This is a chapter from a book I have that criticizes many of the popes before Vatican II. It is the source of a lot of my thinking.
regards,
the White Wolf
Chapter XXI: Follow the Money
The relationship between the Catholic Church and money has not been good, to say the least. In the letters of the Apostles, the description for monetary gain is less than flattering. Paul tells Timothy that Deacons are to be "in like manner chaste, not double tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre." He tells Titus that a bishop must "be without crime, as the steward of God: not proud, not subject to anger, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre." Further on, he tells the bishop about clerics "who must be reproved, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake." Likewise, Peter exhorts his bishops to "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking care of it, not by constraint, but willingly, according to God: not for filthy lucre's sake, but voluntarily." This poignant demonstration served the Church well for over a millennium. The Holy Rule of St Benedict prohibited his monks from taking any donations or gifts, and provided for the self sufficiency of his monestaries. Canon law likewise severely restricted the use of coinage by clerics from a very early date, and the average cenobite passed his whole life without ever so much as seeing a piece of gold or silver, much less handling one. For their part, the Church Fathers decried from their pulpits the crime of usary, the lending of money at interest, and the obligation in justice for the rich to succor the poor. So successful was their legacy that for over a thousand years after the Roman Empire collapsed, both the Empire of Charlamange and Byzantium enjoyed monetary stability unparalled anywhere else in the civilized world.
But when Marie Antoinette lost her head sometime after 1789, things were just never the same. The fingers of instability overran Europe to the point where Napolean Boneparte overran the Italian penninsula and had Pius VII cast into prison. The Congress of Vienna, during its deliberations from September 1814 to June 1815, put the continent of Europe back together and restored the Papal States, but it did not have any intention of restoring the status of Catholicism from before the French Revolution. Meanwhile, despite experiencing the sociological earthquakes of civil unrest, the clergy, rathering than pondering the words of Daniel and Elias, settled for a more intimate part in the mundane affairs of a Europe increasingly disjoined from its spiritual heritage. The results, as Our Lady of La Salette would point out about 1850, did not bode well for Holy Mother Church.
About this time, two interesting characters came to prominence in the Eternal City. Deacon Giacomo Antonelli, who would be created Cardinal but never ordained a priest, began his career in the courts of Rome. Sometime in the next five years he might have bumped noses with Marcantonio Pacelli, who, as a protégé of a clerical uncle, Monsignor Prospero Caterini, studied canon law and by 1834 had become an advocate in the Tribunal of the Sacred Rota, an ecclesiastical court involved in such activities as marriage annulments. While raising ten children (his second child being Eugenio Pacelli's father, Filippo, born in 1837), Marcantonio became a key official in the service of Pius IX. Meanwhile, Giacomo was rumored to be engaging in activities somewhat less illustrious, more in the tradition of pope Julian III. In 1840 Antonelli was appointed to head the civil affairs of the Papal States, and took control of the treasury, which was in dire shape due to the profligate spending of cardinals living as though Rome was still the center of existence. The first thing done was the institution of Peter's Pence, which took in some eight million pence a year, not exactly petty cash. But despite land grabs such as the "Leuchtenberg Operation", the Vatican version of the "enclosure movement", the public debt in 1848 was exactly 2,537,798 scudi, not exactly chump change.
That became a moot point, however, when Giuseppe Garibaldi's calvary came charging over the Palentine Hills, heralding the dawn of the "Roman Republic". In the chaos, Pius IX fled disguised as a parish curate and successfully crossed enemy lines and received asylum in Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples (Recall that at this time the Italian penninsula was not unified into the monolithic Masonic entity it is today, but was divided into some half dozen sovereign entities.) He was quickly joined in exile by both Pacelli, who became his legal and political adviser, and Antonelli. While Pius blustered about this affront to Papal dignity, Antonelli, incredibly enough, convinced the French to intervene on the pope's behalf. The French galleys were hardly sighted on the horizon and Garibaldi headed for the hills, and the "Roman Republic" collapsed in 1849. Pacelli was named to the "Council of Ten" and given the mission of clearing the way for a restoration of the evicted papacy in Rome. In 1851 he was named ministry of the interior of the newly reorganized papal states. (In 1858 he was enrolled in the "Nobili di Sant' Angelo in Vado, which greatly enhanced the prestige of the Pacelli family.) But while Marcantonio Pacelli was enjoying a meteoric rise into the ranks of the Vatican nobolity, what of Giacomo Antonelli?
He was about to embark on a checkered financial career that would do any Wall Street banker proud. The first thing he did was to inject adrenaline into Peter's Pence with appeals to bishops the world over. From 1850 onward donations averaged about 8 million lira a year. Next, he raised taxes in the papal states as high as the pitchforks of the peasantry allowed, and used the revenue as collateral for what might be termed a "home equity loan" from the Bank of Rothschild, a Jєωιѕн firm based in Greater Germany. For the astute reader, the plot has just thickened considerably. For the uninitiated, grab those tinfoil hats, and keep a sharp lookout for conspiracy theories.
Sometime after 1743, Mayer Amschel Bauer, an αѕнкenαzι Jєω, the son of Moses Amschel Bauer, a money lender and the proprietor of a counting house, began an operation of his own in Frankfurt. He called his establishment the "Red Shield", or "Rothschild", in German. To get an idea of how powerful this investment firm was to become, consider what he said in 1790: "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Barely decades later, in 1815, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, his son, said: "I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply." The international scope of this organization can be fathomed by the words of Gutle Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s wife. In 1849, just before her death she nonchalantly stated, "If my sons did not want wars, there would be none."
Concerning finances, the Rothschilds had just about as much integrity as a wolf pack during mating season. To cite but one example: When Wellington defeated Napolean at Waterloo, fast courriers brought the news to Nathan in England some two days before the general public was made aware by the mail services. Nathan used this advantage not merely to engage in insider trading, but to do a classic stock trading fraud, the "pump and dump", only in reverse. He spread rumors Napolean had won the battle. The British aristocracy, fearful of the financial future of the empire, dumped their stocks, which nathon bought for pennies on the dollar. When the truth became known, markets rebounded, and the Rothschilds made a fortune. (Moreover, the houses in Britian and France, respectively, loaned monies to both Wellington and Napolean, respectively, to the tune of handsome profits. One last tidbit: Napolean's Russian campaign was harauged not so much by winter weather but by supply difficulties on banker controlled railroads. His generals were defeated not by Cossacks but by more trivial matters such as a lack of bullets for the muskets of the infantry.)
So what are the angelic pastors doing consorting with the likes of these? That is an interesting question, but it might just explain why the French, who since 1789 had been striving to strangle the last priest with the guts of the last king, suddenly felt the need to send troops in support of the papacy. Let us continue to follow the money.
Back at Rome, in return for a promise by Pius IX to abolish the Jєωιѕн ghetto, the Rothschilds opened their purses with very generous terms. The Vatican took on a mortgage they had until 1901, over forty years in the future, to redeem. The pope went on a spending spree. In spite of his predecessor, Gregory XVI's attitude towards railroads, summed in the words "Chemin de fer, chemin d'enfer" (Road of iron, road to hell), Pius IX loved train rides. Over six hundred miles of track were laid. Despite this, Antonelli, now in undisputed control of the Vatican treasury, was able to consolidate all debts and balance the Vatican budget in 1857.
But the Papal States had a structural problem. To use an analogy, the Masons took all the pasturelands around the dairy farm leaving the pope the barn and the cows. To feed them he was going to have to buy hay, and lots of it. By 1862 the price of that hay was beginning to manifest itself in skyrocketing debt, despite installments of Peter's Pence. In response, he resorted to skulduggery that would do "Helicopter" Ben Bernanke proud. Taking a page from the playbook of the Roman Empire, he debased the Vatican Lira, a part of the Latin Monetary Fund, predecessor of the European Monetary fund. Under terms of a bilateral agreement, Belgian, French, and Swiss banks had to take Vatican copper and pretend it was silver. But when auditors abroad deduced that the Papal States, with a population of some seven hundred thousands, had as much coinage in circulation as Belgium, with a population over five millions, the wheels fell off that ploy. Banks abroad stopped accepting Vatican lira and the debt mushroomed to over 20 million lire.
But once again, this would become a moot point when the partisans of Giuseppe Mazzini, a mere deputy in the last uprising, once again charged over the hills and into Rome. While one of the seers of La Salette, Maximin Giraud, fought with the papal gendarmes against the soldiers of the Risorgimento, Pius IX locked himself in the Lateran Palace and declared himself a "prisoner of the Vatican". No foreign troops came to the rescue this time, and Vatican funds were confiscated along with Vatican goats and Vatican sheep. Not a proverbial stone was to remain on a proverbial stone. The newly created Italian Republic offered the pope a yearly stipend of about three million lira, but he refused it. After all, this was the man who just a few months ago had said to the representatives of the Risorgimento: "Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchres, and wanting in faith!" Theologically correct this certainly was, but not exactly good diplomacy. Moreover, he flunked clairvoyance: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!" Perhaps he should have paid more attention back in 1846 when he was informed about Mélanie Calvat, who, when writing the secret confided to her on the mountain by Our Lady, asked somebody to spell the word "Antichrist".
Meanwhile, Marcantonio Pacelli, who had been serving as Under-Secretary in the Papal Ministry of Finances and then Secretary of the Interior under Pope Pius IX from 1851, suddenly found himself unemployed in 1870. He managed just fine, however. His sons were all gainfully employed and then one of his grandsons, Ernesto, became a key financial advisor to Leo XIII. Acually, he had quite a storied career also being financial adviser to Popes Pius X and Benedict XV and the founder and president of the Banco di Roma from March 9, 1880 until 1916. Pacelli, furthermore, was a mole with the Italian government. Pacelli must have amassed quite a portfolio, because, in the panic following the outbreak of WWI, around April 1916, the bank's confidence crisis worsened to the pont where Pope Benedict XV authorized him, deeply indebted to the bank, to hand over 425,000 shares to the bank (purchased for 42.5 million lira but worth less than 15 million at the time), which had been held by him on behalf of the Administration of the Assets of the Holy See (ABSS); Gasparri then authorized Pacelli to hand over another 90,000 shares in return for the proceeds from the sale of Pacelli's villa.
The plot only thickens from here. Yet another Pacelli, Francesco became a lay canon lawyer and the legal advisor to Pius XI, in which capacity he negotiated the Lateran Treaty in 1929, discussed way back in these pages, and bringing an end to the "Roman Question". (At this point the reader might be interested to know that Filippo Pacelli, Eugenio's father, followed in his father's footsteps to the Sacra Rota Romana after becoming a Franciscan tertiary.) Meanwhile, with the proceeds from that treaty, a trifling 1.75 billion lira (about $100 million 1920 dollars) to layman Bernadino Nogara. This mysterious banker, through shrewd investing in stocks, gold, and futures markets, significantly increased the Catholic Church's financial holdings. The newly founded Istituto per le Opere di Religione (Institute for Religious Works), meanwhile, quickly became, to quote Alec Guiness in one of his more chivalric moments "A wretched hive of scuм and villany". Most Americans know this organization by a more generic term: The Vatican Bank.
To be fair, the popes did reinvest much of this money publishing Catholic periodicals. Marcantonio helped to found the L'Oberservatre Romano in 1871, along with Magazines in France. This was a tremendous fudiciary drain, to which his son Ernesto referred in the following quote: "The financial sacrifices which the Holy See has made for the [Catholic] press are only too well known: to date they have had almost entirely negative results." (That may have had something to do with Rome's softening towards profitable vernacular missals cited a few chapters ago.)
Meanwhile, to follow all the lurid details of the scandals the Vatican bank has been associated with would require a volume larger than this present work. But the following, dramatically presented, is interesting: "On the holiest of Jєωιѕн holidays, Yom Kippur, in the autumn of 1931, Guy de Rothschild walked through the massive street gate at 19 Rue Laffitte, for the first time as an adult on adult business. The day was chosen carefully, what others might perceive as the beginning of a banking career, to a Rothschild it was entering into a priesthood. At twenty-two, Guy was assigned letters to write. One of his correspondents was a Cardinal Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, then in charge of Holy office finances, and who kept a small account at MM de Rothschild Freres."
Eight years pass. Here are some better docuмented details: "Just one day after the death of Pope Pius XI, on February 10, 1939, Msgr Angelo Pomata stood in front of a cahier’s window at Religious Works. The cashier was Massimo Spada. Pomata was dispatched there by Eugenio Pacelli who, after the death of the Pope, assumed the charge of Chamberlain. Pacelli asked Msgr Pomata to deposit some money (Italian liras and dollars) found in a drawer of the Pope’s desk. Spada opened a bank account, to the name of "Segreteria di Stato– Obolo nuovi conti correnti".
Meanwhile, Nogara spun a web of financial investment and shady dealings that stretched across continents. The benefit was that the pope could extend aid to victims of the 2nd World War from Warsaw to Hiroshima. But the drawback was that the Vatican was actually financing the activities of pharasuetical companies developing contraceptives. Carlo Pacelli, papal nephew and general advisor of Vatican City State, questioned the prudence and even the legality of these investments and transactions with some Italian jurists. The question became a matter of jurisdiction. Were the activities of the Vatican Bank part of Vatican City State politics or could they be considered legally independent? The jurists concluded they could be considered independent. Consequently, on June 27, 1942, Pius XII rechartered the Vatican Bank as an entity with its own corporate identity.
Although this corporation was under a commision of five cardinals (or some might spitefully say because of this) the financial shennanagins increased exponentially, and litigation over some of its activities at this time persists to this day. To say the least, the Vatican under the pontificate of the Angelic Pastor became increasing entwined with the machinations of the European banking houses, and some of their initiatives, including real estate speculation, were indistinguishable from the latter. And right in the middle of all this, along with Carlo, were Giulio and Marcantonio Pacelli, also nephews of the pope.
Often, the sudden, surprising promotion of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini as Archbishop of Milan after he was literally shuffled from the precincts of the Vatican is discussed. Many have guessed that the spat between Pius XII and the future Paul VI was over the latter's secret correspondance with the Kremlin. This is pure speculation, but some believe it was rather because he uncovered sensative details concerning the activities of the three stooges mentioned above. Perhaps, just maybe, the Vatican was blackmailed: Montini insisted upon the promotion or he would spill the proverbial beans. The details await Judgment Day.
All of this is not to suggest that Pope Pius XII was a card-carrying member of a Masonic lodge, or interested in amassing a financial fortune. The second, especially, is ludicrous. But the same cannot be said of his family in general. How much they affected his outlook is a subject of pure conjecture. What is not conjecture is that all manner of shady activities multiplied during this pontificate, with no oversight whatsoever. Needless to say, all this activity was dragging the spotless Bride of Christ into the mire of the profane world. And that world was becoming more firmly aligned to the banners of Hell with each passing year, a hell whose representative sold God Incarnate for thirty pieces of silver.
Back in 1871, while Pius IX was making himself prisoner, an American General named, Albert Pike, (not the namesake of Pike's Peak, who was Zebulon) had been enticed into the Illuminati by Guissepe Mazzini. (It is a small world.) In his seminol work, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, he completes a military blueprint for three world wars and various revolutions throughout the world:
"The first world war is to be fought for the purpose of destroying the Tsar in Russia,as promised by Nathan Mayer Rothschild in 1815. The Tsar is to be replaced with communism which is to be used to attack religions, predominantly Christianity. The differences between the British and German empires are to be used to forment this war.
"The second world war is to be used to forment the controversy between facism and political zionism with the slaughter of Jєωs in Germany [While the number of those "slaughtered" Jєωs is a hotly debated historical topic, nobody will deny that hundreds of thousands of Jєωs died in the cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρs due to typhus and other diseases contracted during the "resettlement processes" of the nαzιs. And even if "the final solution" was pure fiction, the power of that myth is testimony to the strength of the Zionists.] a lynchpin in bringing hatred against the German people. This is designed to destroy fascism and increase the power of political zionism. This war is also designed to increase the power of communism to the level that it equalled that of united Christendom.
"The third world war is to be played out by stirring up hatred of the Muslim world for the purposes of playing the Islamic world and the political zionists off against one another. Whilst this is going on, the remaining nations would be forced to fight themselves into a state of mental, physical, spiritual and economic exhaustion."
On the Feast of the Assumption of this same year, Albert Pike wrote a letter (now catalogued in the British Museum) to Guiseppe Mazzini:
"We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism; the origins of savagery and of most bloody turmoil.
"Then everywhere, the people will be forced to defend themselves against the world minority of the world revolutionaries and will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitudes disillusioned with Christianity whose spirits will be from that moment without direction and leadership and anxious for an ideal, but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer brought finally out into public view. A manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism; both conquered and exterminated at the same time."
Pike, having been elected as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ's Southern Jurisdiction in 1859, was also somewhat of a theologian. Writing to his fellow Masons, he made this statement concerning ultimate reality:
"LUCIFER, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darknesss! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!"
If a person follows the money long enough, he will arrive at that same place, shown to the three shepherd children by Our Lady of Fatima.
Topic: Chapter from Desertmonk's book, Angelic Pastors? (Read 525 times)