The history of the Vatican Bank is fraught with scandal. How did the financial division of the biggest religious organization fall so far from grace?

Prologue: Should the Vatican have a bank at all? Can this bank invest money, provide loans, and charge interest? According to the Bible, no—and to this day there is still an official ban on interest. Unofficially, however, toward the end of the 19th century the Vatican started lending money to the Roman nobility—at interest. “Aside from the irony of lending the funds of the faithful to the very rich, it also indicates something else,” says journalist and author Fidelius Schmid. “The Church was no longer concerned about the prohibition on usury, which was cultivated through the centuries and forbids Catholics from accepting interest payments.” It was the start of one of the dirtiest stories in the history of the Catholic Church. For not only did the Vatican Bank, which was founded in 1942, abandon its Christian values, it also broke numerous secular laws—and was ultimately responsible for the death of many people.

It began with a deal with the devil. It had been Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, who laid the foundation for the creation of the Vatican Bank. On February 11, 1929, he and Pope Pius XI finalized a pact: The Church would recognize the fascist regime, which gave Mussolini such a strong boost in popularity that most Italians would later voluntarily follow him as he took Hitler’s side in World War II. In return, the Vatican was promised its sovereignty as an independent state—and received 1.75 billion lire. This money was taken care of by a Special Administration of the Holy See—with great success: Until the outbreak of World War II this Special Administration, which was headed by a genius financial adviser named Bernardino Nogara, increased the money twentyfold with speculative transactions and shell companies. Soon however, the simple tools of the Special Administration were no longer adequate. That’s because it was not prepared for major crises— and the biggest crisis that could be faced was World War II. Up next, a drama in five acts…

Mafia murders, Freemason conspiracies, and entanglement in the most powerful money-laundering cartel of the modern age: Since its inception, the Vatican Bank has been at the center of a number of unbelievable scandals. id presents the chronology of one of the greatest crimes in history, in five acts… “I’ve never seen anything like the abysses I peered into at the Vatican Bank.” Hermann Josef Abs, former chairman of Deutsche Bank