Their Kingdom Come by Robert Hutchison

Author:Robert Hutchison
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781466880016
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 2020-05-26T09:25:51.631723+00:00

22

VATICAN COUP D’ETAT

Desperate situations require desperate remedies.

Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer

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’.

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