The fascist beast is still alive.... Who'll give it the coup de grâce?
Murder in the Vatican?
The attempt on the life of John Paul II.
In 1982, when the world found out that an attempt had been made on the life of John Paul II, there were immediate cries of conspiracy. Right-wing observers, noting the new Pope's anticommunist stance and support of Solidarity in Poland, suggested that behind the assassin Mehmet Ali Agca was a "Bulgarian connection." The Bulgarians, who were suddenly thrust into prominence as "international traffickers" in arms, heroin (despite the fact that even today most of U.S. heroin comes from the "Golden Triangle" in Southeast Asia), and terrorism, were also supposed to have wanted to kill the Pope on behalf of the Soviet Union. In 1983, three Bulgarian secret service operatives - Antonov, Aivazov, and Vassilev - were tried and acquitted on insufficient evidence. Despite concerted propaganda efforts by right-wing Catholics and others in the Reagan administration, the "Bulgarian Connection" just wouldn't stick, although they (through Radio Free Europe, etc.) succeeded in convincing many that such a conspiracy existed, and that there was some super-secret group called "Kintex" behind the whole affair. (Which sounds strangely familiar to "Permindex," the dummy corporation that Jim Garrison tried to show was behind JFK's assassination...)
In fact, if one looks closely at the matter, Agca's background is clearly fascistic. He belonged to the pan-Turkish group Gray Wolves, which has ties to the CIA and many fascist groups in the "Black International." Agca clearly changed his story whenever his whims so moved him; though he claimed Bulgarian backers at one point, he also testified to being Christ at another. So much for his credibility. Nonetheless, Celik, Ozbey, and other members of the Gray Wolves who knew him, said he had written a note stating quite clearly that his goal was to kill the Pope, who he saw as "another representative of the anti-Islamic Crusades," in order to create unrest and other conditions for a fascist coup in Turkey. Many of the supposed points of evidence for Agca's "travels" in Bulgaria are specious, but it is clear he has been to Italy... and Agca and other Gray Wolves may have met with Cuban exiles in Miami in 1981. If anything, Agca's attempt on John Paul II has striking connections to the death of that pope's immediate predecessor, the first John Paul.
John Paul I, who "died in his sleep" (very likely, he was poisoned) after 33 days of papal rule in 1978, was a reformer who made many enemies, even within the walls of the Vatican, because he had started to raise a stink over the Vatican Bank scandal. The "disappearance" of millions of Church dollars into the black hole of Roberto Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano certainly ended up costing Calvi his life (a "suicide" that required a considerable ability in self-hanging, as well as knowledge of Masonic ritual murder) and resulted in a major Italian political scandal when it was found that many magnates of finance, the army, parliament, and industry were members of a super-secret Masonic lodge, Propaganda Due (P2). Also implicated in the affair were Michele "the Shark" Sindona, Licio Gelli (Grandmaster of P2), and even some Archbishops, such as Paul "the Gorilla" Marcinkus and Luigi Mennini. The Church stood accused of allowing its money for 'charitable works' to disappear into dummy companies, Mafia organized crime, and even drug money laundering. It was further discovered that Marcinkus as chairman of the IOR (Institute of Religious Works - the Vatican Bank) had written letters of confidence to enable the insolvent Ambrosiano to stay afloat, and that the Vatican had in fact owned eight of the many 'ghost' companies Calvi had created for transferring money covertly.
How did the Vatican get into this mess? Some people feel that, as with many scandals, it started with a deal with the devil. In 1929, the Vatican and Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty and Concordat. As a result, Vatican City became a sovereign state within the confines of Rome and independent of the Italian government, and the Church received a windfall of millions of lira from "Il Duce." In return, a certain quietness on Italian political affairs - especially the growth of fascism - was expected from Church leaders. The Church, wanting to invest this money for paying off debts and religious charity, created first the APSA and then the IOR. The IOR became a haven for wealthy Italians wanting to expropriate their money in violation of Italian banking laws, and helped many Italians prevent their money from falling into German hands. But the cardinals and bishops were not content with merely working with the country's "Catholic" banks (so-called because they loaned money at low interest rates, claiming this did not violate the Church's rule against usury.) They needed lay financiers to find savvy investments for the Church - men such as Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. The Church at first obtained holdings in Italian corporations, but was soon embarassed when it was found that some of their holdings included businesses involved in gun, pornography, and contraceptive manufacturing; and that they almost blundered into buying illegal American securities in 1974 from the Mob. Soon, the Church found itself in a difficult position defending tax exemption with so many worldly possessions.
Some Italian political analysts believe that P2 and "Ordine Nuovo" may have cooperated with the CIA to bomb a train station in Bologna in 1980 and blame it on Left groups. Many think the CIA has had a long trend of manipulating 'terrorism' in Italy, and that it may have even 'used' the ultra-terror of the Red Brigades to discredit the Italian Communist party: some see Kissinger's hand behind the kidnapping of Premier Aldo Moro. There are clearly overlapping circles of membership between P2, the CIA, and the Knights of Malta, a "sovereign military order descended from the Knights of St. John- Hospitallers," and whose membership in the U.S. has included Bill Casey, Alexander Haig, and Prescott Bush. The Knights, along with Opus Dei, some reactionary Jesuits, and Traditionalists (who resisted the Vatican II Council reforms) form the nexus of the Catholic "hard right wing." In the shadowy world of spookdom, there are many links between this faction of the church, organized crime (the Mafia and Camorra, a Neapolitan 'mafia'), intelligence agencies, arms dealers, and "chivalric" groups working for a united Europe and even a monarchic restoration in some Catholic countries. P2 was also involved with Latin American fascist military coups and the 'death squads' controlled by them; it is even thought that P2 helped transfer Exocet missiles illegally to Argentina during the Falklands War. Klaus Altman, alias Klaus Barbie, was an associate of Gelli and part of the Bolivian military junta; he was one of many Nazi war criminals smuggled into South America (which had a large German and Italian immigrant community before the war) by the Vatican after WW II.
Many people who have looked at the "JFK Question" can see how the CIA and Mafia became associated in the 1960s - they had a mutual interest in eliminating Castro. But, the CIA and the Vatican? Initial ties already existed during WW II between the OSS (the CIA's precursor) and the Vatican because, frankly, "Wild Bill" Donovan thought that priests hearing confession were a blessing for the spook trade. (Interestingly, the OSS and the Vatican worked to get Italy to surrender a week before the Axis, perhaps to prevent Coomunist partisans in the north from taking control.) More darkly, some 'rogue' elements in the Vatican may have worked with the OSS to 'smuggle' former Nazis into Latin America or into the Eastern Bloc spy network, the Kamaradenwerk (such as Reinhard Gehlen.) (Arch-Catholic Traditionalist [SSPX] Marcel Lefebvre has harbored some accused Nazi war criminals for some forty years.) The role of the Church during the World War itself is somewhat suspect: but even though to some extent it was forced to compromise with Mussolini's fascism, and it may not have done enough to save European Jews, it cannot be said to have 'supported' fascism as some have suggested. Some Catholics, notably those in
"Catholic Action", the clergy in Croatia, the Knights of Malta (see later) , and Father Coughlin, were openly fascist.
More importantly, in the post-Vatican II era, the CIA can be said to be very worried about the 'direction' of the Church.
Liberation theology in Latin America contains many seemingly "Marxist" elements, and many thought that with Pacem en Terris , Pope John XXIII moved the Church more toward sympathy for the Soviet Union, liberation theology, and
communism. The pastoral letters of the American bishops, which condemned the arms race, capitalism, and nuclear weapons, certainly were a cause for concern. As Malachy Martin has noted, the Jesuits, originally created as 'shock troops' of the Counter Reformation, were beginning to be a thorn in the side of the Church, as many drifted toward Modernist scholarship on Biblical questions. Many were afraid that John Paul I would be 'liberal' in many issues such as ordination of women, contraception, homosexuality, and perhaps even abortion, and that Catholic support for 'pro-family' values might erode. The CIA was interested in working with right-leaning Catholic elements to counterbalance a perceived leftward tilt within the Church. With these things in the balance, the possibility that John Paul I was murdered - either to prevent the uncovering of the P2/IOR scandal or to retraditionalize the Church - is not so remote.
His successor, the Polish Archbishop Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), was thought to be unconcerned with 'cleaning house' in the Church, and to be very anticommunist due to his support of Solidarity. Indeed, he turned out to be staunchly anticommunist, but critical of 'unreformed' capitalism as well (this is made fairly clear in Keys of this Blood by Malachi Martin.) The second murder attempt may have been motivated by people who were unsatisfied with John Paul II's amenability to the capitalist cause. (The fact that he took his immediate predecessor's papal name was probably fairly distressing to those who thought he was going to distance himself from the first John Paul's reformist crusade.) John Paul II is an enthusiastic promoter of the idea of Catholic unity - his sheer travel distance and ecumenical spirit is worthy of a St. Paul - but he appears to disdain either global capitalist or communist hegemony as ungodly. By pinning his attempted assassination on the 'Bulgarians,' the role of other forces in the matter become obscured. The Bulgarian connection to the drug trade was big news for a while, helping to obscure the more important Colombian and Panamanian connection, and the potentially explosive fact that America's freedom-fighting
Contras were sending back dope to the U.S.
Certainly, the "plot to kill the pope" became big grist for the Reaganite propaganda mill. (A book during this time, Claire Sterling's Terror Network, drew a vast web of conspiracy, suggesting the KGB controlled terrorist groups ranging from the IRA in Ireland, to the ETA in Spain, to the PLO in Lebanon, to the FMLN in El Salvador. Why the Communists would support terrorist groups espousing such ideologies as nationalism, ethnic or racial separatism, or Islamic fundamentalism was never made clear. For Sterling, it was alI simply a matter of their united hatred for the "West" and its foul values of democracy, liberty, and justice.) The plot was used as a classic case example of the so-called Soviet "web of terrorism", and was one of the
main justifications for a whole series of recriminations, 'anti-terrorist' legislation, and crackdowns on domestic groups. A piece of legislation written in 1984 that would punish domestic groups in support of 'terrorist' nations only narrowly avoided passing, because in effect groups such as the Nicaragua Solidarity Network, by the narrow and specious definitions of the law, would have gone to jail! As anti-Soviet propaganda, the "Bulgarian connection" did more to set back arms control and detente than any "missle gap" or "spending gap." Groups like the Christic Institue see the 'kill the pope' conspiracy stretching the other way - to Oliver North's "enterprise" and a host of plots by the "shadow government," from Cointelpro to October Surprise to
Iran-Contra. P2's shadowy links to international finance, 'cult' groups like Reverend Moon's organization, and even
communications - through Calvi and the Rizzoli syndicate, they owned one of Italy's largest newspapers - points that way.
The Catholic Church right now is torn between two contigents. One wants to return to the Tridentine mass, dogmatic absolutist Biblical morality, and feudalism - the time when the Church shared hegemonic power with the State, when the Pope was the coequal (especially in wealth) of any king. The Church should focus on the salvation of souls, and have as much temporal and material power as is needed to guarantee that. The other wants to modernize the Church and make it a force for peacemaking, resisting the power of the State, and social justice - dignity in work, fair wages, and empowering the poor. This progressive contigent sees the mission of the Church to be: building the kingdom of Heaven in this world, right here and now; and guiding by example, abiding by its traditional vows of poverty, asceticism, and communalism. The "Good News" should be addressed in dispensation to the "wretched of the Earth," that Christ is on their side. For those in power, such a Church would be a great threat.
The key players in the struggle for the future of the Church seem to be the so-called Knights of Malta. After the Crusades, the Knights Hospitaller wound up in possession of much of the Templars' wealth and property when that order was dissolved in 1314. They came to set up their headquarters on the island of Rhodes in 1309; in 1522, retreating from Sultan Suleiman, they came to Malta, and defeated several attempts by the Turks to seize it, notably at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Having been driven from that island by Napoleon in 1798, the Knights are still recognized as being part of a "sovereign nation" on their passports in over 40 countries, and currently their official 'residency' is within Vatican City itself. Their progressive opponents appear to be the Jesuits, who, curiously enough, as Loyola's "Soldiers of Jesus," were supposed to be the 'shock troops' of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits engaged in many anti-Protestant intrigues throughout the 17th century in England and elsewhere, for which they came to be seen as conspirators extrordinaire and masters of 'psychological warfare.' Today, as Malachi Martin notes, they seem to be in covert war with the Vatican (or at least its conservative elements) today. Many Jesuits are involved in the dissemination of 'liberation theology' in Latin America, and in effecting the reforms of Vatican II.
The dark history of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) is interesting. Originally a strictly aristocratic, chivalric, European order, they admitted an "American" contingent in 1927. Those admitted to the "American National Association" of the SMOM, unlike earlier members, did not have to provide a genealogical pedigree of royal blood. Members of the American contigent included important industrial leaders who formed part of the "Fraternity" in the U.S. which, toward the end of WW II, was actually providing the Nazis with strategic and material support, trying to replace Roosevelt by 'coup' with General Smedley D. Butler, and using "Project Paperclip" to bring Nazi scientists and doctors into the USA. The careers of other Knights are somewhat less than illustrious. SMOM Knight Magistral Franz von Papen convinced von Hindenburg to offer Hitler the Chancellorship in 1933, and served as Nazi ambassador to Austria and Turkey. SMOM Grand Cross recipient Joseph J. Larkin, vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank, helped to finance General Franco's "counterinsurgency campaigns."
Also, SMOM members Roger Pearson and James Jesus Angleton have edited the rightwing Journal of International Relations. (Pearson, former Editor of the racist journals Western Destiny and Mankind Quarterly , currently sits on the board of trustees for the American Foreign Policy Institute. In 1977, he was removed as head of the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League, a Reverend Moon-financed organization, because he was "too extreme!" Angleton had worked with Luigi Gedda of Catholic Action to fight communism through the Civic Committees and rig the 1948 Italian elections.) SMOM Baron Luigi Parrilli became the go-between of Allan Dulles, U.S. General Lemnitzer, and S.S. General Karl Wolff in 1945. SMOM members De Lorenzo and Prince Borghese each supported fascist coups in Italy in 1964 (the Solo Plan) and 1970. In the 80s, a joint project of the SMOM, Rev. Moon's Nicaraguan Freedom Fund (NFF), and Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, called the Americares Project, shipped over $ 15 million in "humanitarian aid" to Latin America. Some of Americares "aid" went, through SMOM 'houses', to Guatemalan 'model village' military peasant-resettlement programs, Contra-backed Miskito insurgents in Nicaragua, and the Salvadoran air force.
And what about John Paul II? To the pleasure of the conservatives, he does not want to yield one inch on morals, dogma, or doctrine in the Church. Unfortunately, his geopolitics aren't so good, and may have even gotten worse after Agca's failed shot. Unlike some 20th century predecessors, his condemnation of communism does not translate into love of capitalism: as he sees it, any state in the future will have to be based on "the laws of Jesus," and if there is to be a unified Europe (a new Holy Roman
Empire), it must be under the banner once more of the Church Catholic and Universal. He has spoken out against war, particularly the Gulf War, and poverty, and clearly sees a geopolitical role for the Vatican once more, standing in opposition to both Eastern atheism and Western amorality. Clearly, 1992 is an important year for the Church, which marks its entrance into the Americas with Colombus, and it is debating the canonization of Isabel and Ferdinand, Colombus' patrons, but also the patrons of the Inquisition and the Reconquista... it is interesting to see what will happen.
But, if the Church is "corrupt from top to bottom," as Michael Corleone noted in Godfather III , and tied in with organized crime, the international intelligence community, and shadowy groups with covert goals like P2 - then it is hard to see its power and prominence growing. From the Donation of Constantine to their role in the Dead Sea Scrolls investigation, there is much in the Church's very history that is suspect and scandalous. There are the prophecies of St. Malachy and Nostradamus which suggest that at the end of this century the Papacy may face its crisis moment, and possibly its own dissolution. When the full dimensions of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal become clear - and much of those millions are still unaccounted before - the Church may have much to answer for. The P2 revelation shocked the Church, because an 18th century Papal Bull said that Catholics who became Freemasons were to be excommunicated, and many of the names on P2's Masonic Lodge roster were bishops and archbishops! The distance of American clerics from the Vatican hierarchy, still largely a stomping ground for Italians and a few other Europeans, grows daily. The Vatican's concerted opposition to population control is making it difficult for developing nations to take measures to alter their birth rate, and causing some concern among American groups like Catholics for a Free Choice. As to whether the Church will move left, right, or into the ashbin of history, nobody knows for sure, but some momentous changes are in the wings.
Steve Mizrach, aka Seeker1 |
