#Vatican

6 entries tagged Vatican.

People (2)

Paul Marcinkus Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was the American-born president of the Vatican Bank (IOR) from 1971 to 1989 who authorized the bank's participation in Roberto Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano offshore shell company network and the Michele Sindona transactions, avoided Italian prosecution for nine years by remaining within Vatican sovereign territory, and returned to the United States in 1991 never having faced trial.
Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) was the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope since 1523, whose election in 1978 and 1979 visit to Poland directly catalyzed the Solidarity movement, and whose covert collaboration with the CIA under William Casey channeled approximately $50 million to Polish underground opposition networks through Vatican Bank and other conduits.

Vatican Bank The Vatican Bank (Instituto per le Opere di Religione, IOR) is the Holy See's financial institution, whose sovereign immunity from Italian banking regulation made it a vehicle for the P2-connected financial operations of Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, resulting in the Banco Ambrosiano collapse and a $244 million settlement with international creditors in 1984.

Italy Italy appears throughout this vault as the location of CIA-backed Stay-Behind network Gladio, the center of the P2 Masonic lodge scandal connecting intelligence services to organized crime and far-right terrorism, and a hub for Vatican Bank (IOR) financial flows connected to the BCCI network and money laundering.
Poland Poland appears in this vault in connection with the CIA-Vatican-BCCI funding pipeline to the Solidarity trade union movement (1980-1989), which helped bring down the communist government, and as a Soviet bloc country that was a target of Western intelligence operations throughout the Cold War.
Rome Rome is the capital of Italy and home to the Vatican; it appears in this vault as the location of P2 Masonic lodge operations, the Vatican Bank (IOR) financial flows connected to BCCI and CIA-backed anti-communist programs, and the base of Italian intelligence services whose Cold War activities intersected with Gladio and the strategy of tension.