scandals on the other side of the Tiber are no longer the side effects of the Catholic Church’s epoch-making efforts to have Christianity survive in Eastern Europe, but the result of power struggles between the different strings of the Curia that vie for positions of power to the sound of funds raised.

In May 2009, for the first time in the history of the Vatican, thousands of documents on the financial affairs of the Institute for religious works filter through the leonine walls, the impenetrable bank of the Holy See which each year offers its profits for direct management by the Pope. Letters, reports, budgets, minutes, accounting notes, money transfers, letters between the highest authorities from across the Tiber river on how the money is sometimes managed by unscrupulous prelates, bishops and cardinals.

Over 4 thousand documents that make up the archive of a privileged witness: Monsignor Renato Dardozzi from Parma, born in 1922, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and, above all, for twenty years one of the few advisors of the cardinals who succeeded to the Secretary of State, from Agostino Casaroli to Angelo Sodano. Dardozzi wanted that after his death, in 2003, his endless archives be made public.

So, after years of research, the investigative book Vatican spa (Chiarelettere) by Gianluigi Nuzzi, is published containing some passages from the Vatican papers that were crucial for those years: from the bribes of the First Republic to the money for Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano (Massimo Ciancimino, son of Vito, former mayor of Palermo, in an interview published in «Vatican spa» points out the existence at the IOR of a system of accounts, opened in the name of his father’s figureheads and from which came funds intended for the two bosses of the Mafia ).

- Giacomo Galeazzi

FULL ARTICLE

Karol Wojtyla and the secrets of Vatican finances (Vatican Insider)