Head of firm that built warships for Hitler to run Vatican bank
The Vatican faced embarrassment Friday after appointing as the new head of its bank a German Catholic who is chairman of a company that makes warships.
By Nick Squires, Rome
9:43PM GMT 15 Feb 2013
Filling the vacant post was one of the last major acts of Benedict XVI's papacy but there was dismay when it was revealed to be Ernst von Freyberg, the chairman of a Hamburg shipyard that makes frigates and destroyers.
Worse from a public relations perspective, his company, Blohm+Voss Group, was a major producer of battleships and U-boats for Hitler's regime.
On the eve of the Second World War the firm produced the Bismarck, the battleship that sank HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, but which was eventually sunk by the British fleet in May 1941.
The shipyard also built a state yacht for Hitler and aircraft for the Luftwaffe.
During the First World War the company produced the Scharnhorst, an armoured cruiser that took on a Royal Navy squadron at the Battle of Coronel and was then hunted down by British battlecruisers at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914.
Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Mr von Freyburg was a committed Roman Catholic, a member of the Knights of St John of Malta chivalric order that was founded during the Crusades, and had been chosen from among 40 candidates.
He initially claimed that Blohm+Voss was involved only in civil engineering projects, but later released a statement acknowledging that the company made warships, and was currently building four frigates for the German navy.
The Vatican bank formerly known as the Institute for Religious Works has been leaderless since its former head, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was unceremoniously sacked last May, for reasons which are still murky.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
A faux cover story about "Romans" and "Barbarians", enabling MSM to have its fun and ignore the real secrets...
For example:
The most obvious sign of the Barbarians' drive for greater transparency was visible last week on the Janiculum, the hill south of the Vatican that at this time of year offers sublime views to the snowy Apennines. In the North American college, the US cardinals attending the general congregations gave daily media briefings in which they managed to shed light on the process without breaking their duty of confidentiality or contradicting the official account of the pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.
But on Wednesday they were made to shut up in a move that had as much to do with the looming face-off in the Sistine chapel as with media relations. The pretext was a report in the Italian newspaper La Stampa on the previous day's proceedings that certainly did not come from the Americans' press conferences.
According to this account, the "Barbarians", eg the Americans and the Brits, want "greater transparency". However, it was the leader of the Scottish church who had to resign over inappropriate sexual demands, and an American cardinal able to vote for the next Pope was involved in the cover-up of a major child sex abuse case.
The "Romans" and "Barbarians" storyline is fit only for the afternoon matinee stage...
Quote:Vatican report hidden from the cardinals electing the next pope
Before the conclave, Benedict XVI ordered an inquiry into Vatican leaks. Now the men who will choose his successor demand its full disclosure
John Hooper in Rome The Observer, Sunday 10 March 2013
Jump to comments (48)
It is known throughout the Vatican as the Relatio (Narration). It is contained in two stiff, unmarked red folders and runs to around 300 pages. Lying in a safe in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St Peter's Square, it will be at the forefront of the minds of the 115 cardinals who on Tuesday are to file into the Sistine chapel to start the conclave that elects the next pope.
In the Relatio are the findings of three cardinal-detectives, appointed last year by ex-pope Benedict XVI to investigate the leaking of documents from his study. The cardinals, headed by a Spanish member of the Opus Dei fellowship, Cardinal Julián Herranz, discovered the main source of the leaks the pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele.
But they found a great deal else and some of it is reportedly extremely compromising. According to one unconfirmed report, they stumbled on a gay sex ring in the Vatican, some of whose members had been blackmailed.
Already dismayed by the blunders that marred Benedict's papacy, many of the cardinals in Rome to elect his successor are seething with resentment towards the Roman Curia, the intensely secretive and predominantly Italian bureaucracy that administers the Catholic church.
"The anti-curial and anti-Italian feeling is almost palpable," said a source close to their deliberations.
On the first day of last week's pre-conclave discussions, known as general congregations, three cardinals demanded that Herranz circulate the Relatio. For Massimo Franco, author of a recently published book on the protracted crisis rocking the Vatican, this was more than just prurient curiosity. "The cardinals must vote with a clear view of the situation in the Vatican," he said. "Otherwise, they could be voting for a pope who is accused of wrongdoing in the report. If that comes out afterwards, it would cause mayhem."
Neither can they avoid that risk simply by voting for a pastoral cardinal one who is an archbishop in his own country. Most have at least one seat on the committees that oversee the work of the Vatican's various departments and they are frequent visitors to Rome. Innocently or otherwise, one or more could have been linked to events detailed in the Relatio.
Yet Herranz's reaction was to hold out, apparently signalling that Benedict ordered that the report be kept for his successor. Many in and around the Vatican interpreted his reaction as confirmation of something already becoming apparent faced with demands for transparency, the departmental satraps of the Curia were closing ranks.
Indeed, the approach to this conclave has brought about what many in Rome would deem a miracle: an apparent, if temporary, healing of the breach between the Vatican's two most renowned adversaries, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state, and his predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. As a result, a conclave that had been billed as a trial of strength between the two men is shaping up instead as a battle between the "Romans" and invading "Barbarians".
The first group includes the power-brokers in the Vatican and their allies, many of whom are Italians; the second faction, bent on shaking the Curia to its foundations, is led by cardinals from the United States and Germany.
But to see it as a contest between conservatives and liberals would be a mistake: after eight years of Benedict XVI and 27 of John Paul II, there are precious few liberals among the cardinals.
The most obvious sign of the Barbarians' drive for greater transparency was visible last week on the Janiculum, the hill south of the Vatican that at this time of year offers sublime views to the snowy Apennines. In the North American college, the US cardinals attending the general congregations gave daily media briefings in which they managed to shed light on the process without breaking their duty of confidentiality or contradicting the official account of the pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.
But on Wednesday they were made to shut up in a move that had as much to do with the looming face-off in the Sistine chapel as with media relations. The pretext was a report in the Italian newspaper La Stampa on the previous day's proceedings that certainly did not come from the Americans' press conferences.
Initial skirmishing, then, went to the Romans. But the battle itself has yet to be fought, even if there are indications already of who initially will champion each side. The choices are deceptive. The Romans have, for the moment, put their faith in a cardinal who is neither Italian nor curial: the archbishop of São Paulo, Odilo Scherer. Though an "out-of-towner", Scherer is well versed in the ways of the Vatican. The extent of the curial insiders' trust in him is shown by his appointment to the commission that oversees the Vatican bank. Meanwhile, the Barbarians' hopes have coalesced around an Italian, Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan. A disciple, like Benedict, of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, Scola is intimately linked to the conservative fellowship Communion and Liberation. Temperamentally, though, he is unlike the retiring Benedict and could vigorously wield the new broom the Barbarians would like to see sweep through the Vatican. He is handicapped by his association with Communion and Liberation, which has recently been tarnished by a corruption scandal in Lombardy, the region around Milan. And, according to someone present, Scola made a speech to the general congregation that was felt to be rather too electioneering.
The Barbarians have two advantages. One is money; the Americans and Germans between them provide much of the cash that keeps the Vatican afloat. The other is the US contingent's apparent unity of purpose.
The Romans, on the other hand, seem to have maths on their side. Of the 115 cardinal-electors, 39 hold or have held top curial positions. Another nine are Italians outside the Vatican. Some do not share the Curia's instinctive aversion to transparency, but there are others in the field who do. It is among the "floating voters" of the emerging countries that the deciding votes are likely to be cast.
"The Curia feels itself to be very strong," said Massimo Franco. "Under threat, but strong."
Behind the holinesss, an old stove and lots of plywood
There is scaffolding … and there is sacred, papal scaffolding.
What may be the world's only gilded scaffolding is to be found on the left as you enter the Sistine chapel from the Scala Regia (the Regal Staircase) down which kings and queens, emperors and empresses descended after paying their respects to the pope of the day. The scaffolding holds the pipework that will convey to the outside world the white or black smoke that signals a new pontiff has, or has not, been elected.
It is one of the modifications made to the great chapel for the conclave and shown to a restricted number of correspondents on Saturday.
For once, it was not Michelangelo's awe-inspiring ceiling, or the frescoes by Botticelli and others, that were the centre of attention but a cast-iron, grey stove, built circa 1939. It is in this that the ballots are burned at the end of each session.
Straw used to be added to turn the smoke black. But, like the content of many a Vatican communication, the colour of the smoke was often hard to discern.
A new device, designed to generate clearly distinguishable colours, was put alongside and connected to the smoke stack by another copper pipe. It does nothing to enhance the solemnity of the lofty chapel in which the cardinals will vote under the forbidding gaze of Christ in judgment.
But neither does the plywood and there is a lot of it. It is used for the long tables at which the cardinal-electors sit and for the raised floor in the part of the chapel, beyond the carved marble screen, in which balloting takes place.
By the time the conclave begins, the floor will have been carpeted and the tables covered in rich, crimson baize. But, on this occasion more than any other, the chapel has had to be fitted out in haste. So when their eminences file in on Tuesday there may still be, lingering on the air, a hint of that distinctive aroma which you get in your local do-it-yourself shop.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Pope Francis is reported to have acknowledged the existence of a "gay lobby" inside the Vatican. He also said there was a "stream of corruption", according to reports in Catholic media. He is said to have made the remarks during a private meeting with a group of Latin American Catholic clerics. The clerics wrote up a report of the conversation that then appeared on the Chilean website Reflection and Liberation. Previous rumours According to the report, the Pope was extremely open as he discussed problems at the Vatican. He is said to have told the Latin American delegation that there were good, holy men in the administration, but that there was also corruption. The Vatican would have to "see what we can do" about the "gay lobby" operating in the bureaucracy, he said. "It is true, it is there," the report quotes him as saying. In the days leading up to Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in February, the Italian media carried many un-sourced reports that gay Vatican clergymen had been working together to advance their personal interests, leaving the Holy See vulnerable to blackmail. There were even suggestions that the situation had influenced Benedict's decision to resign. At the time, the Vatican vigorously denied all the rumours. It has so far declined to make any comment regarding the Pope's reported remarks, other than that the audience with the Latin American clerics was private. An organisation representing the clerics, known by its Spanish acronym CLAR, has said it has apologised to the Pope for the publication of the report. CLAR said in a statement that it "deeply regretted the publication of a text which refers to the conversation with the Holy Father".
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
No mention of the "paedophile lobby" or the "Paperclip/Dirty War lobby" within the Vatican?
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:No mention of the "paedophile lobby" or the "Paperclip/Dirty War lobby" within the Vatican?
One sin at a time maybe?
No, that doesn't fly either.
What's that term they use a Langley? Limited hangout. Way to go Pope'y!
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:No mention of the "paedophile lobby" or the "Paperclip/Dirty War lobby" within the Vatican?
One sin at a time maybe?
No, that doesn't fly either.
What's that term they use a Langley? Limited hangout. Way to go Pope'y!
If they had all their Magdalena Laundries operating 24 hours a day using full spin cycle it still wouldn't even come close to cleaning the dirty washing that the Vatican has collected over ther the years.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Below is a Google translation of the Italian magazine "Panorama" article that blew the lid on gay priests:
Quote:
The Wild Nights of Gay Priests
A journalist from Panorama infiltrated in the evenings some brave priests who, in Rome, lead an amazing double life. [ATTACH=CONFIG]5454[/ATTACH]
A survey with hidden camera, followed by thorough testing and careful controls. For twenty days Carmelo Abbate, Panoramajournalist, accompanied by an "accomplice" gay, has infiltrated in the evenings some brave priests who, in Rome, lead an amazing double life: by day are priests in clerical garb, and at night, transmitted the cowl, are perfectly integrated into the environment homosexual men in the capital. What came out is an investigation on the field that has allowed us to discover a really unusual and somewhat unsettling: priests who take part in night parties with escort men who have sex with casual partners; attending chat and gay clubs.
Panorama has identified numerous cases and has narrated three in particular: that of Paul, that of Charles and that of Luke (the names are invented to protect the identity of priests).
The first, a Frenchman about 35 years old, met the reporterPanorama Friday, July 2, at a gay party in a local neighborhood of Testaccio. In the evening, which included - paid - Two escort men who danced naked with the priest and other guests (then practicing gay sex with some of them), was present also Carlo, the second priest, who are aged between 45 and 50 years. The night ends at Paul's house, where the reporter's gay accomplice of Panorama first asks the priest to wear the cassock and then has sex with him, filmed by hidden camera.
The next night, Paul and Charles have made an appointment at thePanorama reporter and his accomplice at the Gay Village in Rome, showing that you are comfortable in that environment. On this occasion, Charles has been absent several times claiming to have had to do to avoid meeting those who had recognized as other priests or catechists. The evening ended with the same end of the previous year. The next day, Sunday, July 4, Paul celebrated Mass on a coffee table in your home, in the presence of a reporter
The accompanying video is no longer available on the Panorama website, but it is still available at Youtube:
Quote:Exposing Vatican secrets a 'dangerous' mission, says Vatileaks journalist Fri Mar 8, 2013 5:56 PM EST
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5455[/ATTACH] Pope resignation an act of sacrifice to save church? Pope resignation an act of sacrifice to save church?
NBC News' Richard Engel talks to Gianluigi Nuzzi, one of Italy's top investigative journalists, about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Nuzzi's interviews with Benedict's whistleblower butler led to the Vatileaks scandal. Nuzzi and others allege that within the Vatican there were financial cover-ups and a twisted web of money, power and sex. Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News As the Vatican waits for a new pope under a cloud of scandal, the journalist at the center of the Vatileaks case is revealing the high-stakes, cloak-and-dagger operation he undertook to protect the butler who went public with the secrets. Investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi told NBC News' Richard Engel how he met Paolo Gabriele in public squares and used old-fashioned public phones to set up rendezvous to make it harder for anyone to eavesdrop on their blockbuster conversations. He gave Gabriele a code name -- Maria -- and would leave it on the door buzzer he was to press for meetings in a Rome apartment, Nuzzi said in a "Rock Center with Brian Williams" interview. "He was excited, he was careful, he was afraid," Nuzzi said. "Then I understood why: because the Vatican has a very strong security system...Once Paolo Gabriele told me a confidence, which I do not know if it is true. He told me the cameras inside the Vatican as so powerful that they can even read the lips of people." Their first sit-down, set up by intermediaries before Nuzzi even knew who he was meeting, was a "dangerous encounter," he said. A dozen or so more followed, during which Gabriele gave Nuzzi photocopies of the pope's personal papers, including letters from a top aide, Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, who had investigated the alleged corruption. In one of the letters, Viganò complained that he felt he was being slandered and sidelined from the inside. He was eventually transferred off the case, and moved to Washington, D.C., to become Papal Nuncio, the Vatican's diplomatic envoy. Nuzzi used the documents for broadcast reports and a book that shed light on the infighting and dysfunction at the highest level of the church bureaucracy last year. Gabriele, who said he was trying to help the pope and the church by shining a light on the dark underbelly of the Vatican, was eventually unmasked as the source of the leaks and sentenced to 18 months in Vatican custody. He was later pardoned by the pope and given a job in a hospital. Pope Benedict XVI commissioned three retired and independent cardinals to investigate the leaks and they presented him with a report late last year, weeks before the pontiff shocked the world by announcing his abdication. The Vatican has since denied reports that the cardinals' dossier contains details of a gay cabal in the Vatican and blackmail threats. Allegations of a gay Vatican subculture predate the Vatileaks scandal. In 2010, journalist Carlo Abbate went undercover and filmed Rome priests cavorting with other men. Abbate doesn't buy the Vatican denials. "In my opinion, Pope Benedict XVI's move represents his last attempt to save the Catholic Church from the public exposure of the contradictions of the church in the matter of sexuality," he said. "In a sense, he is casting himself aside in order to let those contradictions rise to the surface." Benedict cited his age when he announced his resignation on Feb. 11 though he has also referred to the Vatican's difficulties. The 115 cardinals who will elect his successor have assembled in Rome but they will not see the Vatileaks report because Benedict decreed that only the next pontiff will get a copy.
Quote:Pope signals start of new war on Vatican corruption
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5456[/ATTACH]
Special audience with whistleblower seen as signalling bold crackdown on cronyism and graft in the Holy See MICHAEL DAY Saturday 12 October 2013
In a clear sign that he wants to be seen to be tackling endemic corruption at the Vatican, Pope Francis welcomed the Church's highest-ranking whistleblower to a special audience today. The Pontiff last night met Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, the Holy See's ambassador to the US, whose letters provided the most explosive evidence to emerge from the Vatileaks scandal. Mgr Vigano's correspondence with former Pope Benedict XVI and his No 2, the Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, suggested that he was effectively exiled in the US after attempting to lift the lid on rampant corruption in the Holy City. Mgr Vigano served as the second-ranked administrator in the Curia the body responsible for the administration of the Vatican under Benedict's reign, from July 2009 to September 2011, before his transfer to America. His letters, leaked to the press by Benedict XVI's butler, Paolo Gabriele, in the Vatileaks scandal, revealed how he had begged not to be transferred to the US after accusing fellow administrators of arranging corruption contracts that may have cost the Vatican millions of euros. There has been no official comment from the Holy See about the audience, but the Ansa news agency said some Vatican insiders claimed the meeting marked the start of a new crackdown on cronyism and graft in the Holy City, including the activities of its troubled bank, the IOR (Institute of Religious Works). Robert Mickens, the veteran Vatican correspondent of The Tablet, said: "Pope Francis is clearly taking the subject of corruption very seriously and he wants to clean up the IOR. This is a man who lives very simply. We already know what his thoughts on banks and bankers are." In May, in a major speech condemning materialism and avarice, Francis declared that the church "must go forward... with a heart of poverty, not a heart of investment or of a businessman". St Peter, he said, "did not have a bank account". But even as Francis was meeting Mgr Vigano, the intrigues real or imagined in the Holy See, which senior officials have tried but failed to keep a lid on, were emerging again, after a national newspaper printed claims from another senior cleric that shadowy figures were plotting to poison him. Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was arrested in June after magistrates found evidence he had tried to smuggle €20m (£17.3m) into Italy from Switzerland, told Libero newspaper he feared he would be killed for dishing the dirt on financial corruption in the Holy See. 'I have told of episodes that could put me in danger. I am trying to be stronger than the fear and nightmares that torment me, but despite my prayers, I am certain that I will die by poisoning," he said. He is due to begin a fast-track trial on 3 December. Mgr Scarano's lawyer has denied that the cleric laundered any money and said rich friends had given him funds to build a home for the terminally ill. Magistrates believe, however, that Mgr Scarano, who owns a luxurious 700sq m flat in Naples, full of expensive art, used his two IOR accounts like overseas slush funds. Records show that on one occasion last year Mgr Scarano withdrew €560,000 from an IOR account in a single transaction. But more importantly, the affair highlighted once again the doubts over the transparency of transactions involving the IOR. In June, investigators led by magistrates Giuseppe Pignatone, released a report on their 30-month investigation into the IOR. The document said that high demand for recycling cash, together with the lack of checks and controls by the IOR and the Italian financial institutions it dealt with, made the Vatican's bank a money-laundering hot spot. Earlier this month it emerged that the IOR was seeking to close 900 suspicious accounts. According to Corriere della Sera newspaper, four of the suspect accounts are linked to the Vatican embassies of Indonesia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Vatican announced further measures to beat money laundering on Monday this week. Some people have dismissed Mgr Scarano's claims of a poisoning plot as a Borgias-style fantasy. However, his statements made under interrogation have made ears prick up. In particular, he is thought to be playing ball with magistrates by shedding a light on the murky workings of the other key financial institution in the Vatican, Apsa (Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See), which administers the Holy City's finances and whose key figures benefit from IOR accounts. One name keeps coming up: that of Paolo Mennini, who heads the division of Apsa that looks after the patrimony of the Holy See. He has been called the Pope's merchant banker. Investigators are interested in cash flows totalling €230m from Apsa accounts to London banks between 2009 and 2011.
Pope Francis delivered an impassioned sermon yesterday, during which he quoted a passage from the bible that said some sinners deserve to be tied to a rock and cast into the sea.
The Argentinian religious leader said Christians who donated money to the church but stole from the state were leading a "double life" and were sinners who should be punished.
Quoting from the Gospel of St Luke in the New Testament, he said: "Jesus says 'It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea'," because "where there is deceit, the Spirit of God cannot be".
Without directly mentioning corruption within the Catholic Church, in his sermon he described those involved in corrupt practices as "whitewashed tombs", explaining that "they appear beautiful from the outside, but inside they are full of dead bones and putrefaction." He said: "A life based on corruption is varnished putrefaction."
His sermon came during his daily morning Mass inside Casa Santa Marta, the guest house he has lived in since being elected pontiff in March.
On Friday, he also condemned corruption, asserting parents who earned through bribes or corrupt practices had "lost their dignity", and fed their children "unclean bread".
He said: "Some of you might say: 'But this man only did what everyone does!'. But no, not everyone! Some company administrators, some public administrators, some government administrators… perhaps there are not even very many. But it's that attitude of the shortcut, of the most comfortable way to earn a living.
"These poor people who have lost their dignity in the habit of bribes take with them not the money they have earned, but only their lack of dignity!"
He compared receiving bribes as "like a drug" as people become "dependent" on the habit of bribes.
The Pope has made clear his intentions to tackle corruption within the Vatican and held a meeting with the Church's highest rankingwhistleblower in October, after telling the Church in May that it "must go forward... with a heart of poverty, not a heart of investment or of a businessman" reminding it that "St Peter did not have a bank account".
And the chief of the IOR was sent packing (from Bloomberg):
Quote:
Vatican Bank Chief Ousted After Money-Laundering Scandal
By Flavia Krause-Jackson & Lorenzo Totaro - May 25, 2012 3:58 PM GMT+0100CE
Q
The Vatican bank, whose reputation took a blow over an investigation into money laundering, has fired Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi after a tenure stained by a financial scandal. In a vote of no-confidence, the board of directors unanimously agreed to remove Tedeschi, aBanco Santander SA (SAN) banker who took the job in 2009, from his post for failing "to carry out various duties of primary importance," according to a statement yesterday by Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5458[/ATTACH] Head of the Vatican bank Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Photographer: Andrew Medichini/AP Photo
Tedeschi said he was "torn" between wanting to explain the truth and not upsetting Pope Benedict XVI, according to an interview with Italian news agency Ansa today. "My love for the Pope prevails even over defending my reputation, which has been cowardly questioned," he was cited as saying. The bank, which is formally called the Institute for the Works of Religion, said it's now hunting for a replacement who can "restore" relations with the financial community. Set up in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage the Vatican's finances, the bank, known by its Italian initials as the IOR, reports directly to the pope.
Money-Laundering Probe
After barely a year in office, Tedeschi, who also teaches ethics in finance at Milan's Catholic University, was taken by surprise when Italian prosecutors in 2010 seized 23 million euros ($29 million) from a Rome bank account registered to the IOR amid suspicions of money-laundering violations. He and Director General Paolo Cipriani were placed under investigation for allegedly omitting data in wire transfers from an Italian account. The publication this month of confidential leaked documents in a book titled "Your Holiness" by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi also painted a poor picture of Tedeschi as the man in charge of the church's money. Lombardi said today that Vatican authorities had detained a layman for alleged possession of secret papal documents, adding that the case was not related to Tedeschi. The suspect was "in a state of arrest" and being questioned by Vatican investigators, Lombardi said by phone. Il Foglio newspaper identified the man as the pope's chamberlain, citing unidentified church officials in a report posted on its website.
Calls for Transparency
The Italian prosecutors' probe triggered calls to bring the city-state in line with European Union financial rules and become more transparent. Tedeschi responded by saying the investigation was yet another example of the Catholic Church coming under "fierce attack." At the time, Pope Benedict XVI was beset by allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests. The cardinals on the IOR's governing council are to meet today to decide on the next steps, according to the Vatican statement. The institute is no stranger to scandal. It was implicated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. The bank's former Chairman Roberto Calvi, dubbed "God's banker," was found hanged under London's Blackfriars Bridge in June of that year. The Vatican paid $240 million to compensate Ambrosiano's account holders without admitting any wrongdoing.
Banco Santander eh? AS I think I mentioned earlier in this thread, he must be Opus Dei. This entire scandal stinks of them. And from the following it looks like the Knights of Columbus are taking back control from OD
ROME -- Probably, there was never going to be a good time to announce the firing of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the high-profile President of the Vatican Bank whose appointment in September 2009 was hailed as the dawn of a new day in Vatican finances. No matter when it happened, skeptics would have suspected a retreat from transparency and reform. Given that his ouster came just one day before the May 25 arrest of the pope's butler, however, the timing was especially bad from the Vatican's point of view, practically inviting people to connect the dots. In effect, that's exactly what's happened. The tendency has been to see the move against Gotti Tedeschi as part of the bigger "Vati-leaks" picture, reflecting the same internal power struggles presumed to underlie the leaks of confidential materials. That hypothesis is especially hard to resist for two reasons:
At least initially, Gotti Tedeschi was seen as close to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State and the reputed target of the leaks. Bertone reportedly wanted a face-saving compromise, rather than the unusually take-no-prisoners fashion in which Gotti Tedeschi was "defenestrated," to use the term that's become coin of the realm in the Italian papers.
Some of the leaked documents revealed a divergence of opinion within the Vatican about its new anti-money laundering statutes, leading some analysts to see Gotti Tedeschi as a martyr to this internal resistance.
Also making the timing delicate is that the fact that a committee of the Council of Europe is supposed to decide in early July whether the Vatican qualifies for its "white list" of countries up to snuff in the fight against money-laundering. Perceptions of disarray created by Gotti Tedeschi's removal probably won't help make the case.
Veteran Vatican writer Andrea Tornielli recently opined that the move, especially the way it's been handled, has been "grossly self-defeating" and has "backfired big-time," creating impressions that Gotti Tedeschi's ouster reflects backstage power plays by figures with vested interests in obstructing reform. Our Nov. 8 edition features our popularColleges & Universities special section. These articles are only available in our print newspaper or Kindle edition, sobecome a subscribertoday!
Gotti Tedeschi returned to the headlines last week, with news that Italian police had searched his home and office as part of a corruption probe into the Italian defense giant Finmeccanica. Authorities said that Gotti Tedeschi is not a suspect but an "informed witness," based on his longstanding friendship with the company's CEO, Giuseppe Orsi. Authorities also stressed that the Institute for the Works of Religion, popularly known as the "Vatican Bank," is not a target of the investigation. Nevertheless, one of the documents reportedly seized was a memo Gotti Tedeschi had prepared about his tenure at the bank, naming both friends and enemies, and responding to the charges against him outlined in a two-page May 24 indictment from the bank's five-member supervisory council. In response to the search, the Vatican issued a statement June 8 expressing "surprise and concern" and insisting that the "sovereign prerogatives" of the Vatican should be "adequately protected and respected" by Italian authorities. In effect, that meant they want any Vatican documents seized in the raid returned, including Gotti Tedeschi's memo. Italian media have also reported that in another letter seized in the search, Gotti Tedeschi expressed concern for his life at the hands of unnamed enemies. Supposedly, that letter was to be distributed to a lawyer, a journalist and his secretary in the event of foul play. Over the weekend, his lawyer attempted to play down those reports, saying, "there are no specific threats" and that Gotti Tedeschi "is not under escort". As tempting as it is to spin the Gotti Tedeschi affair as another juicy Vatican giallo, the preferred Italian term for a mystery, there may actually be a more prosaic explanation for recent events. Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar Vaticanology as a discipline is grounded in the assumption that when it comes to the Vatican, there's usually more than meets the eye. Anodyne public statements can mask titanic inner struggles, seemingly routine personnel moves can imply serious policy shifts, and whenever someone in authority begins a sentence with the reassuring phrase "As the church has always taught," you can bet that a significant shift in teaching is about to follow. Every now and then, however, what you see is actually what you get, and Vatican Bank insiders are insisting that Gotti Tedeschi is a classic case in point. When Gotti Tedeschi was appointed in September 2009, insiders at the Vatican Bank hailed the move. By that stage, the bank was two years into the term of its new director, Italian layman Paolo Cipriani, who's himself perceived as a reformer committed to 21st century "best practices" in the banking industry. Cipriani replaced longtime director Lelio Scaletti, who was 80 when he stepped down. Scaletti had spent his entire career in the Vatican, often regaling friends with stories from the days of Pius XII. Cipriani, by way of contrast, was 53 at the time and had deep experience in the secular banking sector, representing Italian giants such as the Banco di Santo Spirito and the Banco di Roma in Luxembourg, New York and London. Cipriani was also a breath of fresh air on the personal level, a younger guy who plays basketball in his spare time, and who speaks business English comfortably. Under Cipriani, well before recent scandals exploded, the institute launched a wide-ranging review of its books to ensure that nobody held an account who wasn't supposed to, and that there was a clear paper trial behind every movement of assets. As such, the bank's personnel initially believed that in Gotti Tedeschi, the Vatican's powers-that-be had given them someone with the media savvy to tell the story of their house-cleaning to the wider world. After the initial honeymoon wore off, however, there began to be serious rumblings that Gotti Tedeschi's image didn't match reality. The new president didn't seem terribly interested in actually learning anything about how the bank worked, insiders said, and key personnel such as Cipriani found it difficult even to get on his calendar. tBy Gotti Tedeschi's own admission, he typically came into the Vatican Bank only twice a week. tIn 2010, Benedict XVI created a new "Financial Information Authority" within the Vatican in 2010 to ride herd on its various financial departments. In addition to the Institute for the Works of Religion, those agencies include:
The Administration of the Apostolic Patrimony of the Holy See
The Government of the Vatican City State
The Prefecture for Economic Affairs
One could also throw into the mix the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, better known by its old name of "Propaganda Fidei," which also controls a mini-financial empire.At the time, Vatican Bank personnel said they looked forward to a swift inspection by the new financial authority as a way of ratifying their efforts at reform. Privately, Cipriani told people that "the doors are open." Yet Gotti Tedeschi reportedly drug his feet at getting the inspection done, leading to internal suspicions that he had another agenda. Perhaps, some whispered, Gotti Tedeschi's sympathies were actually more with his friends in the Italian banking sector, who sometimes see the Vatican Bank as a rival and potentially stand to profit should its depositors lose confidence and decide to park their assets somewhere else. (Among some Italian bankers, it's an article of faith, despite repeated Vatican denials, that hundreds of millions of Euro belonging to Italian politicians, celebrities and business tycoons, which they believe should be in Italian banks, is instead deposited in the Institute for the Works of Religion.) Tensions inside the bank deepened further in 2010, when Roman authorities seized $30 million in Vatican Bank funds over an alleged violation of European anti-money laundering protocols, and placed both Gotti Tedeschi and Cipriani under investigation. (The funds were later released.) Gotti Tedeschi agreed to be interrogated even before a formal diplomatic request was filed. Many insiders who later read the transcript had the impression that Gotti Tedeschi was attempting to exonerate himself by throwing others in the Vatican Bank under the bus. Cipriani has maintained a low profile through the recent turmoil, but he gave an interview over the weekend to Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading paper, in which he voiced some of these frustrations. "When we brought him all the records, asking him to study them, to ask us questions, to be clear about everything, Gotti Tedeschi never even wanted to look," Cipriani said. "He would say, I don't want to know. It's better not to know.'" "We repeatedly asked [Gotti Tedeschi] to interest himself in the institute, but he wouldn't take things in hand," Cipriani said. "It was as if he were absent even when he was present. Sometimes he'd come into his office, say nothing to us, and then leave." Last February, Cipriani said he finally confronted Gotti Tedeschi during a cascade of negative media coverage of the bank: "We lost our patience, and I said to him: You're the legal representative, but you don't know the institute and don't want to defend it … There are more than 100 honest people who work here, and it's not right that they're attacked for things they haven't done." In other words, it's been clear to insiders for some time that something had to give, because relations between Gotti Tedeschi and the rest of the bank's staff had reached an impasse. The fact that it took the bank's Supervisory Council, in effect its Board of Directors, two years to resolve that tension, observers say, may be no more than a measure of the gap in perceptions between people who work in a place every day, as opposed to distant authority figures who perhaps meet only four or five times a year. The bottom line is that there's a way to explain Gotti Tedeschi's downfall, including its timing, in terms of basic job performance and personnel issues rather than complicated Machiavellian plots. That may not be nearly as much fun, but insiders say that in this case it's closer to reality. Opus Dei and the Knights Finally, a footnote: Gotti Tedeschi is a member of Opus Dei (in technical parlance, he's a "supernumerary," meaning a married layman who doesn't live in an Opus Dei center.) If nothing else, then, his saga ought to call into question the persistent mythology that Opus Dei is the occult force behind everything that happens in the Vatican because if that were so, it would be tough to explain how Gotti Tedeschi's head ended up on the chopping block. Actually, one intriguing way to read the situation is as a show-down between Opus Dei and the Knights of Columbus, given that Carl Anderson, the secretary of the Vatican Bank's supervisory council and the figure who's most vigorously defended the decision to dump Gotti Tedeschi, is also the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. Needless to say, at least in this case the Knights have had the upper hand. Anderson, a veteran of political spin in the States as a former official of the Reagan administration, probably had the best one-liner about the affair: "The only lack of transparency here," he told Italian papers, "came from Gotti Tedeschi."
I don't see this smelly affair ending here though. The Executive Chairman of Santander Group, who own Banco Santander is Emilio Botin:
Apologies for the rather poor Google translation, but you'll get the drift. Botin is Opus Dei too:
He says Mastroianni. Bruno, Marcello not. The director of the Information Office of Opus Dei in Italy. "Emilio Botin is the Opus Dei, though there would be nothing wrong if it were". The clarification stands, a couple of days, between the selected letters to the editor published by the Corriere della Sera. The same newspaper, that the tsunami of news about the alleged irregularities in the management of the Monte dei Paschi bank, says the chairman of Santander belongs to the Work.
The descriptive detail, lost in information about suspected Italian judicial police that Monte dei Paschi Santander and illegal profits were distributed in the sale of Antonveneta, seems to be sitting like a crooked line to Opus Dei Alps. Mastroianni (Bruno, not Marcello) Booty not only clears the condition of cash but wants to eradicate any connection between the work and the financial scandal.
"Opus Dei is concerned with souls and not the banks," writes Mastroianni (Bruno, Marcello not) in the Corriere. A statement that seems difficult to sustain in a world where money and religion are synonymous with power. As surely as the Western banking funds to Catholicism it is that the Vatican has its own bank.
Do you belong to Opus Emilio Botin?. Despite the denial of Mastroianni (Bruno, Marcello not), the question runs several websites and forums addresses ending in. 'It'. Between yes and no one remembered as the 'Work' sneaks into their environment through Covadonga O'Shea, sister Paloma, banker's wife, confessed numerary of Opus.
She, Covadonga, subscribe to the argument Mastroianni (Bruno, Marcello not): "There would be nothing wrong if it were". This Buscón not judge matters of faith.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
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Pope Francis reportedly made the remarks during a private audience with other clerics
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