was also making threats, according to Marcinkus. In May 1981, Calvi was arrested for violating Italy’s foreign-exchange regulations and convicted. He was then taken to the medieval Lodi prison and put into a cell with four terrorists, who kept him awake day and night talking and playing a radio. Calvi warned Marcinkus, “This trial is called IOR,” the Italian initials of the Vatican bank. (According to Calvi’s son, Carlos Calvi, Marcinkus sent a message back, “Our problems are your problems too.”) Calvi then attempted suicide by slashing his wrists and swallowing an overdose of barbiturates. Then on July 20, 1981, after spending two months in Lodi, Calvi was released on bail while the appeal of his four-year sentence was processed, and he resumed work as head of the Banco Ambrosiano.
But the Bank of Italy was pressing to see the books of the bank’s overseas subsidiaries, and so Calvi continued to ask Marcinkus to help. But Marcinkus could not acknowledge the debt of the anonymous companies, since doing so would bankrupt the Holy See. When Marcinkus turned him down, Calvi turned to records in the vault of the Banco Ambrosiano’s banking subsidiary in Switzerland that he claimed would establish the Vatican’s ownership of the subsidiaries. The chief accountant of the Vatican bank, Pellegrino de Strobel, was then dispatched to Switzerland to view the secret records. Since they appeared to substantiate Calvi’s claim, the fatal deal was made: Marcinkus’ deputy acknowledged that the Vatican bank controlled the eight anonymous companies, and Calvi provided the Vatican bank with the letter releasing the Vatican from any liability arising from the activities of these anonymous companies. The problem now confronting Marcinkus was that keydocuments pertaining to this arrangement had vanished along with Calvi.
As it turned out, Calvi could speak from the grave. In the summer of 1982, a special committee of inquiry in Parliament eerily heard Calvi’s posthumous recollections on tape. Flavio Carboni, the Sardinian who had help organized Calvi’s escape from Italy, had kept a microphone concealed behind his lapel during his final conversations with Calvi. These tapes had been seized when Carboni was arrested in Switzerland. On them, Calvi rambled on for no less than ten hours. At one point, Calvi recounted a conversation he had had with Marcinkus, claiming to have warned him “Be careful … if it comes out that you gave money to Solidarity, there won’t be one stone of the Vatican left standing.” (He was referring to the Polish labor union movement that helped undermine the Soviet Union’s control of Poland.)
Marcinkus stonewalled Italian regulators, stating that Calvi was the sole author of the machinations. Italian authorities then issued subpoenas, but they were returned unopened on the basis that the Vatican was not subject to the laws of Italy. Finally, on August 6, 1982, the minister of finance, Beniamino Andreatta, ordered the Banco Ambrosiano liquidated and all its assets turned over to a new consortium of banks. The Vatican’s controlling block of stock in the bank was worthless. The missing $1.2 billion was never recovered.
Why had the Vatican engaged in these massive transactions? “You can’t run the church on Hail Marys alone,” Archbishop Marcinkus told me. As for the details of the transfers, he said the pope had entrusted two lay bankers with this task: Sindona, with whom the Pope had met personally, and Calvi. “They and they alone know,” he concluded. Calvi was dead, but Sindona was in prison in the United States.
I went to see Sindona in Otisville Federal Prison in upstate New York in April 1984. Born in Patti, Sicily, in 1920 andeducated by Jesuit priests, Sindona had become one of the most successful financiers in Europe and the principal financial advisor to the Vatican by the time he was forty-three. Then, in March 1979, he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on charges of
But the Bank of Italy was pressing to see the books of the bank’s overseas subsidiaries, and so Calvi continued to ask Marcinkus to help. But Marcinkus could not acknowledge the debt of the anonymous companies, since doing so would bankrupt the Holy See. When Marcinkus turned him down, Calvi turned to records in the vault of the Banco Ambrosiano’s banking subsidiary in Switzerland that he claimed would establish the Vatican’s ownership of the subsidiaries. The chief accountant of the Vatican bank, Pellegrino de Strobel, was then dispatched to Switzerland to view the secret records. Since they appeared to substantiate Calvi’s claim, the fatal deal was made: Marcinkus’ deputy acknowledged that the Vatican bank controlled the eight anonymous companies, and Calvi provided the Vatican bank with the letter releasing the Vatican from any liability arising from the activities of these anonymous companies. The problem now confronting Marcinkus was that keydocuments pertaining to this arrangement had vanished along with Calvi.
As it turned out, Calvi could speak from the grave. In the summer of 1982, a special committee of inquiry in Parliament eerily heard Calvi’s posthumous recollections on tape. Flavio Carboni, the Sardinian who had help organized Calvi’s escape from Italy, had kept a microphone concealed behind his lapel during his final conversations with Calvi. These tapes had been seized when Carboni was arrested in Switzerland. On them, Calvi rambled on for no less than ten hours. At one point, Calvi recounted a conversation he had had with Marcinkus, claiming to have warned him “Be careful … if it comes out that you gave money to Solidarity, there won’t be one stone of the Vatican left standing.” (He was referring to the Polish labor union movement that helped undermine the Soviet Union’s control of Poland.)
Marcinkus stonewalled Italian regulators, stating that Calvi was the sole author of the machinations. Italian authorities then issued subpoenas, but they were returned unopened on the basis that the Vatican was not subject to the laws of Italy. Finally, on August 6, 1982, the minister of finance, Beniamino Andreatta, ordered the Banco Ambrosiano liquidated and all its assets turned over to a new consortium of banks. The Vatican’s controlling block of stock in the bank was worthless. The missing $1.2 billion was never recovered.
Why had the Vatican engaged in these massive transactions? “You can’t run the church on Hail Marys alone,” Archbishop Marcinkus told me. As for the details of the transfers, he said the pope had entrusted two lay bankers with this task: Sindona, with whom the Pope had met personally, and Calvi. “They and they alone know,” he concluded. Calvi was dead, but Sindona was in prison in the United States.
I went to see Sindona in Otisville Federal Prison in upstate New York in April 1984. Born in Patti, Sicily, in 1920 andeducated by Jesuit priests, Sindona had become one of the most successful financiers in Europe and the principal financial advisor to the Vatican by the time he was forty-three. Then, in March 1979, he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on charges of
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