HAWII
Maui News
February 21, 2015 – Harry Eagar
GOD’S BANKERS: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, by Gerald Posner. 732 pages, illustrated. Simon & Schuster, $32
“God’s Bankers,” though lengthy is only a history of Vatican money and power in modern times, starting with Napoleon’s conquest of Rome.
The Vatican didn’t even have a bank until about 1930, when it needed one to manage an indemnity it collected from the Fascist government. In fact, until well into the 20th century, Roman Catholic doctrine condemned the charging of interest for loans, and the Vatican didn’t produce even pro forma budgets until after the Great War.
Which is not to say that great amounts of money didn’t flow through the Vatican, but they were managed like a the policy bets at a corner candy store. And I mean that in every sense.
Pius XI selected a skilled, prudent, unscrupulous layman, Bernardino Nogara, to manage the windfall, and he generated excellent returns, helped by using Vatican intelligence for insider trading and aided by a side business in helping Italians cheat on their taxes.
When war came, the Vatican Bank (formally the Institute for Works of Religion) did even better by helping the Nazis and Fascists rob and murder Jews and other non-Catholics. Gerald Posner’s heavily-annotated volume is more about power than money, and his chapters 7 and 8 are the best short summation I know for the actions and inactions of Pope Pius XII and most of the Curia in furthering the Holocaust. (The professional Roman Catholic defenders will squeal at this review — and are already squealing at Posner — but there is no longer any real controversy about the Church’s pro-Nazi role.)
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