VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (United Kingdom)
John Hooper in Vatican City
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012
On the ceiling of the conference room in the Vatican bank, there is a big, round allegorical painting.
There is the Virgin Mary somewhat improbably wearing a papal tiara and holding a model of a church. There is another holy lady offering the mother of Jesus a gold plate laden with crowns, a gold chain and an honorific decoration. In the background, Neptune is emerging from the sea on a chariot, while in the foreground there is snake winding its way through a patch of mushrooms.
Baffled? Well, what did you expect? This is the heart of what, until Thursday, was the most secret building in the “city of secrets” – the premises of an institution that has attracted more speculation, suspicion and sinister insinuation than almost any on earth.
Addressing a restricted number of correspondents on the first-ever press visit to the Vatican bank, its managing director, Paolo Cipriani, could scarcely be expected to recall its involvement with Banco Ambrosiano – whose boss, Roberto Calvi, was found lifeless and dangling by the neck under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982 – or the claim by Holocaust survivors that the bank took in gold looted by wartime Croatian fascists. He merely alluded briskly to “that veil, that shadow that comes from the past”, and then plunged back into an account of the bank’s efforts to satisfy international requirements on transparency.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.