February 1998 - Evangelicals Now - Christian Newspaper

The Swiss banks have been in the news - and rightly so! The issue is the disappearance of Jewish gold. Huge quantities were stolen by the Nazis during the holocaust. They even removed gold rings and teeth fillings from the victims of Nazi brutality.

There was also the question of secret deposits of gold by Nazis who saw Switzerland as a safe place for their deposits which could be a source of wealth when the Third Reich collapsed. There were also deposits made by Jewish investors who, before the full fury of the holocaust, could see the confiscation of their savings and wanted to make provision for the future peace, which, sadly, was to be too late for them and the millions of Jews who were slaughtered.

Vatican bank

Swiss bankers have been forced to open their books to expose the enormity of the crime. But it began to emerge that other countries were involved and pressure for disclosure was directed against other financial agencies. This included the Vatican bank. The response of the Vatican was a refusal to open their books. That, of course, does not automatically point to a verdict of guilty, but it does at least raise serious doubts! Those doubts become even more insistent when we look at the Vatican's past history of collusion with the Nazis and the subsequent history of the Vatican bank.

Fascist connection

Turning first to the relationship between the Vatican and the fascists, the evidence is overwhelming. The popes endorsed and allied themselves with the dictatorships which were to cause such misery and sorrow for millions. Pius XI signed concordats (agreements) with Franco, Mussolini and Hitler, three men of unmitigated evil and callous indifference to the deaths of multitudes.
Franco emerged as the victor in the Spanish civil war. As a result, Roman Catholicism not only dominated the state but saw to it that there was great pressure on the little Spanish evangelical churches. But then persecution was the regular feature of dominant papalism. It was also seen at this period in Latin America where evangelicals only emerged publicly as the authority of Rome declined. Franco was clearly the Vatican's man!
Mussolini and his minions also enjoyed the smile of the papacy. This was so in spite of his brutal invasion of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Albania. If my memory is correct, I recall that the invasion of Albania began on Good Friday! They would later taste the same savage treatment as the Serbs. In Yugoslavia, the Croats achieved superiority by massive slaughter of Serbs. Their leader, with his vision of a Catholic Croatia, was Pavelich. He had full support from Archbishop Stepinac. The Roman Catholic hierarchy praised God not only for Pavelich but for Adolf Hitler. The recent Bosnian civil war saw bloody revenge by the Serbs on Croatia.

Von Papen

The Second World War broke out in 1939. The Vatican remained in touch with the Nazi regime. The key diplomatic figure was von Papen, who, at the end of the war, at Nuremberg received a prison sentence, whereas others were hanged. During the war Istanbul was a good centre for intrigue. The pope's legate was there to confer with von Papen. Here was the time for firm pressure on the Nazis to stop the holocaust which was increasingly claiming Jewish lives in the concentration camps. But there was no protest. Pius XII was now pope, but responded to the atrocities with a thunderous silence, even when Jews were being arrested in Rome within a very short distance of the Vatican.
Who was the papal secretary of state who intrigued with von Papen? Who helped at the end of the war to organise the 'rat race' of Nazis to Latin America? Who was despatched to France to get the puppet regime at Vichy off the hook in face of public fury in France after the Nazi occupation? The answer to these questions is one man: Angelo Roncalli. He will be better known by his subsequent title Pope John XXIII, the genial, smiling Italian who imparted to the papacy an aura of warmth and love. We need to recall him as the fellow intriguer with von Papen.

Escaping Nazis

Roncalli also presided over the escape from France of prominent Nazis. Many who were die-hard Nazis with Jewish blood on their hands were protected. After all the years which had elapsed since the war, Paul Touvier was at last arrested and sentenced. He had been hidden in Roman Catholic religious houses. Towards the end of 1997, the French bishops apologised for their Church's connivance with the atrocities. John Paul, in his Christmas message, paid tribute to Jewish contributions to the nations. Yet he, who of all people should have led his followers in acknowledging past shame, still had no word of repentance. The books of papal secrets must be kept firmly closed.

Finance

Turning now to the financial aspects of the failures to disclose the truth, it is the usual story: 'All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' These often quoted words came from a distinguished historian, Lord Acton, who was himself a Roman Catholic. For the Vatican books to be opened would almost certainly cost the Vatican an enormous amount financially but, perhaps even more seriously, it would involve the admission of sinful fallibility.
To enter the murky world of Vatican finance, you could, by way of preparation, study a brilliant piece of journalism later published as a book In God's Name. The author was examining the highly suspicious events surrounding the sudden death of John Paul II after a very brief time as pope. David Yallop, the author, demonstrates the powerful influence of the Vatican bank on the death - Yallop says murder - of the pope. The Guardian - no great lover of evangelicalism! - queried the allegation of murder, but gave a half page to emphasise that the Vatican had a lot of questions to answer.
The Vatican bank was controlled by a prominent cleric, the American Bishop Paul Marcinkus. It made its money by laundering all kinds of deviously acquired money. It was linked with the Banco Ambrosiano and so with very dubious characters - Calvi, who was hanged under Westminster Bridge, Sindona, serving a long sentence in the USA, and Gelli, escapee to South America!
But what about Paul Marcinkus? He was a notorious late-riser and did not live in the precincts of the Vatican. However, on the morning of the pope's death, Marcinkus was seen in the Vatican. He was a prime fraud suspect for the Italian police who were ready to interrogate him as soon as he stepped outside Vatican City. But John Paul II could easily block that questioning which might prove highly embarrassing, if not worse! So the pope invoked the old concordat with Mussolini and stopped the process. He intensified the thwarting of the police by promoting Marcinkus to the level of Arch-bishop. It is certainly time for the Vatican to open its books!

Watch out

The best reply to all this is the attack by Jesus on the ecclesiastical hypocrites of his day. His scathing rebuke is expressed by a whole series of 'Woe to you...' (Matthew 23.1-39). Let me end with Jesus's indictment in Mark 12.35-40: 'Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.'

Time to open the books

Intrigue at the Vatican

Vatican bank

Fascist connection

Von Papen

Escaping Nazis

Finance

Watch out

Herbert Carson

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