By Paola Totaro, The Australian, November 28, 2020

Cardinal George Pell shared his suspicions that up to €100m in ­unregistered cash owned by the Vatican could be hidden in foreign bank accounts at a secret meeting with Australian bankers in London’s financial district in 2016 — but four years later his questions remain unanswered.

In a new book citing confidential letters, documents and transcripts of private conversations between cardinals, Italian investigative journalist Gian Luigi Nuzzi recounts in detail the campaign of intimidation and psychological warfare unleashed by the Vatican’s old guard against attempts by Pope Francis and his German predecessor Benedict XVI to clean up the finances of the Holy See.

However, Nuzzi concludes unequivocally that Pell and ­Milone — who was hired on the basis that he work independently and report directly to the Pope, not to Pell — were targeted by nefarious forces even before they had properly commenced their work.

The intimidation included a Watergate-style break-in and the theft of a dossier of documents relating to the 1982 murder of the Vatican banker Roberto Calvi just weeks after Pell’s appointment as financial tsar. This was interpreted internally as a Mafia-style warning to busybody outsiders.

Nuzzi’s 835-page tome, The Vatican’s Black Book, documents more than 50 years of financial skulduggery by sections of the Roman curia to avoid proper scrutiny and accounting for the millions in cash donated by Catholics around the world each year.

The author, who was a recipient of the original Vatileaks scoop, charts the earliest attempts by Pope Benedict to reform the Holy See’s financial affairs through to the ousting in September of the Vatican kingpin Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

In a vast section titled Attacco Agli Uomini del Papa (Attack on the Pope’s Men), Nuzzi writes about the work undertaken by Pell and Libero Milone, the Vatican’s first auditor-general.

The Dutch-born former partner of multinational accounting giant Deloitte was later accused of spying, threatened with arrest by the Vatican’s Swiss Guard and abruptly dismissed by the now disgraced Becciu. All charges against Milone were later dropped without explanation and the book reveals that he is suing for damages to his reputation.

According to the new account, Pell flew to London in October 2016 and on his return to Rome called an urgent meeting with two of his most trusted advisers, Mil­one and Danny Casey, his ­former business manager of the Sydney Archdiocese. “The Ranger (Pell’s nickname in the Vatican) came right to the point, no preambles: ‘I’ve been in the City (London’s financial district) and I met with some friends, Australian bankers. They confirmed to me that there are important funds belonging to the Vatican which are still hidden in Switzerland. We need to find them and who controls them’,” Nuzzi writes.

“The information provided was credible but imprecise although one account cited allegedly contained €200m … although potentially a total of up to €7bn may be contained in the Lugano branches of two private banks.”

Nuzzi reports that Pell and ­Milone quickly requested papal permission to prepare a rogatory letter demanding formal legal ­access to documentation related to the funds. Pope Francis approved the request and a legal firm was immediately briefed to undertake the necessary paperwork in Switzerland. However, months passed and by Easter 2017, despite continuous requests, no documents were forthcoming.

As the days and weeks passed, Nuzzi writes, the Pell team began to fear that there had been an internal leak or security breach and that its legal move had been ­discovered and the transfer of documents stopped. “At the same time, Milone had made a written request to Apsa (the Vatican’s real estate arm) flagging that he planned visit offices which he had identified were black holes in accountability and did not properly document where rent money collected was held,” Nuzzi writes.

“Neither of these lines of inquiry by Pell or Milone have ever been concluded because both men were ousted from their positions … this is the ‘B’ side of the story, one that could have led directly into the Swiss vaults which would hold a literal treasure in dollars, euros and Swiss francs which are clearly owned by the Vatican but remain outside the orthodox flows of internal accounting and traditional international financial circuits and procedure.”

Nuzzi is by no means a Pell apologist and describes Pope Francis’s decision to appoint the cardinal as his finance tsar as flawed, particularly as he had full knowledge of the cloud of child sex abuse allegations against him at the time.

The book also spares no detail about the accusations made against Pell, from the earliest claims of cover-up of child abuse in Ballarat to the findings of the child sex abuse royal commission, his conviction of sex crimes against two choir boys and the High Court’s subsequent quashing of the verdict.

However, Nuzzi concludes unequivocally that Pell and ­Milone — who was hired on the basis that he work independently and report directly to the Pope, not to Pell — were targeted by nefarious forces even before they had properly commenced their work.

This included the professional break-in at the office of the Commission for Reference on the ­Organisation of the Economic Administrative Structure, the body established by Pope Francis the year before to conduct a full examination of the Vatican’s finances and propose reforms.

The theft happened on March 30, 2014, just weeks after Pell was appointed to his role. The thieves cracked several safes and stole less than €500 but also targeted one armoured cabinet among many dozens and took away a dossier of documents, part of a confidential archive held by COSEA. Scrutiny of CCTV cameras at ground level and the vast network of corridors beneath the palazzi showed nothing. No doors or gates were forced open and investigators ultimately concluded that the safe break-in and money theft was a set-up and the documents were the real target.

“This was not a random act. The thieves stole a part of the secret archive of the secret Pontifical Commission of COSEA. It’s a theft without precedent, an extremely grave action that could compromise the commission’s work,” Nuzzi says.

“The thieves knew exactly what they were looking for but why did they target those papers? The conclusion they came to internally was that this was a threat, a criminal signal — and not even a veiled one — to those who were working for change. Between the lines, the thieves were saying ‘We know where your archive is. We can get to it whenever we want. We know everything and everything is possible’.”

Nuzzi writes that the COSEA commissioners were deeply perturbed by the crime and that it ratcheted up the psychological pressure, layering it on top of the institutional pressure they were already experiencing.

“From that day, they felt vulnerable, observed, spied on. The theory that this was an intimidatory act was also accepted at the most senior levels when the news was relayed to the Pope and to Pell who had only been in his new post a couple of weeks.”

The climate of threats and fear- mongering was exacerbated a few days later when Pell’s private secretary, Melbourne lawyer Father Mark Withoos, was warned that his boss might be being followed. He raised the claim with security as required and also with Pell. who counselled “caution” and told him they needed “nerves of steel” and that a “psychological war” was under way that aimed to frighten and disorient them.

“He was told these were actions designed to distract those who were loyal to the Pope from the very real problems they were about to confront.”

However, the mystery would deepen further when an envelope was found in the pigeonholes used for mail distribution in the Vatican Prefecture. It was found on the morning of April 26, on the eve of a mass for the canonisation of John Paul II when thousands of pilgrims were expected to converge on St ­Peter’s Square and security in the Vatican should have been at its most stringent.

Inside, Vatican security found part of the dossier of papers stolen from the COSEA secret archive, most of them missives between key figures in the 1970 Vatican Bank scandal that resulted in the death of banker Calvi.

“In particular, the thieves seemed to have wanted to return confidential correspondence, dating back to 1970, between senior Vatican officials and the P2 ­Masonic fixer, Umberto Ortolani and the banker, Michele Sindona, including several letters from the latter to the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the time … these are names that are the cause of serious embarrassment to the Holy See.”

Sindona was the man linked to the most powerful and dangerous Cosa Nostra bosses active in the US in the 1960s, including Don Vito Genovese and John Gambino. The Sicilian fixer, along with Monsignor Paul Casimir Marcinkus and Calvi, had been a protagonist in one of the most troubled periods in the Vatican’s financial history. Calvi was found hanged under mysterious circumstances under London’s Blackfriars Bridge on June 18, 1982, while Sindona was found dead in prison on March 20, 1986 after drinking ­coffee laced with cyanide only a few days after being sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli, the liquidator of one of its banks. While investigators believed for many years that both cases had been suicides, Calvi was found to have been murdered six years after his death, although the accused were ultimately acquitted.

Nuzzi writes that within the Vatican, senior figures counselled against alarmism but queried and debated how this act should be viewed: “What message is contained in the return of these documents. Talking to friends (Maltese economist and Vatican auditor) Joseph Zahra describes it as an act of war while Pell tried to send messages of reassurance and to show that he has not been thrown by events.”

Indeed, in an interview some weeks later published in the Italian press, Pell — certainly in retrospect — appeared to offer a veiled reference to the theft, saying it was time to say “enough to scandals …. I am proceeding with perseverance. Nunc coepi (now I begin). We are moving ahead and we must improve but one thing is certain: we’ve had enough of Calvi and Sindona, enough with surprise news delivered in newspapers. We need transparency in finance, professionalism and modernity in methods. And honesty.”

This article first appeared HERE.