The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia [Hardcover]

Paul L. Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003

Based on his years of experience as a consultant for the FBI, Williams produces explosive and never-before published evidence of the Church's morally questionable financial dealings with sinister organizations over seven decades through today. For both Catholics and non-Catholics, this troubling expose of corruption in one of the most revered religious institutions in the world will serve as a serious call for reform.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Burdened by a lurid title, this is a short history of the politics and finances of the Vatican during the last hundred years. As in his Complete Idiot's guides to the Crusades and to the lives of the saints, Williams displays an ability to compress a great deal of information in a short, highly readable way. His main argument is that the current financial strength of the Roman Catholic Church as well as many of its problems began in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty, in which a financially besieged Pope Pius XI exchanged recognition and support of Mussolini's Fascist government for more than $90 million and the establishment of the Vatican as a sovereign state. Williams traces how the Vatican's new emphasis on financial stability led it into other morally questionable financial arrangements with Adolf Hitler, the fascist state of Croatia and reputed Sicilian Mafia financier Michele Sindona. He examines carefully the establishment and workings of the Instituto per le Opere di Religione, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, "an entity unto itself without corporate or ecclesiastical ties to any other agency within the Holy See." While parts of the book overlap with other recent works on the Vatican and the popes (especially on Pius XI's refusal to censure the brutal ethnic cleansing of Orthodox Serbs and Jews by Croatia's Ustashi regime), this is a surprisingly solid short look at the dubious financial dealings of the Vatican from the 1920s to the present.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

On February 11, 1929, Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini's government, affirming Il Duce and netting him the political capital necessary for a secure Fascist future in exchange for $90 million in cash, a new tax-exempt papal state on Vatican Hill, government salaries for Italian parish priests, and the promise of both power and financial security. With it was formed the Vatican's Special Administration of the Holy See, the cleric-free investment arm of the Vatican, in the care of Bernardino Nogara, financial architect of the German Reichsbank. Thus ended the church's long-standing ban against usury and began a tradition of financially rewarding Faustian relationships with some of the twentieth century's most unsavory elements, including Nazi Germany and the Sicilian Mafia. Williams, a church historian who has also done FBI consulting, also investigates the suspicious death of reformer John Paul I and the shadiness of business as usual under John Paul II. This is a jaw-dropping book for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and its straightforward manner and thoroughly documented evidence make it a compelling challenge for reform. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591020654
• ISBN-13: 978-1591020653
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > History > Europe > Vatican

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great history book, July 26, 2005

By 

Newton Ooi (Phoenix, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (Hardcover)

Growing up in America, one of my favorite topics in school was history, be it American, Western, or world history. Never in all those classes did I come across anything like the tales told in this book. The author is a historian of Christianity, and in this book he gives an inside history of the Vatican, with an emphasis on the 20th century. Specifically, he tells the facts that the Vatican would not like people to know. The major events covered in this book are:

1. The Vatican's treaty with Mussolini and the Fascist Party in Italy whereby the Vatican would get its own land and country from Italy. In exchange, the Vatican would support the Fascists publicly and privately. This occurred in 1929, I think.

2. The Vatican's agreement with Hitler in the 1930s whereby the Vatican would pressure Catholics in Germany to not oppose Hitler. In return, the Nazis gave money to the Vatican in the form of a church tax levied on German Catholics.

3. The Vatican covering up for some of its officials who took part in the Holocaust.

4. The Vatican helping Nazi scientists escape to the US at the end of WWII. In return, the Allies kept secret knowledge about the Vatican's complicy in the Holocaust and private arrangements with the Axis powers.

5. The Vatican aligning itself with the Mafia after WWII to help secure inroads into foreign governments, and get good deals on investments world-wide.

All in all, this was a very impressive book. It is quite short, and probably as easy to read as a Harry Potter book, though shorter than a Potter book. The book is written in chronological order, and there are a lot of references to various primary and secondary sources.

I highly recommend this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well done!, December 31, 2007

By 

Warren Greene (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (Hardcover)

In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I

I found this book quite intriguing from start to finish. Williams does a really good job of outlining the politicking that goes on in the Vatican from the prewar period to the present. It is a must read for those interested in what goes on behind the closed doors of the Vatican. The Two other must-reads in Vatican Intrigue are David Yallop's `In God's Name' and Lucien Gregoire's `The CIA and the Bolshevik Pontiff. Of all the books I've read - I've read them all - the latter does by far the best job of proving the Vatican's role in the holocaust and World War II as well as solving the mystery of the unwitnessed death of the 33-day Pope.

Murder in the Vatican: The CIA and the Bolshevik Pontiff

43 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Look at Vatican Corruption, June 19, 2004

By 

Charles J. Rector (Woodstock, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia (Hardcover)

During the late 1970's and early 1980's, the Vatican's finances were in the hands of Cardinal Paul Marcinkus. Marcinkus was corrupt and he placed the Holy See's investments in the hands of Roberto Calvi and Michele Sidona, both of whom were Mafia-connected bankers. Their corruption lead to the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982 and caused the exposure of one of the greatest scandals in Papal history.

Where it stays on focus on this scandal, Paul L. Williams's The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia is an excellent work. However, when it strays from this scandal into other aspects of the Vatican's finances, this book gets shaky. Williams simply bites off more than he can chew.

For instance, Williams calls the Vatican's financing of anti-Communist efforts during the Cold War a scandal. But is not sticking up for your fellow Catholics against atheistic dictatorship a fundamental duty of a church? Also, he attempts to link the Vatican to other financial scandals often without any real proof. In other words, he tries to make the Vatican out to be more corrupt than it really is.

Ths book is worth reading only as far as the Marcinkus scandal is concerned. After that, it becomes not much more than shallow sensationalism and bad reporting.