Free In God's Name by David Yallop Page A

if the loans they granted to the diocese were totally free of interest.’
    Luciani then attempted to get the directors of Banca Cattolica to change the name of the bank. He insisted that for the word Catholic to appear in their title was an outrage and a libel on all Catholics.
    In Rome Pope Paul VI was made fully aware of the added burden that had been placed on the Veneto region by the sale of the Banca Cattolica. Giovanni Benelli urged the Holy Father to intervene but by then the sale to Calvi was already a reality. When Benelli argued for the removal of Marcinkus the Pope responded with an agonized helpless shrug of the shoulders but the fact that Luciani had not led an open rebellion left a deep impression on Paul. At the slightest opportunity he would proclaim the goodness of the man he had appointed Patriarch of Venice. In an audience with Venetian priest Mario Ferrarese he declared three times, ‘Tell the priests of Venice that they should love their Patriarch because he is a good, holy, wise, learned man.’
    In September 1972, Pope Paul stayed at the Patriarch’s Palace on his way to a Eucharistic Congress in Udine. In a packed St Mark’s Square the Pope removed his stole and placed it over the shoulders of a blushing Luciani. The crowd went wild. Paul was not a man to make insignificant public gestures.
    When the two men were being served coffee in the Palace he made a more private one. He indicated to Luciani that ‘the little local difficulty over finance’ had reached his ears. He had also heard that Luciani was trying to raise money for the creation of a work centre for the sub-normal at Marghera. He told Luciani how much he approved of such work and said that he would like to make a personal donation. Between Italians, that most voluble of races, much is often unsaid but understood.
    Six months later during March 1973, the Pope made Albino Luciani a Cardinal. Whatever his deep misgivings about the fiscal policies of the IOR, Luciani considered that he owed the Pope, his Pope, complete and unswerving loyalty. Italian bishops are in a unique position with regard to their relationship to the Vatican. Control of their actions is tighter. Retribution for any failure, real or imagined, is quicker.
    When Luciani was made Cardinal he was aware that Ottaviani and other Curial reactionaries, far from demonstrating total obedience, were in fact involved in a long, acrimonious argument with the Pope. They were quite simply trying to destroy any good that had flowed from the historic Vatican Council II series of meetings. Called upon to make a speech in front of not only the other new cardinals and the Pope but also Ottaviani and his clique, Albino Luciani observed, ‘Vatican Council I has many followers and so has Vatican Council III. Vatican Council II, however, has far too few.’
    Two months later during May 1973, Luciani found himself playing host yet again to a visitor from Rome, Giovanni Benelli. In general Benelli had come to assure him that the problems they had discussed the previous year had not been forgotten. In particular he had an extraordinary story to tell about the American Mafia, nearly one billion dollars’ worth of counterfeit securities and Paul Marcinkus.
    On April 25th, 1973, Benelli had received some very unusual guests in his offices at the Secretariat of State in Vatican City: William Lynch, Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering section of the US Department of Justice, and William Aronwald, Assistant Chief of the Strike Force in the Southern District of New York. Two members of the FBI had accompanied them.
    ‘Having met these gentlemen from the United States,’ Benelli told me, ‘I made my apologies and left them in the capable hands of three of my staff. They of course subsequently reported to me exactly what had taken place.’
    The secret FBI report that I acquired many months after my conversation with Cardinal Benelli confirmed that his account was veryaccurate. It also