This is Part III of the “Sex, Drugs and the Vatican” series. In this paper the role of Michele Sindona will be discussed, the reality and unreality of The Godfather trilogy, as well as the murders of both Aldo Moro and Pope John Paul I. [For Part I refer here, Part II here.]
“Unlike American Catholics, who choose to believe that the pope and the church are above human frailty, Italian Catholics have no illusions about the Vatican. By June 21, 1963, when Conclave 81 announced Giovanni Montini’s election as Pope Paul VI, Italians knew that the Vatican had built a financial empire through the use of secret bank accounts and the advice of expert money men like Michele Sindona.
…
The Instituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR) is the head of the Vatican’s financial octopus. The IOR, known also as the Bank of the Vatican, looks like any other bank, except that the cashiers are priests…In addition to performing all the normal banking functions, the IOR also acts as the Vatican’s holding company. It owns major blocks of shares in eighty-two banks. Among them are the largest banks in Italy: Banca di Roma, Banco Ambrosiano of Milan, Banco di Napoli, and Banco di Sicilia. Its gold reserves are in excess of $3 billion [approx. worth $11.5 billion in today’s money].
With an estimated $11 billion [approx. worth $42 billion in today’s money] invested in stocks, the Vatican is the largest stockholder in the world.”
- Luigi DiFonzo, St. Peter’s banker (1983)
In Part II of this series, we left off with a man named Michele Sindona who would become the banker to both the Sicilian Mafia as well as the Vatican Bank.
Michele Sindona was born into a poor family living in a small commune in Sicily in the province of Messina. He had been educated by the Jesuits through the University of Messina (f. 1548 by Pope Paul III), the world’s first Jesuit college[1] and today among the oldest universities in Italy. Sindona was known as among the brightest students of his class. By the end of the war, Sindona had become a respected member of the Luciano/Don Calo crime family and one of the Sicilian Mafia’s leading financial advisors.
He had earned a degree in tax law from the University of Messina in 1942, but quickly entered the black market of Sicily as a leading figure after Operation Husky. Recall from Part I of this series that Operation Husky was the Allied invasion of Sicily, which in the name of supposedly fighting Italian Fascists, the Sicilian Mafia was given political power, by the CIA, over the island and had been given control of all major Italian ports which then facilitated the black market between the United States and Sicily. The CIA would also profit off this relationship in the trafficking of drugs and weapons in service to Gladio.
Sindona, appears to have been almost immediately recruited into this nexus upon his graduation, if not groomed for this task. One of his sources for protection, as he began his career as a leading figure in the black market of Sicily (in the lucrative Italian market of selling lemons) was through the bishop of Patti, who had close ties to Vito Genovese.[2] Sindona had known the bishop of Patti since he was as young as eight years old, and had visited him every Sunday where he had long conversations with the bishop after church service while accompanied by his grandmother Nunziata.[3] Thus, Sindona would receive his connection to the Mafia it appears through Vatican channels. The bishop of Patti used his influence with the Sicilian dons and US military officials to provide Sindona with fresh produce, forged papers, and safe passage throughout the country.[4]
Sindona would later establish himself in Messina, Sicily as a tax attorney. However, even bigger opportunities awaited him in Milan, the business district of Italy. When Sindona (along with his family, including his grandmother Nunziata) eventually left Messina for Milan, he had received the blessings of the bishop of Messina and an introduction that would lead him to Giovanni Montini (the future Pope Paul VI), then pro-secretary of state for the Vatican under Pope Pius XII.[5]
Between 1952 and 1955, Sindona spent a considerable amount of time in New York, acting as Luciano’s emissary to Vito Genovese[6] where he also met the Gambino family. By 1957, Sindona had become closely associated with the Gambino family and was chosen to manage their profits from heroin sales. By 1955, he had also become a CIA operative, providing a steady flow of black funds to leading Catholic dignitaries, including Giovanni Montini, who had worked as Undersecretary of State to the Vatican and had been promoted to Archbishop of Milan by then.[7] Montini would eventually become Pope Paul VI in 1963.