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THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
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22. Vatican Coup D'Etat
ACCOMPANIED BY GIACOMO BOTTA, HEAD OF THE AMBROSIANO'S foreign department, the Calvis stopped in Montevideo on the first leg of their Latin American tour to meet with Umberto Ortolani. The great Vatican door-opener had recently been appointed the Knights of Malta ambassador to Uruguay. Ortolani and one of his sons continued with the Calvis and Botta to Buenos Aires, where Licio Gelli, his wife Wanda, and their two sons were waiting. Calvi was ostensibly in Buenos Aires to discuss with the Argentine authorities the opening of a local Banco Ambrosiano branch. In fact Calvi, Gelli and Ortolani invited the entire naval general staff to dinner. At the end of the meal the admirals asked how they might finance the purchase of fifty AM39 Exocet missiles for their naval aviation. Each Exocet cost $1 million, so the admirals were talking about a $50 million package. As Exocets were manufactured in Italy under licence from the French firm of Aerospatiale, Calvi was able to provide an easy answer. He arranged for financing which, as no record of it was uncovered in the Ambrosiano accounts, one supposes was routed through the United Trading network. While watching the television news in their hotel on the morning of 29 September 1978, Clara and Anna learned that Pope John Paul I had been found dead in his bed. Roberto was stunned. He had already told Clara that he found Luciani 'very courageous, open to dialogue, but very imprudent. In only a month he made it clear that he intended to adopt his own line at the Vatican. He had shown his intransigence, which surely meant that Marcinkus would be compromised.' [1] With a new pope this was no longer certain. Calvi had explained to Clara that the reasons for the Vatican bank's troubles were to be found in the vaults of Banca del Gottardo, where the accounting secrets of the United Trading family of companies were kept. Later the IOR's chief accountant, Pellegrino de Strobel, went himself to the Gottardo's offices in Lugano to confirm the extent of United Trading's exposed position. Calvi had wondered what John Paul I knew of these dealings. Probably nothing, he supposed. What Papa Luciani had intended for the IOR was Marcinkus's replacement as chairman. That Luciani wanted to relaunch Paul VI's Ostpolitik also seemed certain. But the opening towards Moscow had been brought to a halt when the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Leningrad, the forty-nine-year-old Nikodim (widely regarded as a KGB agent), died of a massive heart attack (infarto miocardico acuto) in the Pope's antechamber before their meeting could take place. A week later, Papa Luciani found on his desk a copy of the latest issue of Mino Pecorelli's Rome scandal sheet, OP. It revealed that 121 senior prelates were Freemasons. The list included the cardinals Villot, Poletti and Baggio. Shocked, Papa Luciani turned for advice to the only member of the hierarchy he trusted. That was Cardinal Benelli, now Archbishop of Florence, who counselled caution because he suspected Pecorelli of 'sharpening someone else's axe'. Luciani asked Benelli to become his secretary of state. Benelli was moved. His return to the Curia would have meant greater Vatican conciliation towards the Communist bloc and an easing of its stance against artificial birth control, two issues that the Conservative cardinals opposed. On 28 September 1978, Luciani informed Villot that in addition to removing Marcinkus, he proposed sending Sebastiano Baggio to Venice and the Vicar of Rome, Ugo Poletti, to Florence. Finally, he requested Villot's own resignation, intending to replace him with Benelli. [2] Although Luciani had no way of knowing, the four prelates he wanted to remove from the Curia were essential to the success of Opus Dei's intentions, namely canonization of the Founder, its own transformation as a Personal Prelature, and control of the Vatican finances. During that night, after only thirty-three days in office, John Paul I died. The scrambling that followed for his succession bore the markings of a minutely prepared coup d'etat. However much one might wish to believe otherwise, the surprise Pope in whom so many had placed such hope was unlikely to have died from natural causes and -- in spite of all that has been written and said on the subject -- the indications are strong that a cover up of the real cause of death was engineered by a Vatican clique convinced it was acting to protect the Church and her sacred teachings. The facts surrounding the discovery of the Pope's death are bizarre to say the least. They prove that the Vatican did not, in the first instance, tell the truth and may not still be telling the truth. The first fact it attempted to hide was that Sister Vincenza found the Pope dead at about 5 a.m. when she brought him his thermos of coffee. She said he was sitting upright in bed, his lips twisted. She noticed that he was clutching a sheaf of papers. An unsettled dispute persists as to the nature of these papers, for they have disappeared. One explanation is that certain members of the Curia did not want the outside world to know that a power struggle was in progress inside the Vatican, engineered by a group that opposed Benelli's return to the centre of power. The papers allegedly detailed the changes that Luciani had intended to decree that same day. But according to Vatican news bulletins, he was holding a copy of The Imitation of Christ. Rumours concerning the missing papers and other anomalies surrounding John Paul 1's death continued to surface during the next six years until finally, in June 1984 -- intending to dispense with the rumours once and for all -- an unsigned memorandum was prepared for a conference of bishops that brushed aside The Imitation of Christ story as a pure invention of the press! This account was just as untrue as the first, produced in an attempt to rewrite history. The same memorandum suggested that the papers seen by Sister Vincenza were nothing more than the Pope's notes for his sermon at the Wednesday audience and the Angelus talk on the following Sunday. But the report neglected to mention that the original Vatican communique claimed the Pope had been found by Father John Magee, one of the two papal secretaries. Sister Vincenza in fact had called Father Magee. His first reaction had been to summon Cardinal Villot from his apartment two floors below. Villot appeared in the papal bedroom a little after 5 a.m. and as camerlingo immediately took charge. According to others present, he did a quick tour of the room, stopping at the Pope's bedside table and at his desk. After his initial visit to the bedroom, a small bottle of Effortil, a liquid medicine used to alleviate low blood pressure, that John Paul kept on his bedside table, went missing. The sheaf of notes also disappeared. No autopsy was requested, and no forensic tests were undertaken. The Vatican doctor, Renato Buzzonetti, arrived in the bedroom at 6 a.m. and made a brief examination of the body. Buzzonetti informed Villot that the cause of death was infarto miocardico acuto -- a massive heart attack -- and he estimated the time of death at about 11 p.m. on the previous evening. Without further ado, Villot called for the rapid embalming of the body. Almost immediately the other secretary, Father Diego Lorenzi, who had been Luciani's aide in Venice, telephoned the Pope's personal physician, Antonio Da Ros, who had looked after Luciani for more than twenty years in Venice. 'He was shocked. Stunned. Unable to believe it ... he said he would come to Rome immediately,' Lorenzi reported. Da Ros had been in Rome two weeks before to examine his patient, and remarked, 'Non sta bene, ma benone' -- 'You're not well, but very well.' [3] But when Da Ros arrived later that same day, he was not allowed near the body. Benelli was telephoned in Florence at about 6.30 a.m. Overcome with grief and openly crying, he immediately retired to his room and began to pray. When Benelli re-emerged at 9 a.m. to speak to the press, he said: 'The Church has lost the right man for the right moment. We are very distressed. We are left frightened. Man cannot explain such a thing.' [4] Hardly had Benelli spoken than the Vatican information department began creating the legend of the Pope's ill health. But if the Pope's health was so frail, why were no medicines -- other than Effortil -- to be found in the papal apartments? And whatever happened to that missing bottle of Effortil? Why was Cardinal Villot never questioned about it? Also not to be forgotten, Edoardo Luciani, the dead pope's brother, was on record as stating that Albino had no history of heart trouble. The controversy surrounding Papa Luciani's death hung over the pre-Conclave General Congregations. As camerlingo, Villot found himself under attack by the more progressive cardinals. He admitted that the Vatican Press Office had given misleading information. [5] The dissident cardinals wanted to know why no autopsy had been performed, nor an official death certificate issued, and they pushed for a collegial statement on the Pope's death. The Conservatives rejected the idea. No more reactionary figure existed in the Roman Curia than Cardinal Silvio Oddi. He was Opus Dei's cardinal protector. The Italian authorities had demanded an autopsy, but Oddi claimed that he had already carried out an investigation for the College of Cardinals and found no evidence of foul play. Therefore he opposed an autopsy on grounds that it would create a precedent, [6] which was untrue. Papal autopsies had been carried out before. Indeed, Oddi was quoted as saying: 'The College of Cardinals will not examine the possibility of anIother1enquiry at all, and will not accept any supervision from anyone, and it will not even discuss the subject ... We know ... in all certainty that the death of John Paul I was due to the fact that his heart stopped beating from perfectly natural causes.' [7] Then on 12 October 1978, as the second Conclave opened, Father Panciroli, the Vatican spokesman, announced that after all a death certificate had been signed by Professor Mario Fontana and Dr. Renato Buzzonetti. The 'certificate' was not, however, a public document. With good reason. It contained a mere five typewritten lines affirming in Italian that the Pope had died in the Apostolic Palace at 23:00 on 28 September 1978 by morte improvvisa -- da infarto miocardico acuto. [8] Such a document would not have passed muster in jurisdictions where developed notions of civil law existed. In the second Conclave Siri and Benelli again started as frontrunners. In the opening ballots Benelli almost got the required two-thirds plus one. [9] Then Siri, at the urging of Baggio, Krol, Oddi and Palazzini, asked those who supported him to transfer their votes to Karol Wojtyla. He suggested that Wojtyla would make a 'good doctrinal pope'. Speaking afterwards about what happened inside the Conclave, Cardinal Enrique y Tarancon expressed disgust for the politicking that surrounded the papal election, while Siri remarked, 'Secrecy can cover some very uncharitable actions."' [10] Siri never specified what those 'actions' might have been, but the election of the first non-Italian pope in 455 years meant that the Holy See embarked upon an apostolic programme that was radically different to the one that John Paul I had begun formulating. Once elected, Wojtyla wanted to take the name of Stanislaus, after Cracow's first bishop and martyr. But Siri recommended that, to heal the Church's wounds, he should call himself John Paul II. Caracas lawyer Alberto Jaimes Berti, who had known Siri for more than twenty years, was in Rome for the papal inauguration. He said Siri was elated. 'He told me he had backed Wojtyla in the Conclave because he saw him as a providential figure sent to destroy Communism everywhere in the world. "We must help this Pope achieve his mission. He will need money, lots of money",' Berti quoted Siri as saying. Berti at that time handled the Church finances in Venezuela. During his visit to Rome, he said Siri drew him aside and mentioned that the Church wanted to create a Latin American bank to promote trade with East Europe, Siri stressed that die' bank required a sound capital base and would have to operate with absolute confidentiality. [11] According to Berti, there was no doubt that if John Paul I had remained alive the Banco Ambrosiano scandal would never have occurred, as Luciani would have uncovered the IOR's secret dealings and put an end to them. On the other hand, there would have been an IOR scandal involving not only Marcinkus, but Opus Dei, the Italian military intelligence agency, SISMI, and others. With Wojtyla as Pope, however, the problems at the IOR were glossed over. Marcinkus continued as the bank's chairman. Villot remained as Secretary of State. It was no secret that Villot was by then Opus Dei's man. And the bottle of Effortil? According to a conspiracy theory still talked about in Vatican corridors, it had been spiked by a clear and tasteless poison that produced the same effect as digitalis, the natural poison that was suspected of being administered to Father Giuliano Ferrari, who died of a massive heart attack only a few months before. The other results of Papa Wojtyla's election were that Baggio continued as Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops and Poletti kept his job as Vicar of Rome. They were needed to insure the Founder's beatification and Opus Dei's elevation to Personal Prelature. And there was no papal audience for US Congressman James Scheuer, vice-chairman of the UN Population Fund, as Wojtyla, backed by Opus Dei, firmly opposed any change in the Vatican's policy on contraception. Indeed within the first year of his pontificate, Wojtyla used Opus Dei's leading theologian in Latin America, Monsignor Ibanez Langlois, to pressure Chilean dictator Pinochet into removing from the country $1 million worth of medical equipment supplied by the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation for a female sterilization programme. Failure to heed the Pope's wishes, Pinochet was warned, would cause Chile to lose papal support in its Beagle Channel dispute with Argentina. Pinochet immediately complied. [12] Under Luciani's successor, the same crowd continued to run the IOR and the bank has similarly denied its involvement in other financial scandals. There was no Curial shake-out, and the Jesuits came under increasing pressure to toe the Conservative line or face dissolution. Under John Paul II Opus Dei moved to suppress all dissident opinion on sexual morality. Moreover, with the encyclical Veritas Splendor Papa Wojtyla branded abortion, euthanasia, contraception and homosexuality as 'intrinsically evil'. These were all pet Opus Dei phobias. Indeed Opus Dei was accused of indirectly financing the anti-abortion commandos that in the 1990s were formed in France and the United States. [13] Unaware of the power play in Rome, Roberto Calvi continued his South American travels, visiting Lima before flying to Washington for the annual general meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While in Lima Calvi met the minister of the economy and the president of the Banco de la Nacion to discuss the possibility of opening a bank in Peru. To demonstrate the usefulness of such an institution, Calvi had Ambrosiano loan the Peruvian Central Reserve Bank, of which Opus Dei's Emilio Castanon was a director, the necessary funds to pay for a naval frigate ordered from an Italian shipyard. The licence for the new bank was delivered within the year. John Paul II, meanwhile, made Cardinal Oddi prefect of the Congregation of Religious. The appointment was strategic because the Congregation of Religious was the ministry that held jurisdiction over secular institutes, and therefore Opus Dei. But perhaps more telling was the appointment of Pietro Palazzini as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. John Paul II had been in office for less than a month when he sent Don Alvaro del Portillo a note of warm wishes on the occasion of the Work's Fiftieth Anniversary -- its first jubilee. The note was enclosed in a letter from Villot stating that 'His Holiness considers the transforming of Opus Dei into a Personal Prelature as a necessity that can no longer be delayed.' But in the midst of Don Alvaro's rush to have the concerned Congregations issue their nihil obstat, Cardinal Villot died, supposedly in his sleep (without disclosing what he had done with the bottle of Effortil), [14] Villot was replaced as Secretary of State by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli. In utmost secrecy, Don Alvaro del Portillo forwarded to Cardinal Baggio, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, a fifteen-page report on the advantages for the Church of making Opus Dei the first -- and only -- Personal Prelature, The document was a masterpiece of bureaucratic reasoning, finely constructed and disciplined in style, For once, it gave statistics, including Opus Dei's exact strength -- 72,375 members, married or celibate, men and women, representing 87 nationalities, of which about 2 per cent were priests, In addition, it pointed out that Opus Dei was already hierarchically structured as a floating diocese, with what amounted to its own Ordinary, presbyterium, territory and congregation. Don Alvaro stressed that Opus Dei represented a new pastoral phenomenon in the life of the Church, 'uniquely comparable to the spiritual reality and apostolates of the faithful -- clergy and laity who belonged to the first Christian communities'. The Transformation Memo devoted an entire section to underlining that 'substantially all of the constitutive elements of a Personal Prelature' already existed in Opus Dei's structure. Then came the clincher: 'The transformation of Opus Dei from Secular Institute to Personal Prelature ... offers the Holy See the possibility of more efficiently deploying a corps mobile of priests and lay persons (specially trained) capable of operating everywhere as a powerful spiritual and apostolic catalyst for Christian action, above all in social and professional domains where today it is often impossible to work decisively in apostolic terms with the means that are currently available to the Church.' [15] The memo also unveiled some details of Opus Dei's auxiliary activities: 'Members of Opus Dei already work in the following professional enterprises ... 479 universities and institutes of higher learning on five continents; 604 newspapers, magazines and scientific publications; 52 radio and television stations; 38 news and publicity agencies; 12 film production and distribution companies, etc. Moreover, our members, aided by ordinary citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic, Christian and non-Christian, promote in 53 countries the apostolic activities Of an educational or social nature: through primary and secondary schools, technical institutes, youth clubs, trade schools, hotel schools, home economics schools, clinics and infirmaries, etc. (See Note 9).' [16] Note 9 stated that the list was exclusive of the 'apostolate of penetration'. This apostolate was carried out by Opus Dei members within the framework of their normal professional activities by organizing specialized training courses, cultural exchanges, international congresses, conventions and seminars attended by leading economic figures, technicians, teachers and others. The apostolate of penetration specifically targeted countries 'governed by totalitarian regimes that are either atheist, anti-Christian or at least nationalistic in tendency, in which it is difficult or virtually impossible de jure o de facto to undertake a missionary or religious activity, and in the end [to establish] an organized presence or activity related to the Church as one of its institutions.' _______________ Notes: 1. Clara Calvi's diaries, p. 29. 2. Yallop, Op. cit., pp. 302-303. 3. Ibid., p. 353. 4. Ibid., p. 320. 5. Peter Hebblethwaite, The Next Pope, Fount (HarperCollins), London 1995, p. 64. 6. Tommaso Ricci, 'Yallop Debunked', 30 Days, Rome, June 1988. Ricci was quoting Swiss journalist Victor Willi, who had just written a book titled Im Namen des Teufels? (In the Devil's Name?), refuting Yallop's thesis. The book was 'read and approved' by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, Willi told 30 Days. But Navarro-Valls denied to John Cornwell that Cardinal Oddi had any official standing as an investigator or spokesman for the Vatican concerning John Paul I's death [see A Thief in the Night, p. 291]. 7. Yallop. Op. cit., p. 336. 8. A copy of the death certificate was later published by John Cornwell in the appendices to A Thief in the Night. 9. Jan Grootaers, De Vatican II a Jean-Paul II: Le grand tournant de l'Eglise catholique, Centurion, Paris 1981, pp. 124-133. 10. Hebblethwaite, The Next Pope, pp. 66-67. 11. Interview with Dr. Alberto Jaimes Berti, London, 24 February 1994. 12. Stephen D. Mumford, American Democracy & the Vatican: Population Growth & National Security, Humanist Press, Amherst, New York, 1984, pp. 196-197. 13. Reseau Voltaire, Notes d'information No. 15 of 10 April 1995 and No. 23 of 5 June 1995. 14. Cornwell relates in A Thief in the Night, page 87, that a confidential Vatican source told him Villar 'collapsed' outside the Vatican and was taken to the Gemelli Hospital. 'The Vatican people rushed round and snatched the body ... They pretended the corpse was still alive, took it back to the Vatican, and said he died holily in bed.' 15. Transformation of Opus Dei into a Personal Prelature; memorandum to the Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, Cardinal Sebastiana Baggio, 23 April 1979, paragraph 19. 16. Ibid., paragraph 20.
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