Pope Pius XII’s (1876-1958) actions during the Holocaust remain controversial. For much of the war, he maintained a public front of indifference and remained silent while German atrocities were committed. He refused pleas for help on the grounds of neutrality, while making statements condemning injustices in general. Privately, he sheltered a small number of Jews and spoke to a few select officials, encouraging them to help the Jews.
Protection against Satan and his witch-y minions was a hot commodity in early modern Europe.
By Gwynn Guilford
ReporterPublished January 24, 2018Last updated on July 24, 2018
In 1572, the killings began. That year, authorities in the tiny settlement of St Maximin, in present-day Germany, charged a woman named Eva with using witchcraft to murder a child. Eva confessed under torture; she, along with two women she implicated, were burned at the stake.
The pace of prosecution picked up from there. By the mid-1590s, the territory had burned 500 people as witches—an astonishing feat, for a place that only had 2,200 residents to begin with.
Why is it that early modern Europe had such a fervor for witch hunting? Between 1400 to 1782, when Switzerland tried and executed Europe’s last supposed witch, between 40,000 and 60,000 people were put to death for witchcraft, according to historical consensus. The epicenter of the witch hunts was Europe’s German-speaking heartland, an area that makes up Germany, Switzerland, and northeastern France.
The apparent suicide last month of an Italian financier known as ”God’s banker,” who was found hanged beneath London’s Blackfriars Bridge, has added to the mystery of a major Italian financial scandal in which the Vatican appears heavily involved.
The cost to the Roman Catholic Church could amount to several hundred million dollars. The scandal centers on some $1.4 billion in unsecured loans made in Latin America by Banco Ambrosiano, Italy’s largest privately owned banking group, and endorsed by the Vatican bank. It is sending shock waves through the world of international finance and raising questions about current efforts to regulate the foreign operations of multinational banks. Unusual Outside Inquiry
The Vatican’s ultra-secretive culture and dubious financial dealings have frequently mired it in scandal. We chart the most memorable
The Vatican’s finances have long been shrouded in mystery, but its involvement in a number of scandals over the last 100 years have shed some light on the city-state’s secretive dealings
The Vatican is exceptional in every sense of the word. The tiny city-state, surrounded by Rome, is the smallest state in the world by area and population, yet it wields a unique power over the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, by dint of the fact that it holds the seat of the religion’s church.
It is independent of, yet fully owned by, the Holy See, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope. It is, quite literally, a law unto itself.
By David Willey BBC News, RomePublished18 July 2013
image captionDespite his cheery exterior, the Pope is angry at the goings on at the Vatican Bank
When I first settled in Rome in the early 1970s, it was common knowledge among resident foreign journalists that you could get a much better exchange rate for the Italian lira from your dollars or pounds by visiting the Vatican’s own bank, situated inside a medieval tower next to the Apostolic Palace inside Vatican City.
So, showing my press pass, I climbed the stairs into this strange Holy of Holies, where the only other clients in the marble-lined banking hall were priests and nuns.
I wrote out a cheque, which the bank clerk cashed after checking my identity. He handed me about 10% more lira than if I had made the transaction in one of the commercial banks just down the street in Italian territory. I had just discovered my very own offshore fiscal paradise.
Thus began my short-lived but instructive introductory course into Vatican banking. A few months later, someone leaked what was happening and I could no longer gain access to the Vatican’s financial inner sanctum.
Behind Pope Benedict XVI is a porfolio of property that includes commercial premises on London’s New Bond Street. Photograph: Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis
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David Leigh, Jean Fracois Tanda and Jessica Benhamou, Mon 21 Jan 2013
Papacy used offshore tax havens to create £500m international portfolio, featuring real estate in UK, France and Switzerland
Few passing London tourists would ever guess that the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James’s Square and Pall Mall.
But these office blocks in one of London’s most expensive districts are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by the Vatican.
Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church’s international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.
How much real estate does the Catholic Church own? What are its equity holdings? These questions, and more, not answered.
TheStreet
Emily StewartSEP 22, 2015
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Feeling guilty about investing in “sin” stocks, like makers of guns, cigarettes and alcohol products? Don’t. Over the course of its history of investing, the Catholic Church has done much worse.
In the 1960s, Italian media uncovered evidence that the Vatican had invested in entities that conflict directly with the church’s holy mission, including Istituto Farmacologico Serono, a pharmaceutical company that made birth control pills, and Udine, a military weapons manufacturer. There have also been unconfirmed rumor of church money in firearms manufacturer Beretta and companies with activities in gambling and pornography. It has been linked to dealings with Nazi gold during World War II as well.
ABC’s documentary about a convicted paedophile priest is difficult to watch, but perhaps it’s necessary to bear witness
The inside of Ballarat cathedral. The ABC’s new three-part documentary Revelation sees journalist Sarah Ferguson interview criminal priests and brothers of the Catholic church in Australia. Photograph: ABC TV
Despite an extensive royal commission, scores of criminal trials and excellent books such as Louise Milligan’s Cardinal and David Marr’s The Prince, there are still some unanswered questions about child sexual abuse in the now-tattered narrative of the Catholic church in Australia.
These include: why did these priests do such horrible things? How did they justify their crimes to themselves and to God? What kind of conversations may they have had with, say, their archbishop or monsignor, once they were rumbled by a parent or teacher or victim?
The Vatican’s ultra-secretive culture and dubious financial dealings have frequently mired it in scandal. We chart the most memorable
The Vatican’s finances have long been shrouded in mystery, but its involvement in a number of scandals over the last 100 years have shed some light on the city-state’s secretive dealings
The Vatican is exceptional in every sense of the word. The tiny city-state, surrounded by Rome, is the smallest state in the world by area and population, yet it wields a unique power over the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, by dint of the fact that it holds the seat of the religion’s church.
It is independent of, yet fully owned by, the Holy See, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope. It is, quite literally, a law unto itself.
The Vatican’s relationship with the EU is complex. Despite being located within a central EU member country, the state is unable to join the union as it does not adhere to the Copenhagen Criteria.
These regulations, laid out by the European Council, dictate that candidate states must be free market democracies. The Vatican is an elective and ecclesiastical monarchy, with the only economic actor being the state itself.
Because the Vatican has published very little over the centuries about its finances and investments, most people don’t know how it makes money as a sovereign city-state with its own economy. The Vatican is located within the city of Rome, encompassing 110 acres with a population of under 1,000, which makes it the world’s smallest country.1 While the Vatican may be small in size, it has a large impact in the financial world with its far-reaching investments that include banking, real estate, and private enterprises.
