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Authors: Rupert Cornwell
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himself out for a friend. From the other side of the cultural divide, many Italians who had to deal with him could find Marcinkus rude and abrupt. Some found it quite plausible that he was the Vatican end of a conspiracy stretching from Calvi , Sindona and the P-2 to the CIA and the Mafia.
Sindona himself has claimed that he had a hand in Marcinkus' appointment to the IOR, nor would that be surprising. Both were friends of Continental Illinois' David Kennedy, head of the biggest bank in the archbishop's home town of Chicago. The Sicilian was already helping the APSA dispose of its embarrassing holdings in Italian industry; while Paul VI had had reason in his Milan days to be grateful to Sindona for helping the success of Church-backed charities. In any event, Marcinkus was first named manager and then, in 1971 , chairman of the Vatican Bank.
The enterprising archbishop thus became the latest embodiment of a dilemma which in varying degrees has haunted the Church since it ceased to be a temporal power in Italy in the nineteenth century. How was it to reconcile its rejection of crude liberal capitalism (a hundred years ago at its height) with the practical need of working with that system, to raise money to finance its mission?
Back in 1860 devout Catholics attempted to resolve the difficulties by instigating the device of "St Peter's Pence", individual contributions from the faithful donated each year to the person of the Pope. Catholic financiers rallied round, too, providing loans and other ingenious fund-raising proposals. One of them was a certain Andre Langrand-Dumonceau, who first earned the nickname of "Europe's financial Napoleon", only to go spectacularly bankrupt in 1870. A recent study* has observed that he was "the extreme example of a strategy worked out by Catholic financiers, French and Belgian in particular. They aimed to involve the Holy See in their business deals, thus profiting from the moral and economic good name of the entire Catholic Church." Something of the same could be said for the relations of Sindona, and then Calvi, with the IOR. But Marcinkus seems to have been unmindful of the precedents.
*Carlo Crocella, Augusta Miseria, Nuovo Istituto Editoriale Italiano 1982.
When he took over the IOR he already inherited some links with Sindona, notably the holding in Banca Privata Finanziaria. But the two, who got on splendidly, rapidly extended their collaboration. Sindona is fond of claiming today that he saved the Vatican from financial disaster by relieving it not only of SGI, but two other companies as well. One was Condotte d'Acqua (later to pass to IRI, the giant Italian state industrial conglomerate); the other was Ceramica Pozzi, a badly run manufacturer of, among other things, lavatories. In return the IOR bought into various Sindona enterprises, both in Italy and outside. Marcinkus, with his lack of financial training, was no banker. Indeed, it has been maliciously observed that his troubles began when he started to regard himself as one. The real expertise belonged to Luigi Mennini, the IOR's managing director, a rarely-seen figure with a lifetime's experience in the Vatican bank—and of the ways of Catholic Italian finance.
Just how and when Paul Marcinkus and Roberto Calvi met is not clear. Marcinkus has declared that he was put on to Calvi by the Milanese Curia; Sindona has asserted that he was responsible. But the fateful meeting must have happened in 1971 at the latest. For by the August of that year, as we have seen, Marcinkus was seated on the board of Calvi's Cisalpine Bank in Nassau. The moment marks the start of IOR's hidden association with Ambrosiano. The Vatican bank took an early shareholding of Cisalpine of two and a half per cent, later to rise to eight percent. Nobody noticed, or paid attention to, the fact that Marcinkus was one of its directors. But then nobody was paying much attention to Calvi in those days.
The archbishop has since stated that he saw Calvi
Sindona himself has claimed that he had a hand in Marcinkus' appointment to the IOR, nor would that be surprising. Both were friends of Continental Illinois' David Kennedy, head of the biggest bank in the archbishop's home town of Chicago. The Sicilian was already helping the APSA dispose of its embarrassing holdings in Italian industry; while Paul VI had had reason in his Milan days to be grateful to Sindona for helping the success of Church-backed charities. In any event, Marcinkus was first named manager and then, in 1971 , chairman of the Vatican Bank.
The enterprising archbishop thus became the latest embodiment of a dilemma which in varying degrees has haunted the Church since it ceased to be a temporal power in Italy in the nineteenth century. How was it to reconcile its rejection of crude liberal capitalism (a hundred years ago at its height) with the practical need of working with that system, to raise money to finance its mission?
Back in 1860 devout Catholics attempted to resolve the difficulties by instigating the device of "St Peter's Pence", individual contributions from the faithful donated each year to the person of the Pope. Catholic financiers rallied round, too, providing loans and other ingenious fund-raising proposals. One of them was a certain Andre Langrand-Dumonceau, who first earned the nickname of "Europe's financial Napoleon", only to go spectacularly bankrupt in 1870. A recent study* has observed that he was "the extreme example of a strategy worked out by Catholic financiers, French and Belgian in particular. They aimed to involve the Holy See in their business deals, thus profiting from the moral and economic good name of the entire Catholic Church." Something of the same could be said for the relations of Sindona, and then Calvi, with the IOR. But Marcinkus seems to have been unmindful of the precedents.
*Carlo Crocella, Augusta Miseria, Nuovo Istituto Editoriale Italiano 1982.
When he took over the IOR he already inherited some links with Sindona, notably the holding in Banca Privata Finanziaria. But the two, who got on splendidly, rapidly extended their collaboration. Sindona is fond of claiming today that he saved the Vatican from financial disaster by relieving it not only of SGI, but two other companies as well. One was Condotte d'Acqua (later to pass to IRI, the giant Italian state industrial conglomerate); the other was Ceramica Pozzi, a badly run manufacturer of, among other things, lavatories. In return the IOR bought into various Sindona enterprises, both in Italy and outside. Marcinkus, with his lack of financial training, was no banker. Indeed, it has been maliciously observed that his troubles began when he started to regard himself as one. The real expertise belonged to Luigi Mennini, the IOR's managing director, a rarely-seen figure with a lifetime's experience in the Vatican bank—and of the ways of Catholic Italian finance.
Just how and when Paul Marcinkus and Roberto Calvi met is not clear. Marcinkus has declared that he was put on to Calvi by the Milanese Curia; Sindona has asserted that he was responsible. But the fateful meeting must have happened in 1971 at the latest. For by the August of that year, as we have seen, Marcinkus was seated on the board of Calvi's Cisalpine Bank in Nassau. The moment marks the start of IOR's hidden association with Ambrosiano. The Vatican bank took an early shareholding of Cisalpine of two and a half per cent, later to rise to eight percent. Nobody noticed, or paid attention to, the fact that Marcinkus was one of its directors. But then nobody was paying much attention to Calvi in those days.
The archbishop has since stated that he saw Calvi
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