ACT I WHAT’S REALLY BEHIND THE VATICAN BANK?

Before today, none of the cardinals even knew that this room existed. Behind heavy doors is a long table. At the head of the table sits a stout man with a beard. His expression is serious. Bernardino Nogara is akin to a treasurer at the Vatican— and what he has to say will change the Catholic Church forever: “Hitler will lose the war.” He warns something must be done fast so the Church’s treasures in Germany do not become the Allies’ spoils of war.

A few days later, on June 27, 1942, that something happens. Nogara convinces Pope Pius XII to phase out the Vatican Bank under the name Istituto per le Opere di Religione— transforming the innocent asset-management system of the Church into a shadowy network that branched off into more than 70 banks in only a few years. It was a brilliant move that made the Vatican Bank virtually invisible as a financial institution, which meant that even during the war large amounts of money could be moved across borders. At the same time, Vatican speculators proceed to undermine the global economy by investing billions in the purchase of blocks of shares. They use shell companies to hoard shares in the Generali Group insurance company, defense company Finmeccanica, auto manufacturer Alfa Romeo, oil giant Shell, General Motors, IBM, and the pharmaceutical company Serono (later one of the most important manufacturers of the birth control pill). But why bother with all this? The answer is camouflage. The special role of the Vatican Bank had long since stopped being a salvager of Church property— it had become a lucrative business model: the perfect tool to launder money for the Mafia around the world. However, the first sin of the “Bank of God” involved truckloads of Nazi loot appearing at its headquarters in Rome…