A FINANCIAL EMPIRE SECOND TO NONE

Whenever anyone writes on conspiracy money is always given a prominent place. In this regard the Vatican certainly does not take a back seat to anyone. The wealth of the Vatican, as we will see, is so vast that in all probability its true worth will never be known.

We are going to examine in some detail what various writers, who have tried to research the wealth of the Vatican, have said. Several of these writers are members of the Roman Catholic church. It is surely interesting to every Protestant that when Pope Paul brought his entourage from Milan to the Vatican, they were dubbed by Roman Catholic writers as the Milan Mafia.¹

It is not within the bounds of this study to examine the Mafia in detail. But the Cosa Nostra, the Family, or The Mafia are a 100% Roman Catholic outfit. They originated in Sicily where Michele Sindona was also born. They control vast holdings in Italy and North America. They have gone what they call “legit” in many enterprises and were able to close down an entire cheese plant in Wisconsin. They did this to establish a monopoly in the Pizza business. This incident made the national news. Businessmen came in and brought the cheese factory. After they bought it, they closed it down. It was only later that Mafia involvement was discovered. As far as we know, the factory, which employed most of the town’s work force, is still closed down as of this writing.

It is interesting to notice the timing of the move by the Mafia to control the cheese and pizza business in the United States. Panatella, a Vatican controlled company dealing mainly in flour and pasta, lost two and a half million dollars just prior to the Mafia takeover and required financing of 4.8 million dollars to keep it afloat.

Martin discloses that by the late sixties both the Institute for Religious Words (whose assets were conservatively put at 3 billion dollars) and the Special Administration of Holy See Property were invested in every sector of Italian industry and commerce. He went on to say, “On the boards of directors of companies in which the Vatican had an interest there always sat a Vatican ‘ family ‘ man, somebody like Massimo Spada or Luigi Mennini.”²

Martin also pointed out that the Special Administration of Holy See Property, which was run by competent lay bankers, was advised by J. P. Morgan, Hambros Brothers of London, and the Rothschilds of Paris.

Ostling recounts the story of Boys’ Town, a Roman Catholic charity.

Boys Town now has a worth of well over $200 million, including a securities portfolio valued (very conservatively) at $157 million. Although the interest on such a nest egg is ample to operate the Town, it still spends millions to send the traditional tearjerker fund appeals to 34 million people and raises nearly $18 million a year. This means Boys Town has about three times the endowment of Notre Dame University, raises more money than the Greater New York United Fund, and would rank 372nd in assets on the Fortune 500 if if were a business corporation. All this for 700 boys.³

All this came to light after much digging by a weekly newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska.

According to Lo Bello, a Roman Catholic journalist, the Vatican is the only sovereign state that never publishes a budget. He was accused of exaggeration in his estimates of Vatican wealth, but suffice it to say, the wealth of the Vatican must be immense, for a simple honest disclosure of its holdings, if they do not constitute great wealth, would lay to rest all the “extravagant” estimates of various writers, but such a disclosure has not been forthcoming.

The Sindona debacle, which the Vatican sought to hide from the general public, resulted in a loss of close to one billion dollars. Yet the Vatican carried on as before, demonstrating its reservoir of financial reserves as nothing else could. Very few companies could sustain such a loss and carry on without so much as a whisper. (Chrysler Corporation lost half a billion and would have gone under but for the U. S. government.)

The financial tentacles of the Vatican reach into numerous banks in different countries. Yallop says that the Rothschilds in Paris have been doing business with the Vatican since early in the 19th century.4 He goes on to point out that, “Credit Suisse, Hambros, Morgan Guaranty, Bankers Trust, Chase Manhattan, and Continental Illinois among others became Vatican partners.”⁵

This financial empire which finances the Vatican conspiracy is filled with murder and mayhem. Yallop states, “The murder of Luciano-Pope John Paul I was to stop him from removing Marcinkus who was the foundation holding up Calvi, Sindona, and Celli.”⁶ When the dust had cleared from John Paul’s mysterious death, it left in its aftermath a series of murders, assassinations and “suicides” that only the Mafia could match for cold bloodedness. Of the main players in the scene only Marcinkus and Celli still remain in control. Yallop recounts in detail each one of the murders and “suicides,” and his pages, which are very difficult to refute, make grim reading. His book, IN GOD’S NAME,” merits close reading by all who are concerned about freedom.

Because of the criticism that no disclosure is ever made of its wealth, the Vatican has in recent years tried to reform some of its monetary policies, but much still remains to be done. No estimate can be given of the immense wealth of the Vatican, but one can get some glimpses of the multi-billion dollar enterprise through various works that have appeared in recent years.

Ostling, in his work, “Secrecy in The Church,” written from the standpoint of one sympathetic to the Church, does give some interesting insights into the wealth of the Papacy.

He recounts that the late Bishop James A. Pike (a convert from Romanism to Episcopalianism) wrote what he calls a sensational article in which he said that the Jesuits had a controlling interest in the Bank of America, the nation’s largest, and that they earned 250 million dollars a year from their investments (a quarter of a billion). He goes on to say that the Jesuits “sputtered, but they have never made a full accounting of their holdings.”⁷ Gollin, a freelance writer who tried to research Papal wealth, figured the securities and commercial properties of the Dioceses of the U.S. at almost “one billion dollars.”⁸ Nino Lo Bello put “the American Jesuit’s annual income at $250 million.” He claims that all Catholic units in the U.S. and Canada combined have assets of more than $80 billion and an annual income of nearly $12.5 billion.”⁹

It was none other than Cardinal Vagnozzi who observed concerning the Vatican’s finances:

It would take a combination of the KGB, the C.I.A. and Interpol to obtain just an inkling of how much and where the monies are. ¹⁰

According to this Cardinal three of the most powerful agencies in the world could only obtain an inkling of how much the Vatican is worth. Yallop points out that the “Vatican bought into General Motors, Shell, Gulf Oil, General Electric, Bethlehem Steel, IBM and TWA.” He went on to say that “the Vicar of Christ had acquired a new unofficial title: Chairman of the Board.”¹¹

The Vatican also acquired “controlling interest in companies, in fields of insurance, steel, financing, flour and spaghetti, industry, cement and real estate.”¹² It owns sections of downtown Montreal, Canada, sections of Mexico City in Mexico, many of the major hotels in Italy, blocks of real estate on the Champs D’Elysee in Paris, the Watergate area in Washington, D.C., real estate in New York City, and the entire satellite city of Lomas Verdes in Mexico. This is only the tip of the iceberg, for much of the Vatican’s wealth is hidden in holding companies so that it is difficult to come even close in an estimate of its vast wealth. It is interesting to observe also that Pope John Paul, who was murdered in the Vatican, intended to reform the Vatican’s finances. Yallop in his work claims that this could have been one of a half dozen reasons why he was murdered right in the Vatican. Another very interesting fact is that Pope John Paul confessed to Father Dezza. Even the Pope has a prelate to whom he confesses, and poor Pope John Paul for some reason chose the head of the Jesuits as his “Father Confessor.” If for any reason he chose to confide some of his proposed changes to Dezza, he may have unwittingly sealed his own death warrant.

Malachi Martin, former Jesuit professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, in his new book, “RICH CHURCH POOR CHURCH,” puts the wealth of the “church” at 300 billion (Webmaster’s note: I’m sure it’s a far higher amount today, more like hundreds of trillions) dollars. He points out that the Vatican is the:

largest single stockholder in the world with about $20 billion dollars traceably invested (but much more untraceably invested) with gold deposits exceeding those of most medium sized countries, and with a worldwide real estate operation.¹³

He goes on to say in another place:

a list of the companies and banks in Italy and abroad in which the Vatican acquired a controlling interest before the outbreak of World War II, when added to the list of those in which it acquired a minor but substantial interest, would fill some sixty or seventy pages of this book.¹⁴

Even Martin, who still classes himself as a Roman Catholic, is appalled at the extent of the Vatican’s wealth when contrasted with the impoverished millions of Roman Catholics around the world. The present Pope speaks much about economic justice. Although much has been written about the present Pope in glowing terms, Yallop does not share the international newsmen’s accolade. Yallop states candidly:

the papacy of John Paul II has been a case of business as usual. The business has benefitted immeasurably not only from the murder of Albino Luciana, but also from the murders that have followed that strange lonely death in the Vatican.¹⁵

He goes on to say:

Many millions of words have been written since the election of Karol Wojtyla in attempts to analyze and understand what kind of man he is. As can be seen, he is the kind of man who could allow men like Villot, Cody, Marcinkus, Mennini, De Strobel and Poletto to remain in office.¹⁶

He adds:

“It is a papacy of double standards, one for the Pope and one for the rest of mankind.
“There can be no defense on the grounds of ignorance, Marcinkus is directly answerable to the Pope.”¹⁷

REFERENCES

1.Martin, Malachi, THE FINAL CONCLAVE, Stein and Day, New York, 1978. p. 18
2. Ibid., p. 26
3. Ostling, Richard, SECRECY IN THE CHURCH, Harper and Row, N.Y. 1974, p. 51
4.Yallop, David, IN GOD’S NAME, Bantam Books, N.Y., N.Y. 1984, p 97
5. loc. cit.
6. Ibid., p. 103
7. Ostling, p. 49
8. loc.cit.
9. Ibid., p. 50 10.Yallop,p. 105
11. Ibid., p. 99
12. Ibid., p. 98
13. Martin, Malachi, RICH CHURCH POOR CHURCH, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y., N.Y. 1984, p. 14
14. Ibid., p. 40
15.Yallop, p. 264
16. Ibid, p. 265
17. Ibid., p. 264

Download a PDF file of this article.

Please follow and like us: