Italy: The Great Vatican Bank Mystery

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Simmering for more than a year, the scandal came to a boil last June 18, when the body of a man was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge, his toes just touching the surface of the muddy Thames. The dead man's pockets contained some $13,000 in various currencies, as well as 12 lbs. of bricks and stones. He was identified as Roberto Calvi, 62, the president of Banco Ambrosiano of Milan, the largest private banking group in Italy, with operations in 15 countries. Authorities in Italy, in the Vatican and throughout the international banking community were stunned by the news. Calvi, who had disappeared mysteriously from Italy a week earlier, was the architect of a financial house of cards, and his death brought the structure tumbling down.

Italian authorities have since ordered the liquidation of Banco Ambrosiano and declared the institution bankrupt. The government has also been pressing the Holy See for a fuller disclosure of its role in the bank's affairs, thus rekindling the age-old tension between Italy and the Vatican, an independent entity that occupies 108.7 acres in the center of Rome. The Bank of Italy, the nation's central bank, has agreed to cover only part of Banco Ambrosiano Group's $1.2 billion shortfall, and is suggesting that the I.O.R. may have to come up with at least some of the money. Part of the reason for the Bank of Italy's stand is to put pressure on the Vatican to bring its bank into line with Italian banking regulations. The Bank of Italy has long been resentful of the I.O.R.'s status as an unregulated "offshore," or foreign, bank in the heart of the country. In addition, Archbishop Marcinkus and his two principal lay assistants, Managing Director Luigi Mennini, 71, and Chief Accountant Pellegrino de Strobel, 70, are under investigation by Italian authorities in connection with the possibly fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano.

The Vatican, citing its status as a sovereign state, has so far declined to cooperate with the Italian authorities, and Marcinkus has remained inside the Vatican, where he cannot be questioned by the government. But Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican's Secretary of State, has named three respected international bankers, all prominent Catholic laymen, to examine the I.O.R.'s role in the scandal.* Casaroli has pointedly not suggested that Marcinkus did anything illegal. At the same time, however, the Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, a former Vatican Under Secretary of State, has told the Italian magazine Il Sabato that "if there was any imprudence, it was because of incompetence and inexperience." Added Benelli: "The fact that Archbishop Paul Marcinkus is a friend of the Pope's doesn't mean that he has to remain in the post."