Word: vatican
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even though he had no background in finance, he was appointed secretary of the Vatican Bank in 1968 and became its president three years later. Said he at the time: "I have no banking experience, but I think I was chosen because of the organizational ability I showed when it was needed during the Pope's travels." Last October, Marcinkus was named to an additional job as chief administrator of Vatican City. He has been considered a sure bet to be elevated to Cardinal later this year...
Whatever the outcome of the current investigation, international financiers hope the scandal will prompt the Vatican to reform and open up the operations of its bank. Italian Treasury Minister Beniamino Andreatta has long urged the Vatican to conduct its financial affairs in pub lic. Says he: "As a Catholic, I am against this strange, secret, uncontrolled, scandal-filled administration." Andreatta and many Italian moneymen do not think that the Vatican should even be in the banking business. Says he: "It is silly for the clergy to manage directly a financial institution." The peculiar relationship between the Vatican and international high...
Within the guarded privacy of the Vatican, there are no better kept secrets than those concerning the workings of the Holy See's bank, the Institute per le Opere di Religione (Institute for Religious Works). In a church that is nearly 2,000 years old, the Vatican bank is a relative newcomer. Its main holdings go back to 1929, when the Italian government under Benito Mussolini paid $83 million to the Holy See as compensation for the loss of papal territory seized from the church in 1870 by the Italian republic. Much of that money was eventually invested...
...Vatican's assets began to grow, Francis Spellman, an American bishop then living in Rome, urged Eugenic Pacelli, the Vatican Secretary of State and later Pope Pius XII, to set up a modern stock portfolio to manage the funds better. After Pacelli became Pope, he decided to set up a bank. The IOR, established in 1942, served to shield some Vatican money from war-torn Europe...
Even a to council of 15 Cardinals appointed last year to find ways to make up the Vatican's operating deficit was given only scant information about the bank...