Post 2/2:
Continuing on the matter of the rather catholic-sounding murder 'suicides' above (mafia-style 'suicides'). Read for clarification:
The following 3 articles are from the American Atheists' website (atheists.org), the news "Flashline" section.
1. http://web.archive.org/web/20080115233445/...line/calvi4.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>INDICTMENTS IN CALVI MURDER FOCUS LIGHT ON VATICAN BANK SCANDAL, FASCIST & MOB LINKS, GLOBAL AGENDA</b>
Web Posted: June 6, 2005
In the latest chapter of a decades-old scandal, four people have been indicted in connection with the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, a powerful international financier and the man dubbed "God's banker" for his close ties to the Vatican.
 Calvi was found hanging beneath Blackfriar's Bridge in London on June 18, 1982. His body was weighed down with 14 pounds of bricks and mortar, and he had $15,000 worth of currency stuffed in his pocket. Although his hands were secured behind his back, the incident was promptly ruled a suicide and the matter mysteriously dropped.
 Calvi had been on the run using a false passport and numerous aliases following the collapse of his Banco Ambrosiano, a financial institution that partnered and laundered money for the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Holy See's bank headed by Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.
 All told, nearly $1.4 billion disappeared from the accounts of Banco Ambrosiano, including several hundred million dollars in loans and other financial instruments guaranteed by the IOR, and funneled through a complex network of dummy corporations and off-shore tax havens. Part of the money was diverted to the Solidarity Trade Union in Poland, while other funds subsidized the activities of fascist movements throughout Latin America, and a "shadow government" operating within a renegade Masonic lodge known as P-2 or "Propaganda Due."
Named in the indictment are Flavio Carboni, his ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig, and mobsters Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi. A trial is set for October.
 Two years ago, partly in response to pressure from Calvi's family Italian prosecutors issued a report saying that the influential banker did not commit suicide. British authorities reopened their investigation as well.
 Several theories have emerged to explain the bizarre series of events which began with the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, and revelations that the IOR had guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable loans and money transfers. Calvi's son, also named Roberto, told an Italian newspaper that while he believes organized crime members carried out the execution of his father, "someone else" was behind the murder. BBC notes that, "In recent years more evidence has come to light, suggesting Calvi was murdered by the mafia to stop him divulging damaging details about links between the mafia, the Vatican and P2."
 His death, observed BBC reporter Chris Summers, took place when Italian business and politics operated in an environment of "smoke and mirrors," where nothing was quite what it appeared to be.
 The Vatican moved quickly to block any investigation of the Banco Ambrosiano fraud, citing diplomatic immunity and its status as a sovereign nation-state under a Concordant established by the regime of dictator Benito Mussolini. (Mussolini's government had also "initialized" the IOR with a sizeable contribution of funds quickly making the Holy See a major player in Italian finance and a lucrative partner in off-shore tax frauds and other scams.) Archbishop Marcinkus, head of the IOR at the time of Calvi's disappearance, avoided arrested by Italian authorities while living within the extraterritorial boundaries of Vatican City. Indeed, Calvi told attorneys "If the whole thing comes apart, it will be enough to start the Third World War."
 The unsavory alliance of mobsters, ambitious politicians and greedy Vatican officials depended on large part on the Holy See's secretive financial network, its huge holdings within major Italian corporations and the Vatican's status as an independent nation-state beyond the purview of Italian officials. Calvi was aware of much of the operation, and accumulated a series of documents and other material as "insurance." In 1988, some of the papers surfaced when police raided the headquarters of a drug gang. Among the evidence were letters addressed to high officials in the Vatican Curia, including the Holy See's Secretary of State Cardinal Agostino Casaroli. Two of the letters referred to the transfer of 1.5 billion lire (approximately $1 million) to cover funds advanced to Flavio Carboni to acquire documents written by Calvi. The Vatican ended up paying Carboni nearly $2 million ("All of it Vatican money" according to Carboni)for those documents, and according to investigators may have released another $40 for other Calvi documents.
 There are other aspects of the Calvi murder that have relevance today, more than two decades after the disgraced banker's corpse was found dangling beneath Blackfriar's Bridge in the City of London:
  ¶   <b>The powerful, semi-secret Catholic group known as "Opus Dei,"</b> is famous for more than its alleged connections with the mythic DaVinci Code fiction. In fact, "Opus Dei" operates as a "Personal Prelature" accountable only to the Pope of Rome. There is compelling evidence that the group stepped in to cover short-falls at the IOR and Banco Ambrosiano, thus insulating the Vatican from potential scrutiny and liability in the midst of Italy's biggest financial scandal.
  ¶   The Vatican through its legal entity, The Holy See, remains unique among the world's religious movements in that it is considered both a nation state and sect. It enjoys official diplomatic relations with over 180 governments including the United States, maintains a growing network of diplomatic missions (which supposedly account for much of the Vatican's "red ink") and is an active "observer" at the United Nations and international NGO events. In the U.S., this dual status has raised questions of whether entities like the <span style='color:red'>National Conference of Catholic Bishops are, in fact, operating under the instructions of another "government," and should thus register under the Foreign Agents Act.</span>
(Naxal Ram - of the christocommunista paper the Chindu - attended something that sounded like the Indian equivalent.)
 This sovereign status has allowed the Vatican to resist scrutiny in a myriad of investigations, including the one into the collapse. A ruling by a U.S. court last month, however, in another case related to the Vatican bank, may indicate that the wall of secrecy surrounding the Holy See's financial intrigues may be pierced in some instances. On April 18, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (frequently the target of charges of so-called "judicial activism") ruled that a lawsuit over restitution from the Second World War could proceed. The case involves charges that property expropriated from Serbs, Jews and Russians looted by the Nazi-controlled Croatian government (at the time a self-proclaimed "Catholic State") was sequestered and "laundered' by the Vatican.
 Fearing that the suit was gaining momentum, the Holy See had asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to intervene on behalf of the Vatican. According to attorneys Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton, the amount at issue could be more than $100 million. The case is ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK.
 On the other side of the globe, the new revelations in the murder of Roberto Calvi are refocusing attention on the role of the Vatican and its ties to covert fascist groups, intelligence services, mobsters and greedy, ambitious politicians. Time is running out, though, for the full story to be told about the Calvi incident and the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus is 81-years old, and assigned to a church in Phoenix, AZ. He still enjoys the benefits of a Papal Passport and diplomatic immunity. It is also doubtful that the new pope, dubbed Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, is eager to clean house at the Vatican. Indeed, he has maintained most of the old bureaucracy that operated the Holy See under the regime of Pope John Paul II, who covered up everything from sex scandals to the full story behind the papacy's complicity in events dating back to World War II. Unraveling the machinations of the Vatican Bank is proving to be a slow, tedious process. For those seeking justice and a full accounting of one of the biggest financial scandals in recent history, revelations about the murder of Roberto Calvi provide, at least, another step forward.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. http://web.archive.org/web/20080115233455/....line/vat13.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b> FLASHLINE
REPORT ON CALVI AUTOPSY RETURNS SPOTLIGHT TO VATICAN BANK SCANDAL</b>
 Roberto Calvi, the man once dubbed "God's Banker," was murdered according to new autopsy results. Will the finding put the spotlight back on a decades-old financial scandal involving the Vatican bank, or end up as the most "under-reported" story for 2002?
Web Posted: October 29, 2002
<b>An investigation into a man linked to a decades-old Vatican bank scandal reveals that he was murdered, and did not commit suicide as earlier claimed.</b>
 Roberto Calvi, a leading Italian financier, was found suspended from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. He was chairman of the powerful Banco Ambrosiano, and had close ties with top-ranking Vatican officials as well as organized crime. <b>His death came amidst revelations that the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Holy See's financial arm, was involved in money laundering and other suspect activities. Principals in the story were linked to fascist groups including a renegade Masonic lodge that was working to overthrow the Italian government, Mafia operatives and foreign intelligence services.</b>
 An initial investigation concluded that Calvi had somehow managed to commit suicide. His body was disinterred in 1998 and a new probe revealed that he had been strangled, and his body then suspended from beneath the London bridge and weighed-down with bricks. One theory investigators have operated on is that Calvi, who was intimately involved with money laundering and other suspect financial activities with the Vatican, may have been murdered for not repaying loans to organized crime, or was silenced for complicity and what he knew about the unravelling Ambrosiano-Vatican scandal.
 There was no official explanation of why it took four years to perform the new autopsy and release the results.
 The latest report notes that Calvi's neck bones did not show the kind of damage that would have been caused by suicide through hanging, and that his hands and fingernails were clean. "If he had stuffed bits of brick in his own pockets and climbed a rusty scaffolding to hang himself, there would have been traces," noted a Reuters news report.
 Three men are awaiting trial in Rome accused of conspiring to murder the prominent financier. The accused -- Francesco DiCarlo, Flavio Carboni and Pippo Calo -- all have ties to organized crime groups. Prosecutors are expected to examine the results of the new evidence in Calvi's autopsy and possibly use it in forthcoming trials.
 But the background of Calvi's mysterious death is part of a larger tapestry of events which includes the collapse of banks in Europe and the United States, the role played by the Vatican in laundering money and stealing assets of Jews and other refugees from the World War II period, and even efforts to stage political coups and shelter former Nazis and fascists from being brought to justice. Calvi's links to the Vatican bank/IOR have resulted in books, and even a recent movie -- "God's Banker" -- which has played throughout Italy, much to the consternation of the Holy See. The Church has even tried to have posters and other advertisements for the film censored.
(The Vatican will go to HUGE LENGTHS to conceal what it did in WWII and after.)
 "The Vatican is reported to be furious over the film," noted a BBC story last March, "and the Holy See's press office said it had 'absolutely no comment' when asked for their reaction."
<b>FROM BANCO AMBROSIANO TO P-2
AND THE VATICAN RAT LINES</b>
(The Vatican Rat Lines: the Vatican helped the nazis escape. See also "Vatican Bank Claims" site.)
 The Calvi story touches on persons and developments going back to the time when the Vatican Bank was first chartered by the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Throughout the 19th century, the holdings of what was originally considered "the Papal State" were confiscated thanks to the unification of Italy. With an ear to the interests of the Vatican, Mussolini proposed in 1929 a Concordant which formally recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See as a geopolitical institution. The equivalent of approximately 85$ million was granted to "actualize" a banking institution under the control of the papacy, known benignly as the Institute for Religious Works.
The IOR was more than a simple internal banking system for the relatively small "government" of the Catholic Church. It benefited from shrewd investments, and eventually would become a haven for "offshore" funds secreted by corporations, organized crime, intelligence services and other groups. During World War II, over $100 million flowed into the IOR coffers thanks to the imposition of the notorious "kirchensteur" or "church tax" imposed by the Nazis in Germany and occupied countries. Other assets, believed confiscated from Jews, Serbs and other nationalities were also safely smuggled into the Vatican treasure chest where they found safe haven and legal immunity.
 In 1969, the Vatican brought into its inner financial circle Michael Sindona, a man with ties to the Mafia dating to the 1940s. Using various "letters of introduction" from key Catholic officials, Sindona had risen rapidly in the world of Italian banking, and was described as "Uomini Di Fiducia," a Man of Confidence in the eyes of the Holy See. Sindona established his own investment empire, and worked closely with Vatican officials to invest in other banks and financial holdings.
 In the United States, Sindona was prominent inside the hierarchy of the Illinois Republican Party. He was also working with the Inzerillo crime family (cousins of the New York Gambino family), and used their funds to invest in private banks and holding companies such as the Liechtenstein-based Fasco AG to the Banca Privata Finanziaria, which had been founded in 1930 by a fascist ideologue.
 Among Sindona's contacts and close associates were Roberto Calvi (Banco Ambrosiano) and an American Bishop, Paul Marcinkus, who would later rise to the position of Archbishop and head of the Institute for Religious Works.
 ¶   Another curious thread of the tapestry involving the Vatican Bank was Liccio Gelli.
 Gelli was welcome in the homes of Italy's leading bankers, industrialists and church officials. He had been a member of the Black Shirts Battalion in Italy, and served with the fascists during the Spanish civil war. With the advent of WW II, he became oberleutnant in the Nazi SS assigned as liaison with the elite Herman Goring Division, and developed close ties to the OVRA, or Italian Secret Service.
 <b>Gelli was also involved with a Croatian priest, Krujoslav Dragonovic, a man instrumental in operating a smuggling service known as the "Vatican ratline."</b> Hundreds of ex-Nazis and clerical fascists were successfully smuggled out of Europe using Vatican passports and other transit instruments. Funds from the IOR often helped in the re-settlement of the war criminals, and spoils from the Third Reich looting spree were sequestered in the untouchable vaults of the Vatican bank.
 <b>Gelli went on to establish an impressive list of international contacts.</b> He was instrumental in bringing Juan Person to power in Argentina, and years later brokered an agreement between French arms manufacturers and the Argentine military for the acquisition of Exocet missiles used during the Falklands war. His penchant for supporting authoritarian, neo-fascist clerical regimes was best articulated by his frequently-mentioned homily, "The doors of all bank vaults open to the right..."
 With his background in fascist movements and ties to intelligence services, Gelli also presided over a secret "lodge" known as Propaganda Due, or P-2. It was structured along the lines of traditional Masonic groups (although the fraternity did not officially recognize P-2 or Gelli), with Gelli as the Grand Master. Its ranks included leading industrialists and financiers, the heads of various intelligence and police services, gangsters and individuals with close ties to the Vatican. In Italy, Sindona and Calvi were both linked to P-2, as was Klaus Barbi, the notorious "Butcher of Lyon."
 Branches of P-2 were established in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal and Nicaragua. The Latin American lodges included junta and death squad leaders, such as Jose Lopez Rega, head of an Argentina-based murder-for-hire intelligence apparatus which also ran a cocaine smuggling operation on the side.
 In Italy, a likely member of P-2 was <b>Cardinal Paolo Bertoli</b>, an official with the church's diplomatic corps. It was Bertoli who introduced Liccio Gelli to the head of the Vatican Bank, Paul Marcinkus. Another entree for both Gelli and Calvi into the Vatican was Italian lawyer and businessman Umberto Ortolani, who in WWII served in the intelligence corps. Ortolani, another P-2 member, was also a enrolled in the <b>Catholic Knights of Malta</b> -- a group which included leading American and European business and intelligence community leaders -- and was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the official status of "Gentleman of His Holiness" within the Holy See.
<b>RISE AND FALL</b>
 A number of developments occurred which brought down Calvi, Gelli, and others tied to the Vatican Bank. Throughout the 1970s, the IOR had served as a shelter for "hot money" and stolen assets, and under the directorship of Marcinkus and others, had guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans connected to Banco Ambrosiano.
 ¶   Sindona fell first, when in April, 1974 his Franklin National Bank collapsed. Banca Privata disintegrated six months later, with the Vatican's loss pegged at about $27 million. The following month news about Sindona's speculative and illegal offshore capital flight ventures leaked, and Liccio Gelli tipped off the wanted banker to a police arrest warrant. By the time Sindona surfaced in Switzerland, Franklin Bank had collapsed, and Vatican exposure on the debacle reached $240 million.
 ¶   Calvi was also overextended, and some Ambrosiano-Vatican ventures were in serious trouble. Marcinkus, in September, 1981, steps in with "letters of patronage" with the IOR seal to seek more financing. The IOR later admits that its partnership with Banco Ambrosiano in the control of eleven ghost companies based in Panama adds up to a debt of about $1 billion.
 ¶   Word breaks in the news media that Liccio Gelli and his P-2 lodge had created a virtual "state within a state" with the intent of overthrowing the Italian government and establishing a clerical-fascist regime. The membership rolls of P-2 are made public. <b>Also exposed is Flavio Carboni, a "fixer" with ties to the Holy See, various political groups, Propaganda Due and the Vatican -- and a recipient of cash from Banco Ambrosiano for construction projects in Sardinia. Calvi boasts, "Behind those loans is the Vatican, the Pope."
 ¶   In England and elsewhere, investigations into Sindona have widened to include Roberto Calvi and the Vatican Bank. One group being mentioned is Opus Dei, the semi-secret Catholic "prelature" founded by Jose Escriva de Balaguer (recently elevated to sainthood by Pope John Paul II). A powerful financial backer of Opus Dei, Spanish industrialist Jose Mateos, was also treasurer of Propaganda Due and a close associate of Roberto Calvi. Prior to his disappearance, Calvi revealed to associates that in exchange for 16% of Banco Ambrosiano, Opus Dei would help close the institutions $1.3 billion debt. Marcinkus opposed the plan, though, fearing that it would require him to be replaced with a representative of Opus Dei.</b>
(By the way. Opus Dei and its founder were anti-semitic and fascist. Literally. Not a secret. See note at end.)
<b>THE DEATH OF ROBERTO CALVI</b>
 <span style='color:blue'>On June 18, 1982, Calvi's body was discovered dangling from Blackfriars Bridge in London.</span> Sindona had gone down, P-2 was exposed -- with Gelli fleeing to Switzerland and later literally "disappearing" from a Swiss prison -- and more questions were being asked about the Vatican's complicity in the Ambrosiano affair, as well as the failed Propaganda Due coup.
 Sworn depositions from members of the Calvi family reflect that he blamed "the priests," men like Marcinkus and Ortolani, and possibly Opus Dei. By this theory, the Vatican reaped huge sums of money through participation in illegal offshore banking schemes, "peekaboo finance," and other questionable financial devices. It is also intriguing to consider the political clout the Vatican purchased, especially with Banco Ambrosiano making huge loans to Italy's major political parties, from the Christian Democrats and Socialists to even the Communist Party.
 The Vatican emerged relatively untouched by the Calvi affair despite the many links between it and principals like Gelli, Carboni, and others. In 1984, the Italian Government guaranteed the return of about $600 million to those who had loaned money to the Ambrosiano-IOR group. Nearly $400 million still remains missing, unaccounted for in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.
 Flavio Carboni, one of the men possibly implicated in the murder of Calvi, has also been under investigation for his involvement in a scheme to sell contents of Calvi's missing briefcase to Czechoslovakian Bishop Paolo Hillica. Hillica had been wiretapped by Italian authorities while in conversation with Carboni negotiating for the briefcase, believed to contain documents embarrassing to the Vatican. Hillica, in turn, is linked to another bizarre story, the "miracles on demand" industry centered around alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugore.
 Calvi's body was exhumed on Wednesday, December 16, 1998. News stories suggested that the autopsy results would be release the following year. Now, nearly four years later, comes word that <b>Roberto Calvi did not load his clothing up with bricks and broken mortar and climb to the underside of Blackfriars Bridge to commit suicide, but was killed elsewhere to become a prop in a staged suicide.</b>
 Carlo Calvi, his son told the Toronto Star in December, 1998, "My father had many enemies within the Vatican... The Vatican was at the time effectively selling its extra-territoriality for profit."
 For the Holy See, the outcome was different. There was the mysterious death of one pope, and the rise of a new pontiff who, despite his avuncular public style, has done little to bring transparency to the Vatican Bank. The United States extended official diplomatic recognition to the Holy See, making Catholicism the only world religion which enjoys such a unique governmental status. It was no secret by Reagan-era strategists that one reason for the diplomatic gesture was to tap into the extensive intelligence and organizational resources the Church possessed, particularly in Eastern Europe. With the "fall of the wall," the Church moved aggressively to try and replace the hegemony of fragmented Communist parties throughout the region with its own vision of stern clerical control using the facade of a limited democracy. Soon, as the Stalinist regimes disintegrated, the Holy See was denouncing new secular governments and the prospect of "too much freedom" and the rejection of spiritual values.
 Calvi's death, and the revelation that it was the result of murder, may turn public attention toward a financial scandal that vanished from the media radar screen without being fully resolved. Despite its ramifications, it is a story which so far is under-reported, and may still have significant consequences. For a church besieged by revelations of priestly pedophile abuse and complicity in the looting of personal property from victims of the Holocaust, it is a story best left ignored.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3. http://web.archive.org/web/20080214164536/...line/calvi5.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>"GOD'S BANKER" MURDER TRIAL BEGINS: COULD EXPOSE VATICAN FINANCIAL SCHEMES, RAISE QUESTIONS OVER DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY, RECOGNITION</b>
Web Posted: November 18, 2005
Trial has begun in Rome, Italy over the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, the man dubbed "God's Banker" who had close ties to the Vatican, global financial institutions, organized crime and a shadowy neo-fascist movement.
 Calvi was found hanging with his hands tied behind his back under Blackfriar's Bridge in London on June 18, 1982 Bricks and thousands in British Pound currency were stuffed in his pockets.
 Investigators originally ruled the death a suicide, but in 1998 an Italian judge ordered the exhumation of Calvi's body for a new autopsy and a subsequent probe into the incident. Authorities began a new investigation in 2002 after medical experts revealed that Calvi had in fact been strangled near the bridge and then hung from it. Several defendants, including a convicted mobster were indicted, and went on trial last month.
 Legal proceedings will resume on November 28.
 While the case has remained a sensation on the continent even after more than two decades, news coverage of the trial by American media has been sketchy. Many of the personalities, events and details in the Calvi story involve Europe. But it is the recurrent "Vatican connection" through a Chicago archbishop, Calvi's indirect ties to the collapse of a major New York financial institution, and the peculiar relationship between the Holy See and the U.S. government which provides a distinct American flavor to the mysterious case.
 The man at the center of the story, Roberto Calvi, was head of Banco Ambrosiano, a private financial institution with links to the Vatican. The bank failed in one of the most catastrophic financial debacles in modern Italian history, with the equivalent of nearly two billion dollars vanishing into off-shore accounts. Banco Ambrosiano was also involved with the Vatican Bank, benignly titled the "Institute for Religious Works" or IOR. Subsequent investigation uncovered a rogue cast of characters, and evidence that the IOR and Ambrosiano were financial safe havens and pipelines for "flight capital" and other illegally laundered monies.
  ¶   Among those linked to Calvi was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. Ordained in Chicago, Marcinkus was posted to the Holy See in Rome, and served in the Vatican Secretariat of State. He rapidly moved up within Vatican bureaucracy from personal papal bodyguard to head of the IOR -- a post he held from 1971 to 1989. There he worked closely with international financier Michael Sindona to expand the Vatican's portfolio of international holdings, transforming the Institute for Religious Works into a quiet but reliable shelter for questionable capital. Sindona, laundering money from associates in organized crime, funneled huge sums of money through Banco Ambrosiano and the IOR. The Vatican Bank also worked closely with the United States government as a cover money conduit to groups like the Solidarity Trade Union in Poland. Thanks to Marcinkus, Sindona was to become a "man of confidence" within the Vatican who enjoyed unique access to officials of the Holy See, even the pope.
monthly special  ¶   Michael Sindona had been among Calvi's patrons at the Banco Ambrosiano, and helped expand the small "Catholic bank" into an international financial institution. Sindona's financial manipulations make a story of their own, and investigations after the Ambrosiano collapse would document how his elaborate international network of banks and offshore companies served as vehicle for laundering dirty money earned from everything from heroin traffic to "soft money" investments.
  ¶   Perhaps the most mysterious character in the Calvi saga was Liccio Gelli. A former member of the fascist Black Shirts Battalion and liaison between the Mussolini regime and the infamous Herman Goring SS Division in World War II, Gelli survived the conflict and amassed an impressive list of contacts. He also obtained sensitive information on hundreds of key political, military and financial figures not only in Italy but throughout Europe, Latin America and elsewhere thanks to his access of files from the Italian secret service (OVRA) and possibly British Intelligence. Gelli helped to smuggle Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon" to safe haven in Argentina, and even managed to sell his services to the CIA and NATO. He also ingratiated himself with the regime of Juan Person in Argentin
 In 1963, Gelli began the takeover an obscure Italian Masonic lodge, Propaganda Due or P-2, and using the blackmail files of the OVRA and other information, began aggressively recruiting members of the military and intelligence services, as well as key financial and political figures. (The Grand Lodge of Italy quickly severed recognition ties with P-2 when it learned of Gelli's activities.) P-2 expanded its operations to Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal and Nicaragua. Associated of Klaus Barbie were recruited, as were leaders from death squads operating in Latin America. One member was the notorious Jose Lopez Gega, an Argentinean <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>clerical fascist who also ran a cocaine smuggling operation into the United States.</span>
(There used to be a website called ClericalFascism or something. It was about the deep involvement of the Vatican and christian priests in nazism.)
 Gelli, like Sindona, enjoyed unprecedented access to the Vatican thanks to his close friendship with Cardinal Paolo Bertoli of the Holy See's Diplomatic Corps. Bertoli is known to have introduced Gelli to Paul Marcinkus. Another close associate and member of this "Gang of Four" was Umberrto Ortolani, a former OVRA Intelligence Officer and co-patron for Calvi while he was moving up in the Banco Ambrosiano. Ortolani was also tied to a secretive Roman Catholic order known as the Knights of Malta, and was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the status of "Gentleman of his Holiness." He also sponsored Liccio Gelli for membership in the Knights of Malta.
  ¶   As the scandal enveloping Calvi and the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano unfolded, police raided Gelli's private offices on March 17, 1981 and seized a treasure trove of documents including one of the membership lists of P-2. Among the 962 members identified in the papers were 43 generals in the Italian armed forces, eight admirals, 43 members of Parliament, all of the heads of the respective security and intelligence services, editors and publishers of major Italian papers and, of course, Michael Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Word of several other lists eventually surfaced, and one P-2 member "went public" with charges that key functionaries of the Holy See were involved in the clandestine group. The cell was shut down by prosecutors amidst evidence that Gelli and P-2 were establishing a "state within a state," and were plotting what amounted to a fascist coup. He eluded police for years, was captured in Cannes, then escaped prison and recently died.
  ¶   <b> Among those on trial in the murder of Roberto Calvi is gangster Flavio Carboni, considered a "fixer" with ties to police, political groups, intelligence services and the Vatican.</b> Banco Ambrosiano backed a risky construction project Carboni had launched in Sardinia. He also admitted being with Gelli in London with Calvi after the embattled banker had fled in the wake of the Ambrosiano collapse. Skeptics say that Carboni was a close friend of Calvi's and had no credible motive for carrying out the murder.
  ¶   Carboni is the man believed to have sold the contents of a brief case Calvi had taken to London to a Czech Bishop, Pavel Hnilica. Hnilica admitted to using funds from the Vatican Bank to purchase the Calvi documents, but said that he did so because Carboni promised that this would insulate the Holy See from any publicity having to do with the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Today, those papers remain missing although researchers say they might contain further evidence of the ties between Calvi, Gelli, Marcinkus and illegal activities at the IOR and Ambrosiano. Hnilica was ordained a priest in the Jesuit order, and in 1964 was appointed Bishop of Rusadus.
 In 1993, an Italian court convicted the Catholic prelate for his involvement in using Vatican money to obtain the briefcase.
<b>MURDER AND VATICAN DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY</b>
 When it was learned that over a billion dollars have evaporated from Banco Ambrosiano's ledger and that the Vatican had guaranteed numerous loans with "letters of comfort" and other financial instruments, the Holy See was in the glare of public inquiry and official investigation. It was later revealed that the conservative Roman Catholic group known as Opus Dei had reportedly tried to shore up the $1.3 billion shortfall, but Calvi had already fled to England in an attempt to avoid Italian prosecutors. In 1984, the Vatican tried to close the book on the whole Calvi scandal by paying out $241 million to Ambrosiano creditors "for moral considerations" without admitting to any responsibility.
 Sindona's carefully assembled empire of companies and other holdings, including Franklin National Bank in New York, all crashed in 1974. He died of poisoning while serving a prison sentence.
 Eventually, police warrants were issued for Archbishop Marcinkus who was left at the helm of the Institute for Religious Works by Pope John Paul II. Marcinkus managed to avoid arrest by staying within the confines of the Vatican. Under cover of diplomatic immunity he eventually resigned from the IOR and in 1990 retired to Arizona.
 That legal veil, say critics, permitted not only Marcinkus but other functionaries of the Holy See to immunize themselves from questioning and prosecution about the Calvi affair. Some point to the current scandal involving priestly pedophilia and the obstructionist attitude of the church hierarchy as examples of how the Vatican lacks the accountability and "transparency" many believers say is essential if the Holy See is to survive in the modern world. And the secrecy enveloping the Vatican as an antonymous nation state may be concealing other scandals as well. David Yallop, author of the 1984 best-seller "In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" reads like a modern detective thriller, and lays out a compelling argument suggesting that the late pope was eliminated over his threat to reform the Holy See and "clean house" at the Vatican Bank. Equally disturbing is John Cornwell's 1898 work, "A Thief in the Night: Life and Death in the Vatican."
 Other provocative works like "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks" by Mark Aarons and John Loftus probe earlier history, and explore the people and events liking the Holy See with the Third Reich.
 For many researchers, the Calvi murder is at the center of a nexus of events spanning several decades, and underscores the secretive relationship the Vatican -- through the IOR and principals like Roberto Calvi and Paul Marcinkus -- has enjoyed with powerful financial interests, intelligence services, secret political cabals and foreign governments.
<b>THE VATICAN AS RELIGION AND NATION STATE</b>
 Among the world's religions, the Roman Catholic Church is unique in being both a faith and a nation state. The modern era witnessed the creation of the present Holy See in June, 1929 when the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini engineered the Lateran Treaty. It gave the Vatican full control over its grounds and buildings. And in exchange for supporting Mussolini's authoritarian government, the church received a check for 750 million lire, about $39 million in currency of that era used to initialize the financial institution that evolved into the Vatican bank.
(Can you say "Blood money"?)
 Today, the Holy See has official diplomatic relations with 174 countries, as well as the European Union, Russia and the Palestine Liberation Organization. A total of 69 nations maintain accredited missions with permanent resident diplomatic staff to the Vatican. This theocratic state is also active in a number of international organizations, with permanent "observer" status in the United Nations. It also has delegations within the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the UN Industrial Development Organization. It has a staff of slightly over 3,000 employees working in Vatican City, and is a member of the World Trade Organization.
 The special status has provided the Roman Catholic Church with extraordinary political influence throughout the world. Critics say that the Vatican wields considerable advantage in affecting the course of social and political developments across the globe, especially in issues pertaining to population control; rights for women, gays and other groups; and human rights. As the Banco Ambrosiano affair suggested, through institutions like the IOR the Vatican accumulated financial wealth and power involving the papacy in an unsavory arrangement with gangsters, rogue political operators and quite possibly even murder.
<b>A MURDER PLOT REVEALED?</b>
 Beginning in 1998, the Calvi affair was back in the news when the family of the late financier had his body exhumed. The new autopsy confirmed that Calvi was murdered elsewhere, and his corpse then hanged from beneath Blackfriar's Bridge. Investigators caught a major break in the case when in December, 2002, Mafia kingpin Antonio Giuffee told police that Calvi was murdered in part for absconding with mob money being laundered through Banco Ambrosiano.
 It is known that as the bank collapsed, Calvi approached friends in the Vatican to cover losses. He allegedly told associates in the Holy See that unless Ambrosiano was protected, he would expose powerful men in Italian finance and politics. Calvi disappeared the day after those frantic phone calls to the Vatican, along with the briefcase packed with sensitive documents.
 Leading the effort to solve the mystery of Roberto Calvi's murder has been Carlo Calvi, the banker's son who left Italy in 1977 and now lives in Montreal, Canada.
 His father, says Carlo Calvi, "was a dynamic businessman but not a good judge of people."
 Police and prosecutors have zeroed in on four suspects now on trial: Flavio Carboni; his former girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig; and Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi, two "fixers" with close ties to the Mafia.
 There are concerns, though, that the four could be scapegoats for a wider conspiracy, and that significant aspects of the case implicating the Vatican, government agencies, other banks and special interests could be conveniently ignored. The judge in the current proceedings, Mario D'Andra, has been vehement in demanding a swift trial.
 "Let's try to keep in mind that this is a trial about facts that happened almost 24 years ago," he declared. And Carboni's attorney, Renato Borzone has argued that there is no proof of his client's participation in any murder, charging Italian prosecutors with "relying on a phony testimony by turncoats" in order to make their case.
 On the opening day of the proceedings, Borzone told the court, "Today, a new battle begins to find the truth about Calvi's death.
 Carlo Calvi theorizes that while mobsters may have executed his father, "the murder was organized by politicians. The Mafia had simply the role of carrying out the murder."
 <b>Questions linger not only about who killed Roberto Calvi, but who ordered the murder.</b>
-- Conrad F. Goeringer,
November 16, 2005<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"Oh it's all a coincidence" said the Hindus.
<i>Of course</i> it is:
- Italian Helena in charge. But another in the long line of catholic infiltrators into non-catholic governments. (Previously this role was filled by Jesuits and the converts they tutored, like in China. But we got our own alien publicly-catholic entity with loyalties to the Bishop of Rome which we can point out clearly for being an alien catholic and traitor to Bharatam. Buddhist Vietnam had a catholic dictator too, but he looked Vietnamese and in the hole where his heart ought to have been there was the void of a christian traitor).
- To prop up Santa Antonia, she is set up with a whole puppet cabinet filled with public christians, crypto christians (like Ambika Soni), and sell-out traitors.
- Mafia-style 'suicide' murders of people who know too much or are in the way.
- Hindu money stolen and put into 'neutral' Swiss accounts. Let's move it to catholic Austria and then to catholic Italy and then to the Vatican bank. Stoopid Hindoos will never know.
And some notes and links.
http://freetruth.50webs.org/C1.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A dictator and the fascist, anti-Semitic founder of Opus Dei, and more:
  <!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Some of the sainthood choices, though, are prompting controversy.
  The theocratic dictator and 15th century Girolamo Savonarola was approved last month.
  <b>John Paul also attracted controversy early in his pontificate when he beatified Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of the Opus Dei group who was a virulent anti-Semite and fascist sympathizer.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From: Pope running "Saint factory"? John Paul beatifies monk accused of mental illness, fraud, philandering<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
- Lawsuits against Vatican for helping nazis escape and stealing from Holocaust victims (don't be shocked, it's what christianism does):
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/
- On Vatican Rat Lines:
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7d.htm#Ratlines
But to understand the full extent of that, I needed to read all of
http://freetruth.50webs.org/Appendix4.htm <b>"What is the Vatican Hiding"</b>
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7b.htm
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7c.htm
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7d.htm
- ClericalFascism site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030221181849/...d/cf/index.html
Continuing on the matter of the rather catholic-sounding murder 'suicides' above (mafia-style 'suicides'). Read for clarification:
The following 3 articles are from the American Atheists' website (atheists.org), the news "Flashline" section.
1. http://web.archive.org/web/20080115233445/...line/calvi4.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>INDICTMENTS IN CALVI MURDER FOCUS LIGHT ON VATICAN BANK SCANDAL, FASCIST & MOB LINKS, GLOBAL AGENDA</b>
Web Posted: June 6, 2005
In the latest chapter of a decades-old scandal, four people have been indicted in connection with the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, a powerful international financier and the man dubbed "God's banker" for his close ties to the Vatican.
 Calvi was found hanging beneath Blackfriar's Bridge in London on June 18, 1982. His body was weighed down with 14 pounds of bricks and mortar, and he had $15,000 worth of currency stuffed in his pocket. Although his hands were secured behind his back, the incident was promptly ruled a suicide and the matter mysteriously dropped.
 Calvi had been on the run using a false passport and numerous aliases following the collapse of his Banco Ambrosiano, a financial institution that partnered and laundered money for the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Holy See's bank headed by Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.
 All told, nearly $1.4 billion disappeared from the accounts of Banco Ambrosiano, including several hundred million dollars in loans and other financial instruments guaranteed by the IOR, and funneled through a complex network of dummy corporations and off-shore tax havens. Part of the money was diverted to the Solidarity Trade Union in Poland, while other funds subsidized the activities of fascist movements throughout Latin America, and a "shadow government" operating within a renegade Masonic lodge known as P-2 or "Propaganda Due."
Named in the indictment are Flavio Carboni, his ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig, and mobsters Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi. A trial is set for October.
 Two years ago, partly in response to pressure from Calvi's family Italian prosecutors issued a report saying that the influential banker did not commit suicide. British authorities reopened their investigation as well.
 Several theories have emerged to explain the bizarre series of events which began with the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, and revelations that the IOR had guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable loans and money transfers. Calvi's son, also named Roberto, told an Italian newspaper that while he believes organized crime members carried out the execution of his father, "someone else" was behind the murder. BBC notes that, "In recent years more evidence has come to light, suggesting Calvi was murdered by the mafia to stop him divulging damaging details about links between the mafia, the Vatican and P2."
 His death, observed BBC reporter Chris Summers, took place when Italian business and politics operated in an environment of "smoke and mirrors," where nothing was quite what it appeared to be.
 The Vatican moved quickly to block any investigation of the Banco Ambrosiano fraud, citing diplomatic immunity and its status as a sovereign nation-state under a Concordant established by the regime of dictator Benito Mussolini. (Mussolini's government had also "initialized" the IOR with a sizeable contribution of funds quickly making the Holy See a major player in Italian finance and a lucrative partner in off-shore tax frauds and other scams.) Archbishop Marcinkus, head of the IOR at the time of Calvi's disappearance, avoided arrested by Italian authorities while living within the extraterritorial boundaries of Vatican City. Indeed, Calvi told attorneys "If the whole thing comes apart, it will be enough to start the Third World War."
 The unsavory alliance of mobsters, ambitious politicians and greedy Vatican officials depended on large part on the Holy See's secretive financial network, its huge holdings within major Italian corporations and the Vatican's status as an independent nation-state beyond the purview of Italian officials. Calvi was aware of much of the operation, and accumulated a series of documents and other material as "insurance." In 1988, some of the papers surfaced when police raided the headquarters of a drug gang. Among the evidence were letters addressed to high officials in the Vatican Curia, including the Holy See's Secretary of State Cardinal Agostino Casaroli. Two of the letters referred to the transfer of 1.5 billion lire (approximately $1 million) to cover funds advanced to Flavio Carboni to acquire documents written by Calvi. The Vatican ended up paying Carboni nearly $2 million ("All of it Vatican money" according to Carboni)for those documents, and according to investigators may have released another $40 for other Calvi documents.
 There are other aspects of the Calvi murder that have relevance today, more than two decades after the disgraced banker's corpse was found dangling beneath Blackfriar's Bridge in the City of London:
  ¶   <b>The powerful, semi-secret Catholic group known as "Opus Dei,"</b> is famous for more than its alleged connections with the mythic DaVinci Code fiction. In fact, "Opus Dei" operates as a "Personal Prelature" accountable only to the Pope of Rome. There is compelling evidence that the group stepped in to cover short-falls at the IOR and Banco Ambrosiano, thus insulating the Vatican from potential scrutiny and liability in the midst of Italy's biggest financial scandal.
  ¶   The Vatican through its legal entity, The Holy See, remains unique among the world's religious movements in that it is considered both a nation state and sect. It enjoys official diplomatic relations with over 180 governments including the United States, maintains a growing network of diplomatic missions (which supposedly account for much of the Vatican's "red ink") and is an active "observer" at the United Nations and international NGO events. In the U.S., this dual status has raised questions of whether entities like the <span style='color:red'>National Conference of Catholic Bishops are, in fact, operating under the instructions of another "government," and should thus register under the Foreign Agents Act.</span>
(Naxal Ram - of the christocommunista paper the Chindu - attended something that sounded like the Indian equivalent.)
 This sovereign status has allowed the Vatican to resist scrutiny in a myriad of investigations, including the one into the collapse. A ruling by a U.S. court last month, however, in another case related to the Vatican bank, may indicate that the wall of secrecy surrounding the Holy See's financial intrigues may be pierced in some instances. On April 18, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (frequently the target of charges of so-called "judicial activism") ruled that a lawsuit over restitution from the Second World War could proceed. The case involves charges that property expropriated from Serbs, Jews and Russians looted by the Nazi-controlled Croatian government (at the time a self-proclaimed "Catholic State") was sequestered and "laundered' by the Vatican.
 Fearing that the suit was gaining momentum, the Holy See had asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to intervene on behalf of the Vatican. According to attorneys Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton, the amount at issue could be more than $100 million. The case is ALPERIN v. VATICAN BANK.
 On the other side of the globe, the new revelations in the murder of Roberto Calvi are refocusing attention on the role of the Vatican and its ties to covert fascist groups, intelligence services, mobsters and greedy, ambitious politicians. Time is running out, though, for the full story to be told about the Calvi incident and the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus is 81-years old, and assigned to a church in Phoenix, AZ. He still enjoys the benefits of a Papal Passport and diplomatic immunity. It is also doubtful that the new pope, dubbed Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, is eager to clean house at the Vatican. Indeed, he has maintained most of the old bureaucracy that operated the Holy See under the regime of Pope John Paul II, who covered up everything from sex scandals to the full story behind the papacy's complicity in events dating back to World War II. Unraveling the machinations of the Vatican Bank is proving to be a slow, tedious process. For those seeking justice and a full accounting of one of the biggest financial scandals in recent history, revelations about the murder of Roberto Calvi provide, at least, another step forward.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. http://web.archive.org/web/20080115233455/....line/vat13.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b> FLASHLINE
REPORT ON CALVI AUTOPSY RETURNS SPOTLIGHT TO VATICAN BANK SCANDAL</b>
 Roberto Calvi, the man once dubbed "God's Banker," was murdered according to new autopsy results. Will the finding put the spotlight back on a decades-old financial scandal involving the Vatican bank, or end up as the most "under-reported" story for 2002?
Web Posted: October 29, 2002
<b>An investigation into a man linked to a decades-old Vatican bank scandal reveals that he was murdered, and did not commit suicide as earlier claimed.</b>
 Roberto Calvi, a leading Italian financier, was found suspended from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. He was chairman of the powerful Banco Ambrosiano, and had close ties with top-ranking Vatican officials as well as organized crime. <b>His death came amidst revelations that the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Holy See's financial arm, was involved in money laundering and other suspect activities. Principals in the story were linked to fascist groups including a renegade Masonic lodge that was working to overthrow the Italian government, Mafia operatives and foreign intelligence services.</b>
 An initial investigation concluded that Calvi had somehow managed to commit suicide. His body was disinterred in 1998 and a new probe revealed that he had been strangled, and his body then suspended from beneath the London bridge and weighed-down with bricks. One theory investigators have operated on is that Calvi, who was intimately involved with money laundering and other suspect financial activities with the Vatican, may have been murdered for not repaying loans to organized crime, or was silenced for complicity and what he knew about the unravelling Ambrosiano-Vatican scandal.
 There was no official explanation of why it took four years to perform the new autopsy and release the results.
 The latest report notes that Calvi's neck bones did not show the kind of damage that would have been caused by suicide through hanging, and that his hands and fingernails were clean. "If he had stuffed bits of brick in his own pockets and climbed a rusty scaffolding to hang himself, there would have been traces," noted a Reuters news report.
 Three men are awaiting trial in Rome accused of conspiring to murder the prominent financier. The accused -- Francesco DiCarlo, Flavio Carboni and Pippo Calo -- all have ties to organized crime groups. Prosecutors are expected to examine the results of the new evidence in Calvi's autopsy and possibly use it in forthcoming trials.
 But the background of Calvi's mysterious death is part of a larger tapestry of events which includes the collapse of banks in Europe and the United States, the role played by the Vatican in laundering money and stealing assets of Jews and other refugees from the World War II period, and even efforts to stage political coups and shelter former Nazis and fascists from being brought to justice. Calvi's links to the Vatican bank/IOR have resulted in books, and even a recent movie -- "God's Banker" -- which has played throughout Italy, much to the consternation of the Holy See. The Church has even tried to have posters and other advertisements for the film censored.
(The Vatican will go to HUGE LENGTHS to conceal what it did in WWII and after.)
 "The Vatican is reported to be furious over the film," noted a BBC story last March, "and the Holy See's press office said it had 'absolutely no comment' when asked for their reaction."
<b>FROM BANCO AMBROSIANO TO P-2
AND THE VATICAN RAT LINES</b>
(The Vatican Rat Lines: the Vatican helped the nazis escape. See also "Vatican Bank Claims" site.)
 The Calvi story touches on persons and developments going back to the time when the Vatican Bank was first chartered by the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. Throughout the 19th century, the holdings of what was originally considered "the Papal State" were confiscated thanks to the unification of Italy. With an ear to the interests of the Vatican, Mussolini proposed in 1929 a Concordant which formally recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See as a geopolitical institution. The equivalent of approximately 85$ million was granted to "actualize" a banking institution under the control of the papacy, known benignly as the Institute for Religious Works.
The IOR was more than a simple internal banking system for the relatively small "government" of the Catholic Church. It benefited from shrewd investments, and eventually would become a haven for "offshore" funds secreted by corporations, organized crime, intelligence services and other groups. During World War II, over $100 million flowed into the IOR coffers thanks to the imposition of the notorious "kirchensteur" or "church tax" imposed by the Nazis in Germany and occupied countries. Other assets, believed confiscated from Jews, Serbs and other nationalities were also safely smuggled into the Vatican treasure chest where they found safe haven and legal immunity.
 In 1969, the Vatican brought into its inner financial circle Michael Sindona, a man with ties to the Mafia dating to the 1940s. Using various "letters of introduction" from key Catholic officials, Sindona had risen rapidly in the world of Italian banking, and was described as "Uomini Di Fiducia," a Man of Confidence in the eyes of the Holy See. Sindona established his own investment empire, and worked closely with Vatican officials to invest in other banks and financial holdings.
 In the United States, Sindona was prominent inside the hierarchy of the Illinois Republican Party. He was also working with the Inzerillo crime family (cousins of the New York Gambino family), and used their funds to invest in private banks and holding companies such as the Liechtenstein-based Fasco AG to the Banca Privata Finanziaria, which had been founded in 1930 by a fascist ideologue.
 Among Sindona's contacts and close associates were Roberto Calvi (Banco Ambrosiano) and an American Bishop, Paul Marcinkus, who would later rise to the position of Archbishop and head of the Institute for Religious Works.
 ¶   Another curious thread of the tapestry involving the Vatican Bank was Liccio Gelli.
 Gelli was welcome in the homes of Italy's leading bankers, industrialists and church officials. He had been a member of the Black Shirts Battalion in Italy, and served with the fascists during the Spanish civil war. With the advent of WW II, he became oberleutnant in the Nazi SS assigned as liaison with the elite Herman Goring Division, and developed close ties to the OVRA, or Italian Secret Service.
 <b>Gelli was also involved with a Croatian priest, Krujoslav Dragonovic, a man instrumental in operating a smuggling service known as the "Vatican ratline."</b> Hundreds of ex-Nazis and clerical fascists were successfully smuggled out of Europe using Vatican passports and other transit instruments. Funds from the IOR often helped in the re-settlement of the war criminals, and spoils from the Third Reich looting spree were sequestered in the untouchable vaults of the Vatican bank.
 <b>Gelli went on to establish an impressive list of international contacts.</b> He was instrumental in bringing Juan Person to power in Argentina, and years later brokered an agreement between French arms manufacturers and the Argentine military for the acquisition of Exocet missiles used during the Falklands war. His penchant for supporting authoritarian, neo-fascist clerical regimes was best articulated by his frequently-mentioned homily, "The doors of all bank vaults open to the right..."
 With his background in fascist movements and ties to intelligence services, Gelli also presided over a secret "lodge" known as Propaganda Due, or P-2. It was structured along the lines of traditional Masonic groups (although the fraternity did not officially recognize P-2 or Gelli), with Gelli as the Grand Master. Its ranks included leading industrialists and financiers, the heads of various intelligence and police services, gangsters and individuals with close ties to the Vatican. In Italy, Sindona and Calvi were both linked to P-2, as was Klaus Barbi, the notorious "Butcher of Lyon."
 Branches of P-2 were established in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal and Nicaragua. The Latin American lodges included junta and death squad leaders, such as Jose Lopez Rega, head of an Argentina-based murder-for-hire intelligence apparatus which also ran a cocaine smuggling operation on the side.
 In Italy, a likely member of P-2 was <b>Cardinal Paolo Bertoli</b>, an official with the church's diplomatic corps. It was Bertoli who introduced Liccio Gelli to the head of the Vatican Bank, Paul Marcinkus. Another entree for both Gelli and Calvi into the Vatican was Italian lawyer and businessman Umberto Ortolani, who in WWII served in the intelligence corps. Ortolani, another P-2 member, was also a enrolled in the <b>Catholic Knights of Malta</b> -- a group which included leading American and European business and intelligence community leaders -- and was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the official status of "Gentleman of His Holiness" within the Holy See.
<b>RISE AND FALL</b>
 A number of developments occurred which brought down Calvi, Gelli, and others tied to the Vatican Bank. Throughout the 1970s, the IOR had served as a shelter for "hot money" and stolen assets, and under the directorship of Marcinkus and others, had guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans connected to Banco Ambrosiano.
 ¶   Sindona fell first, when in April, 1974 his Franklin National Bank collapsed. Banca Privata disintegrated six months later, with the Vatican's loss pegged at about $27 million. The following month news about Sindona's speculative and illegal offshore capital flight ventures leaked, and Liccio Gelli tipped off the wanted banker to a police arrest warrant. By the time Sindona surfaced in Switzerland, Franklin Bank had collapsed, and Vatican exposure on the debacle reached $240 million.
 ¶   Calvi was also overextended, and some Ambrosiano-Vatican ventures were in serious trouble. Marcinkus, in September, 1981, steps in with "letters of patronage" with the IOR seal to seek more financing. The IOR later admits that its partnership with Banco Ambrosiano in the control of eleven ghost companies based in Panama adds up to a debt of about $1 billion.
 ¶   Word breaks in the news media that Liccio Gelli and his P-2 lodge had created a virtual "state within a state" with the intent of overthrowing the Italian government and establishing a clerical-fascist regime. The membership rolls of P-2 are made public. <b>Also exposed is Flavio Carboni, a "fixer" with ties to the Holy See, various political groups, Propaganda Due and the Vatican -- and a recipient of cash from Banco Ambrosiano for construction projects in Sardinia. Calvi boasts, "Behind those loans is the Vatican, the Pope."
 ¶   In England and elsewhere, investigations into Sindona have widened to include Roberto Calvi and the Vatican Bank. One group being mentioned is Opus Dei, the semi-secret Catholic "prelature" founded by Jose Escriva de Balaguer (recently elevated to sainthood by Pope John Paul II). A powerful financial backer of Opus Dei, Spanish industrialist Jose Mateos, was also treasurer of Propaganda Due and a close associate of Roberto Calvi. Prior to his disappearance, Calvi revealed to associates that in exchange for 16% of Banco Ambrosiano, Opus Dei would help close the institutions $1.3 billion debt. Marcinkus opposed the plan, though, fearing that it would require him to be replaced with a representative of Opus Dei.</b>
(By the way. Opus Dei and its founder were anti-semitic and fascist. Literally. Not a secret. See note at end.)
<b>THE DEATH OF ROBERTO CALVI</b>
 <span style='color:blue'>On June 18, 1982, Calvi's body was discovered dangling from Blackfriars Bridge in London.</span> Sindona had gone down, P-2 was exposed -- with Gelli fleeing to Switzerland and later literally "disappearing" from a Swiss prison -- and more questions were being asked about the Vatican's complicity in the Ambrosiano affair, as well as the failed Propaganda Due coup.
 Sworn depositions from members of the Calvi family reflect that he blamed "the priests," men like Marcinkus and Ortolani, and possibly Opus Dei. By this theory, the Vatican reaped huge sums of money through participation in illegal offshore banking schemes, "peekaboo finance," and other questionable financial devices. It is also intriguing to consider the political clout the Vatican purchased, especially with Banco Ambrosiano making huge loans to Italy's major political parties, from the Christian Democrats and Socialists to even the Communist Party.
 The Vatican emerged relatively untouched by the Calvi affair despite the many links between it and principals like Gelli, Carboni, and others. In 1984, the Italian Government guaranteed the return of about $600 million to those who had loaned money to the Ambrosiano-IOR group. Nearly $400 million still remains missing, unaccounted for in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.
 Flavio Carboni, one of the men possibly implicated in the murder of Calvi, has also been under investigation for his involvement in a scheme to sell contents of Calvi's missing briefcase to Czechoslovakian Bishop Paolo Hillica. Hillica had been wiretapped by Italian authorities while in conversation with Carboni negotiating for the briefcase, believed to contain documents embarrassing to the Vatican. Hillica, in turn, is linked to another bizarre story, the "miracles on demand" industry centered around alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugore.
 Calvi's body was exhumed on Wednesday, December 16, 1998. News stories suggested that the autopsy results would be release the following year. Now, nearly four years later, comes word that <b>Roberto Calvi did not load his clothing up with bricks and broken mortar and climb to the underside of Blackfriars Bridge to commit suicide, but was killed elsewhere to become a prop in a staged suicide.</b>
 Carlo Calvi, his son told the Toronto Star in December, 1998, "My father had many enemies within the Vatican... The Vatican was at the time effectively selling its extra-territoriality for profit."
 For the Holy See, the outcome was different. There was the mysterious death of one pope, and the rise of a new pontiff who, despite his avuncular public style, has done little to bring transparency to the Vatican Bank. The United States extended official diplomatic recognition to the Holy See, making Catholicism the only world religion which enjoys such a unique governmental status. It was no secret by Reagan-era strategists that one reason for the diplomatic gesture was to tap into the extensive intelligence and organizational resources the Church possessed, particularly in Eastern Europe. With the "fall of the wall," the Church moved aggressively to try and replace the hegemony of fragmented Communist parties throughout the region with its own vision of stern clerical control using the facade of a limited democracy. Soon, as the Stalinist regimes disintegrated, the Holy See was denouncing new secular governments and the prospect of "too much freedom" and the rejection of spiritual values.
 Calvi's death, and the revelation that it was the result of murder, may turn public attention toward a financial scandal that vanished from the media radar screen without being fully resolved. Despite its ramifications, it is a story which so far is under-reported, and may still have significant consequences. For a church besieged by revelations of priestly pedophile abuse and complicity in the looting of personal property from victims of the Holocaust, it is a story best left ignored.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3. http://web.archive.org/web/20080214164536/...line/calvi5.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>"GOD'S BANKER" MURDER TRIAL BEGINS: COULD EXPOSE VATICAN FINANCIAL SCHEMES, RAISE QUESTIONS OVER DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY, RECOGNITION</b>
Web Posted: November 18, 2005
Trial has begun in Rome, Italy over the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, the man dubbed "God's Banker" who had close ties to the Vatican, global financial institutions, organized crime and a shadowy neo-fascist movement.
 Calvi was found hanging with his hands tied behind his back under Blackfriar's Bridge in London on June 18, 1982 Bricks and thousands in British Pound currency were stuffed in his pockets.
 Investigators originally ruled the death a suicide, but in 1998 an Italian judge ordered the exhumation of Calvi's body for a new autopsy and a subsequent probe into the incident. Authorities began a new investigation in 2002 after medical experts revealed that Calvi had in fact been strangled near the bridge and then hung from it. Several defendants, including a convicted mobster were indicted, and went on trial last month.
 Legal proceedings will resume on November 28.
 While the case has remained a sensation on the continent even after more than two decades, news coverage of the trial by American media has been sketchy. Many of the personalities, events and details in the Calvi story involve Europe. But it is the recurrent "Vatican connection" through a Chicago archbishop, Calvi's indirect ties to the collapse of a major New York financial institution, and the peculiar relationship between the Holy See and the U.S. government which provides a distinct American flavor to the mysterious case.
 The man at the center of the story, Roberto Calvi, was head of Banco Ambrosiano, a private financial institution with links to the Vatican. The bank failed in one of the most catastrophic financial debacles in modern Italian history, with the equivalent of nearly two billion dollars vanishing into off-shore accounts. Banco Ambrosiano was also involved with the Vatican Bank, benignly titled the "Institute for Religious Works" or IOR. Subsequent investigation uncovered a rogue cast of characters, and evidence that the IOR and Ambrosiano were financial safe havens and pipelines for "flight capital" and other illegally laundered monies.
  ¶   Among those linked to Calvi was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. Ordained in Chicago, Marcinkus was posted to the Holy See in Rome, and served in the Vatican Secretariat of State. He rapidly moved up within Vatican bureaucracy from personal papal bodyguard to head of the IOR -- a post he held from 1971 to 1989. There he worked closely with international financier Michael Sindona to expand the Vatican's portfolio of international holdings, transforming the Institute for Religious Works into a quiet but reliable shelter for questionable capital. Sindona, laundering money from associates in organized crime, funneled huge sums of money through Banco Ambrosiano and the IOR. The Vatican Bank also worked closely with the United States government as a cover money conduit to groups like the Solidarity Trade Union in Poland. Thanks to Marcinkus, Sindona was to become a "man of confidence" within the Vatican who enjoyed unique access to officials of the Holy See, even the pope.
monthly special  ¶   Michael Sindona had been among Calvi's patrons at the Banco Ambrosiano, and helped expand the small "Catholic bank" into an international financial institution. Sindona's financial manipulations make a story of their own, and investigations after the Ambrosiano collapse would document how his elaborate international network of banks and offshore companies served as vehicle for laundering dirty money earned from everything from heroin traffic to "soft money" investments.
  ¶   Perhaps the most mysterious character in the Calvi saga was Liccio Gelli. A former member of the fascist Black Shirts Battalion and liaison between the Mussolini regime and the infamous Herman Goring SS Division in World War II, Gelli survived the conflict and amassed an impressive list of contacts. He also obtained sensitive information on hundreds of key political, military and financial figures not only in Italy but throughout Europe, Latin America and elsewhere thanks to his access of files from the Italian secret service (OVRA) and possibly British Intelligence. Gelli helped to smuggle Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon" to safe haven in Argentina, and even managed to sell his services to the CIA and NATO. He also ingratiated himself with the regime of Juan Person in Argentin
 In 1963, Gelli began the takeover an obscure Italian Masonic lodge, Propaganda Due or P-2, and using the blackmail files of the OVRA and other information, began aggressively recruiting members of the military and intelligence services, as well as key financial and political figures. (The Grand Lodge of Italy quickly severed recognition ties with P-2 when it learned of Gelli's activities.) P-2 expanded its operations to Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal and Nicaragua. Associated of Klaus Barbie were recruited, as were leaders from death squads operating in Latin America. One member was the notorious Jose Lopez Gega, an Argentinean <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>clerical fascist who also ran a cocaine smuggling operation into the United States.</span>
(There used to be a website called ClericalFascism or something. It was about the deep involvement of the Vatican and christian priests in nazism.)
 Gelli, like Sindona, enjoyed unprecedented access to the Vatican thanks to his close friendship with Cardinal Paolo Bertoli of the Holy See's Diplomatic Corps. Bertoli is known to have introduced Gelli to Paul Marcinkus. Another close associate and member of this "Gang of Four" was Umberrto Ortolani, a former OVRA Intelligence Officer and co-patron for Calvi while he was moving up in the Banco Ambrosiano. Ortolani was also tied to a secretive Roman Catholic order known as the Knights of Malta, and was elevated by Pope Paul VI to the status of "Gentleman of his Holiness." He also sponsored Liccio Gelli for membership in the Knights of Malta.
  ¶   As the scandal enveloping Calvi and the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano unfolded, police raided Gelli's private offices on March 17, 1981 and seized a treasure trove of documents including one of the membership lists of P-2. Among the 962 members identified in the papers were 43 generals in the Italian armed forces, eight admirals, 43 members of Parliament, all of the heads of the respective security and intelligence services, editors and publishers of major Italian papers and, of course, Michael Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Word of several other lists eventually surfaced, and one P-2 member "went public" with charges that key functionaries of the Holy See were involved in the clandestine group. The cell was shut down by prosecutors amidst evidence that Gelli and P-2 were establishing a "state within a state," and were plotting what amounted to a fascist coup. He eluded police for years, was captured in Cannes, then escaped prison and recently died.
  ¶   <b> Among those on trial in the murder of Roberto Calvi is gangster Flavio Carboni, considered a "fixer" with ties to police, political groups, intelligence services and the Vatican.</b> Banco Ambrosiano backed a risky construction project Carboni had launched in Sardinia. He also admitted being with Gelli in London with Calvi after the embattled banker had fled in the wake of the Ambrosiano collapse. Skeptics say that Carboni was a close friend of Calvi's and had no credible motive for carrying out the murder.
  ¶   Carboni is the man believed to have sold the contents of a brief case Calvi had taken to London to a Czech Bishop, Pavel Hnilica. Hnilica admitted to using funds from the Vatican Bank to purchase the Calvi documents, but said that he did so because Carboni promised that this would insulate the Holy See from any publicity having to do with the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Today, those papers remain missing although researchers say they might contain further evidence of the ties between Calvi, Gelli, Marcinkus and illegal activities at the IOR and Ambrosiano. Hnilica was ordained a priest in the Jesuit order, and in 1964 was appointed Bishop of Rusadus.
 In 1993, an Italian court convicted the Catholic prelate for his involvement in using Vatican money to obtain the briefcase.
<b>MURDER AND VATICAN DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY</b>
 When it was learned that over a billion dollars have evaporated from Banco Ambrosiano's ledger and that the Vatican had guaranteed numerous loans with "letters of comfort" and other financial instruments, the Holy See was in the glare of public inquiry and official investigation. It was later revealed that the conservative Roman Catholic group known as Opus Dei had reportedly tried to shore up the $1.3 billion shortfall, but Calvi had already fled to England in an attempt to avoid Italian prosecutors. In 1984, the Vatican tried to close the book on the whole Calvi scandal by paying out $241 million to Ambrosiano creditors "for moral considerations" without admitting to any responsibility.
 Sindona's carefully assembled empire of companies and other holdings, including Franklin National Bank in New York, all crashed in 1974. He died of poisoning while serving a prison sentence.
 Eventually, police warrants were issued for Archbishop Marcinkus who was left at the helm of the Institute for Religious Works by Pope John Paul II. Marcinkus managed to avoid arrest by staying within the confines of the Vatican. Under cover of diplomatic immunity he eventually resigned from the IOR and in 1990 retired to Arizona.
 That legal veil, say critics, permitted not only Marcinkus but other functionaries of the Holy See to immunize themselves from questioning and prosecution about the Calvi affair. Some point to the current scandal involving priestly pedophilia and the obstructionist attitude of the church hierarchy as examples of how the Vatican lacks the accountability and "transparency" many believers say is essential if the Holy See is to survive in the modern world. And the secrecy enveloping the Vatican as an antonymous nation state may be concealing other scandals as well. David Yallop, author of the 1984 best-seller "In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" reads like a modern detective thriller, and lays out a compelling argument suggesting that the late pope was eliminated over his threat to reform the Holy See and "clean house" at the Vatican Bank. Equally disturbing is John Cornwell's 1898 work, "A Thief in the Night: Life and Death in the Vatican."
 Other provocative works like "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks" by Mark Aarons and John Loftus probe earlier history, and explore the people and events liking the Holy See with the Third Reich.
 For many researchers, the Calvi murder is at the center of a nexus of events spanning several decades, and underscores the secretive relationship the Vatican -- through the IOR and principals like Roberto Calvi and Paul Marcinkus -- has enjoyed with powerful financial interests, intelligence services, secret political cabals and foreign governments.
<b>THE VATICAN AS RELIGION AND NATION STATE</b>
 Among the world's religions, the Roman Catholic Church is unique in being both a faith and a nation state. The modern era witnessed the creation of the present Holy See in June, 1929 when the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini engineered the Lateran Treaty. It gave the Vatican full control over its grounds and buildings. And in exchange for supporting Mussolini's authoritarian government, the church received a check for 750 million lire, about $39 million in currency of that era used to initialize the financial institution that evolved into the Vatican bank.
(Can you say "Blood money"?)
 Today, the Holy See has official diplomatic relations with 174 countries, as well as the European Union, Russia and the Palestine Liberation Organization. A total of 69 nations maintain accredited missions with permanent resident diplomatic staff to the Vatican. This theocratic state is also active in a number of international organizations, with permanent "observer" status in the United Nations. It also has delegations within the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the UN Industrial Development Organization. It has a staff of slightly over 3,000 employees working in Vatican City, and is a member of the World Trade Organization.
 The special status has provided the Roman Catholic Church with extraordinary political influence throughout the world. Critics say that the Vatican wields considerable advantage in affecting the course of social and political developments across the globe, especially in issues pertaining to population control; rights for women, gays and other groups; and human rights. As the Banco Ambrosiano affair suggested, through institutions like the IOR the Vatican accumulated financial wealth and power involving the papacy in an unsavory arrangement with gangsters, rogue political operators and quite possibly even murder.
<b>A MURDER PLOT REVEALED?</b>
 Beginning in 1998, the Calvi affair was back in the news when the family of the late financier had his body exhumed. The new autopsy confirmed that Calvi was murdered elsewhere, and his corpse then hanged from beneath Blackfriar's Bridge. Investigators caught a major break in the case when in December, 2002, Mafia kingpin Antonio Giuffee told police that Calvi was murdered in part for absconding with mob money being laundered through Banco Ambrosiano.
 It is known that as the bank collapsed, Calvi approached friends in the Vatican to cover losses. He allegedly told associates in the Holy See that unless Ambrosiano was protected, he would expose powerful men in Italian finance and politics. Calvi disappeared the day after those frantic phone calls to the Vatican, along with the briefcase packed with sensitive documents.
 Leading the effort to solve the mystery of Roberto Calvi's murder has been Carlo Calvi, the banker's son who left Italy in 1977 and now lives in Montreal, Canada.
 His father, says Carlo Calvi, "was a dynamic businessman but not a good judge of people."
 Police and prosecutors have zeroed in on four suspects now on trial: Flavio Carboni; his former girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig; and Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi, two "fixers" with close ties to the Mafia.
 There are concerns, though, that the four could be scapegoats for a wider conspiracy, and that significant aspects of the case implicating the Vatican, government agencies, other banks and special interests could be conveniently ignored. The judge in the current proceedings, Mario D'Andra, has been vehement in demanding a swift trial.
 "Let's try to keep in mind that this is a trial about facts that happened almost 24 years ago," he declared. And Carboni's attorney, Renato Borzone has argued that there is no proof of his client's participation in any murder, charging Italian prosecutors with "relying on a phony testimony by turncoats" in order to make their case.
 On the opening day of the proceedings, Borzone told the court, "Today, a new battle begins to find the truth about Calvi's death.
 Carlo Calvi theorizes that while mobsters may have executed his father, "the murder was organized by politicians. The Mafia had simply the role of carrying out the murder."
 <b>Questions linger not only about who killed Roberto Calvi, but who ordered the murder.</b>
-- Conrad F. Goeringer,
November 16, 2005<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"Oh it's all a coincidence" said the Hindus.
<i>Of course</i> it is:
- Italian Helena in charge. But another in the long line of catholic infiltrators into non-catholic governments. (Previously this role was filled by Jesuits and the converts they tutored, like in China. But we got our own alien publicly-catholic entity with loyalties to the Bishop of Rome which we can point out clearly for being an alien catholic and traitor to Bharatam. Buddhist Vietnam had a catholic dictator too, but he looked Vietnamese and in the hole where his heart ought to have been there was the void of a christian traitor).
- To prop up Santa Antonia, she is set up with a whole puppet cabinet filled with public christians, crypto christians (like Ambika Soni), and sell-out traitors.
- Mafia-style 'suicide' murders of people who know too much or are in the way.
- Hindu money stolen and put into 'neutral' Swiss accounts. Let's move it to catholic Austria and then to catholic Italy and then to the Vatican bank. Stoopid Hindoos will never know.
And some notes and links.
http://freetruth.50webs.org/C1.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A dictator and the fascist, anti-Semitic founder of Opus Dei, and more:
  <!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Some of the sainthood choices, though, are prompting controversy.
  The theocratic dictator and 15th century Girolamo Savonarola was approved last month.
  <b>John Paul also attracted controversy early in his pontificate when he beatified Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of the Opus Dei group who was a virulent anti-Semite and fascist sympathizer.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From: Pope running "Saint factory"? John Paul beatifies monk accused of mental illness, fraud, philandering<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
- Lawsuits against Vatican for helping nazis escape and stealing from Holocaust victims (don't be shocked, it's what christianism does):
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/
- On Vatican Rat Lines:
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7d.htm#Ratlines
But to understand the full extent of that, I needed to read all of
http://freetruth.50webs.org/Appendix4.htm <b>"What is the Vatican Hiding"</b>
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7b.htm
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7c.htm
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7d.htm
- ClericalFascism site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030221181849/...d/cf/index.html