The American adviser

Prof. Brzezinski, who would become security adviser to President Carter, attended the address that Cardinal Wojtyla gave in 1976 at Harvard University. Later they had tea and talked about Poland and the world situation. They also exchanged letters. Naturally, as part of his duty, Brzezinski represented the United States at the inauguration of the papacy of Karol Wojtyla. 

Two years later, the American adviser opened official dialogue with the Vatican. He did so through the Czechoslovak Bishop Joseph Tomko, who in 1985 would be named cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Nations. In the United States there were “sources of financing, equipping and organizational support, above all from American workers unions” for the cause of Solidarity, the new Polish movement.

Without revealing particular details, the adviser informed Tomko of a covert CIA operation, authorized secretly by Carter, to send anti-communist books and literature to East Europe, where dissident nationalism was flourishing.

The adviser and the bishop studied how to promote in Poland basic human rights (economic, political and religious) without provoking repression from the Soviets. This was the central point of the meeting between the Pope and President Carter on June 21, 1980 in the Vatican .

In December, 1980, the American adviser telephoned the Pope to warn him of the large concentration of troops on the Polish frontier. He asked that “the Pope  require his bishops be enlisted to convince governments of western Europe, with a great many Catholics, to support an ultimatum to the Soviets, that they be threatened with economic, political and cultural isolation if they intervene in Poland”. The Pope accepted. For their part, the soviets sent comrade Vadim Zagladin to Rome to report that for the moment thee would be no intervention [2] .

The collaboration between the United States and the Vatican grew closer with President Ronald Reagan. Almost all the men chosen by Reagan at the beginning of his administration for the most important foreign policy posts were Catholics: Casey, head of the CIA; Alexander Haig, Secretary of State; Vernon Walters, retired general and international envoy of the president; Richard Allen, national security adviser; also his successor, William Clark.  As for the rest, Reagan held on to Brzezinski as adviser for Poland, which involved direct contact with John Paul II.

Reagan searched by every means to establish tight links with the Pope and the Vatican: “I wanted them as allies,” he explained years later [3] .

By the spring of 1981, Casey and Clark were frequent visitors to the residence of the papal nuncio in Washington, Archbishop Pio Laghi. At the same time, Laghi entered the White House “by the back door” to have secret meetings with Clark, Casey and, later on, with the President. But, more than any other ecclesiastic, it was John Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia, of Polish origin, who informed the White House about the general situation of Solidarity, its needs and its relationship with the Polish bishops. He acted as intermediary between the White House, Poland and the Vatican.

Krol was situated as no one else to overcome whatever resistance that Wojtyla might have in establishing close ties with the American president: “The historical tie stemming from the anti-Marxist creed created between the United States and the Vatican, between a temporal superpower and a spiritual superpower, involved notable advantages for both sides, especially in relation to Poland and Central America” [4] .   

The CIA and the Vatican

Before leaving for Rome, on November 28, 1981, Vernon Walters went by car to Langley (Virginia) to meet with Bill Casey, head of the CIA.

Gen. Walters, creator of “coups d’état”,  died on February 10, 2002. It has been said of him, caustically: “He was possibly the one who helped the Holy Spirit elect Wojtyla, and could have taken part in the death of Luciani”, “the fall of the Berlin wall has been attributed to him (he was ambassador to Germany), which has been such a catastrophe for the world because it removed the last fetters on the Good Empire, which now has no problem being an Evil one, if it is convenient” [5] .

The visit of Walters to the pope took place in the framework of talks that Secretary of State Alexander Haig held with political leaders of the world. The right information would convince them of the fact that “security itself was threatened, whether by communists, terrorists, neighboring countries, internal opposition, Islamic fundamentalists, nationalist movements or liberation theologians”.

Besides, the United States could offer the Pope “something he probably wanted more than anything else”, said Walter, “the perception of having close relations and at top level with the most powerful country on earth” [6] .

On November 30, Walters arrived at the Vatican accompanied by William Wilson, head of the USA mission in the Vatican: “Holy Father, I bring you greetings from the President of the United States”. Walters opened an envelope that contained some photos taken by satellite: “The president believes that you should know what we are doing and why”. The Pope examined the photos: the shipyards of Danzig, heavy armament, military vehicles, troop transport facilities, tanks for Polish security forces, missiles programmed to reach the heart of Europe in a few minutes. Other photos showed successive movements of Warsaw Pact forces toward the Polish frontier from their barracks in the Soviet Union, East Germany and Czechoslovakia [7] .

Walters showed the Pope another photograph showing troops, Polish troops, inside Poland: “If the Soviets invade, there will be war. It will be a limited war and of brief duration, but a war”. The Pope did not doubt Walters’ view. Still, “according to indications in our power, it will be difficult for the soviet leadership to reach a consensus on the invasion”, the American added. After the slow bleeding from Afghanistan, some military chiefs would oppose a new adventure that could mean the loss of Russian lives.

Wojtyla nodded slowly in agreement. He knew his people. And the estimations of the CIA seemed to him a comfort. Walters briefly explained to the pope that the Reagan administration was already taking a series of measures to guarantee that Solidarity would continue receiving United States aid. He also said that recently he had made some visits to Latin America and Africa. The Pope asked him for an evaluation of the political situation in Argentina and Chile.

Walters commented that the United States wanted to favor a pacific and democratic transition in both countries, but it had to keep leftist groups aligned with Cuba and the USSR from taking advantage of the situation. The same could be said of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Liberation theology was spreading in the region. Both the United States and the Vatican would have to use its power to reduce the importance of the phenomenon.

The Pope asked Walter to speak at length to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli. Nevertheless, Casaroli had a very different view of the world and recommended prudence [8] .

Reagan and Wojtyla

On June 7, 1982, Reagan arrived at the Vatican to meet with the Pope, who would make the secret alliance between them more personal. On the one side, Reagan had strategic (and secret) power that the Vatican did not. On the other side, Solidarity was “an essential crack in the iron wall”, Poland and the Pope were “instruments that God had mysteriously chosen to shake up the world”. And so, Reagan was determined to help what he considered a holy cause and had ordered his staff not to skimp on material or intellectual sources to sustain it.

Reagan and Wojtyla commented that both, with a difference of six weeks, had been saved from assassination attempts to play a special role in the destiny of eastern Europe. At the same time, the two agreed that there was no reason to maintain the artificial divisions created at Yalta, at the end of the 2^nd World War. Europe was a unique reality. “There was something we had to do,” Reagan observed  many  years later, “Solidarity was the weapon at our disposal to do it” [9] .

During the meeting, Reagan proposed to the Pope that Walters and Casey visit more frequently, an offer that the Pope accepted immediately.

A day later, Reagan  announced in London the end of the Soviet empire: in eastern Europe there would be continual outbreaks against repression. Poland was an example, and the Soviet Union itself would not remain exempt from that reality. For Reagan, the communist block was on the border or ruin. Intolerable tensions were manifesting themselves in its interior.

The United States simply applied pressure on that ruinous system, in a way that the inevitable was anticipated. In the period between the visit of President Reagan to the Pope and the fall of the Berlin wall (1982.1989), the United States government invested more than 50 million dollars in sustaining the Solidarity movement.

In April of 1984 diplomatic relations were established between the United States and the Vatican State. For his part, Richard Allen, who was President Reagan’s security adviser, characterized the relation of Reagan with the Vatican as “one of the great secret alliances of all time” [10] .

Poland and East Europe

“It was a very complicated situation”, says Pío Laghi , then apostolic delegate in Washington. “The aim was to insist on human rights in Poland, on religious freedom, and at the same time keep Solidarity alive without ultimately provoking the communist authorities” [11] .

Private contacts of John Paul II with the Soviets created in Moscow a sensation that “the Pope strived for a moderate evolution – and not a confrtontation – in Poland” [12] .   

On January 13 of 1987, John  Paul II and General Jaruzelski met in the Pope’s office. It was not their first meeting. Furthermore, they corresponded privately.

In the course of that conversation Jaruzelski mentioned Gorbachev and thus  “for the first time, brought the Pope into contact with Gorbachev, although without his physical presence”. Says the Polish general: “In a simple way, because of my position in the politics of the time, I became, one can say, the extra-official channel and bearer of certain opinions of Gorbachev to the Pope and the Pope to Gorbachev. I could speak to each one of them about my evaluation of their respective personalities in the most constructive way. I told that Pope what I knew of Gorbachev and the role that he was carrying out, of what his intentions were, of what difficulties he found, of the importance of supporting him, of how to understand him and what a great opportunity this was for Europe and the world... although not everything was happening as wished. And on speaking to Gorbachev I tried to transmit the Pope’s opinion, for which he was very interested” [13] .

If in Poland, the Vatican’s intervention had a moderating function, that was not the case in the difficult moments of the declaration of independence of Slovenia and Croatia, nor before that: “As with the orthodoxes, leaders of the Catholic Church have shown secular behavior of affirmation-exclusion in earlier moments throughout history” [14] .

Prof. De Diego García of the Complutense University of Madrid says that the German attitude would be decisive: “From the beginning of the political process in Slovenia and Croatia, and especially starting with independence declarations, German public opinion was decidedly in favor of the secession of the two republics”, “according to the Germans, Croatia and Slovenia should not be denied the right of auto-determination. The same attitude defended by the Vatican. However, this prerogative should not be extended to the Serbs of Croatia or of Bosnia in the political view of Bonn and the Catholic hierarchy” [15] .

At the end of 1991, the Vatican took an unusually rapid decision of serious consequences, the diplomatic recognition of two new Catholic states in Europe, Slovenia and Croatia. The Vatican move has been considered as “partially responsible for the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation, with which the Holy See maintained normal diplomatic relations, and even of the war which this independence decision had given impulse in a fatal and predictable form” [16] .

Another matter: the action caused perplexity and scandal. On October 3, 1998,   John Paul II beatified the Archbishop of Zagreb, Alohzije Stepinac (1898-1960), who from the beginning was in agreement with the general objectives of the fascist regime of Ante Pavelic (1941-1945). As he wrote in his diary, Stepinac believed that Pavelic was “a sincere Catholic”. The Cardinal held a dinner for the dictator and other Ustachi (those who rebel) leaders. The same day that 250 Serbs were massacred in Bjelovar, a pastoral letter was read in the pulpits in which Stepinac called on the clergy and the faithful to collaborate with the dictator.

A great deal has been said of Stepinac and his later protests against the persecution and killings. The archbishop wrote a letter to Pavelic about conversions (forced) and massacres. As other bishops, he spoke enthusiastically of the mass conversions: “There was never a more splendid occasion as now to help Croatia save uncountable souls”. He deplores the narrow views of the authorities that attack even the converted and “they hunt them, as if they were slaves”. He points to massacres known to mothers, girls, children less than a eight years old, who are taken to the mountains and “thrown live …to profound depths”.

The bishops (some seated in the Croatian parliament) support the forced conversions and show themselves incapable of keeping a critical distance from the regime. Frequent broadcasts of the BBC sound the alert over the situation in Croatia. For example, this one of February 16, 1942: “The worst atrocities are being committed around the archbishopric of Zagreb. Rivers of blood flow through the streets. Orthodox Christians are being converted by force to Catholicism, and we don’t hear the voice of the archbishop opposing it. It is reported that, on the contrary, he participates in Nazi and fascist parades” [17] .

French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant told Nicola Russinovic, Croatian representative in the Vatican, on March 6, 1942: “I know that Franciscans themselves, for example Fr. Simic de Knin, have participated in the attacks against the Orthodox population, destroying their churches, as was done with that of Banja Luka. I know that the Franciscans of Bosnia and Herzegovina have behaved in an abominable way, and that hurts me. Such actions should not be committed by educated, cultured and civilized people, and much less by priests”. A few days later, on March 27, Tisserant told Russinovic that, according to German estimates, “350,000 Serbs have disappeared” and that “in one single concentration camp there were 20,000 Serbs” [18] .

The figures are almost unbelievable. According to recent recounts, 487,000 Orthodox Serbs and 27,000 gypsies were assassinated between 1941 and 1945. Furthermore, some 30,000 of the 45,000 Jews: “Priests, always Franciscans, participated actively in the massacres” [19] . It was a campaign of “ethnic cleansing”, an attempt to create a “pure” Catholic Croatia through forced conversions, deporations and massive exterminations.

On May 18, 1941, Pope Pius XII received Pavelic, the Ustachi leader of Croatia, in the Vatican, at a time when the program of genocide against the Orthodox Serbs was being carried out [20] . Furthermore, in 1943 the Pope “expressed his satisfaction with the personal letter that he had received from our poglavnic (leader)” [21] . 

In 1946, Archbishop Stepinac was tried as a collaborator in the extermination  of political enemies carried out by the fascist regime of Pavelic. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but under pressures from the United States, the penalty was reduced to house arrest. The government of Tito suggested to the Vatican that Stepinac be transferred to Rome because several charges against him could result in life imprisonment. The Vatican kept him in Croatia and, moreover, named him cardinal [22] . And now John Paul II beatifies him.

Latin American Dictators

From the beginning, the Reagan administration decided that the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, of Marxist inspiration, should be overthrown. To achieve this objective, the CIA financed the Contra army, four thousand men in large part aligned with the old Somoza oligarchy, ousted by the Sandinistas in 1979 after nearly forty years of dictatorship propped up by the United States.

However, in December of 1982, President Reagan found himself obliged to allow passage of a law that prohibited the CIA and the Defense Department from providing arms, training or aid to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Nevertheless, the CIA and the president looked for other ways to finance and aid the Contra.

The Swiss bank statements of Oliver North show that the White House paid millions of dollars to the secret agent Monzer Al Kassar to deliver arms to the Contra. That raised a contradiction: a top North American official involved in illegal arms traffic with a secret agent considered one of the most major drug dealers

Since the Reagan administration could not operate freely in Nicaragua, the role of its principal moral and political ally in the zone, the Catholic Church or, as it was known by the Cia, the Entity, became even more important. But in Nicaragua there was also the so-called people’s Church, allied with the Sandinistas and with a  strong popular base, above all among the poor. So “in 1981 the CIA began secretly funding the top hierarchies of the institutional Church”.

The Sandinistas accused the Archbishop of Managua Miguel Obando y Bravo (who in former times had cautiously supported their movement as the only way to counteract the Somoza oligarchy) of being a paid CIA agent. He strongly denied the accusation. Although Obando was not its agent, the CIA came to consider him one of its principal resources, anxious as he was, after the election of Wojtyla, to cooperate with American efforts to discredit the Sandinistas.

Admiral John Poindexter, then deputy chief of the National Security Council, says: “We kept the bishops informed about what for us were the intentions of the Nicaraguan government and leftist organizations in El Salvador (another country where the bishops of the institutional church received funds). In Nicaragua this was done directly through the bishop”.

In early 1981 it was discovered in the congressional intelligence committee that at least 25,000 dollars of CIA funds had been delivered to the Obando diocese. Fearing that the matter would become public and a discredit to the Vatican and the United States, it was reported to William Casey, the CIA chief, who took charge of ending that funding.

Still, immediately after, Casey ordered Alan D. Fiers to find another way to do it. Fiers went to the White House, to Lt. Col. Oliver North, member of the National Security Council, who gave him thousands of dollars so that financial aid to the Church would not be interrupted: “It is not known how many hundreds of thousands – or perhaps millions – of dollars arrived secretly to the Entity during the Reagan administration years, but the Church of Wojtyla became in that period the principle ideological ally of the American government in the struggle against the Sandinistas”.

The Church of the people enjoyed the support of a large part of the population: “Fearing that the popular church could be an antagonist too strong for United States interests in Central America, above all in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Casey and William Clark insisted that the Pope visit Nicaragua. They suggested it to Pío Laghi, pontifical representative in Washington, that the Pope show his unequivocal support of the bishops against the popular Church”.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, UN ambassador in Reagan’s time, says: “We had a common interest in discouraging a communist bridgehead in this hemisphere. The Pope is profoundly anti-communist and during the Reagan administration he had a global vision of communism similar to ours. The question of the popular Church was a major problem”.

The Pope arrived in Managua on March 4, 1983. The Sandinista junta, led by Daniel Ortega and legitimized by popular elections, had begun a vast program of social reforms: free health service, a literacy campaign, agrarian reform, housing.

Daniel Ortega said in his initial greeting to the Pope that revolutionaries can be believers, he attacked the Reagan administration policies and recalled the bitter history of the seven U.S. military interventions in his country. At the same time he denounced the deaths of 375 Nicaraguans in the previous three years from external aggressions; among them, seventeen young people assassinated by the Contra and buried barely two days before.

John Paul II responded that he wished to contribute to an end to bloody conflicts, the hate and sterile accusations, in order to leave room for genuine dialogue.

Later, at the celebration of mass, John Paul II attacked the popular Church and ordered the faithful to obey their bishops. He made no reference to the political situation of the country nor mentioned the implication of the United States or the war of the Contra. When  the Pope launched into another attack on Marxism, emphasizing that the Church should be free of ideological distortions, the young Sandinistas in charge of maintaining order began to shout: “Power to the people!”. The zone closer to the altar responded: “One and only Church!”. And other voices replied: “Church of the people!”. John Paul II defined the episode as a profanation of the Eucharist.

President Reagan and his team could breathe easy. The commitment of the Pope to a line in accordance with the interests of the White House was assured. In El Salvador, Costa Riva, Guatemala and Haiti, during the following week, John Paul II stuck to an anti-Marxist line, avoiding whatever would disturb the Reagan administration

A very different trip was made two years later by Pedro Casaldáliga, Bishop of Sào Félix do Araguaia, in the state of Mato Grosso (Brazil). From July 28 to September 21 of 1985 he was in Nicaragua to join the fasting of Miguel D’Escoto, priest and Nicaraguan Foreign Minister. On July 27 he released a communiqué, with the list of 23 bishops and more than 200 entities and personalities who adhered to his gesture of solidarity.

Casaldáliga is on a pilgrimage for peace, for the non-intervention in Nicaragua and in Central America, for the self-determination of those nations. To awaken the conscience of the First World to the drama and the violated rights of Central America and of all the Third World. To become involved in the co-responsibility and in the credibility of the Church of Jesus in that martyrized Central America and in all Latin America” [23] .

When the Bishop arrives, the Contra killed eight mothers who were going to the mountain bearing food for their sons in combat. “Before killing them…, a some of them, declared the survivor Nubia Vargas, they grabbed them, raped them and later cut off their legs, they destroyed them”.

At the funeral, with the caskets next to the altar, Casaldáliga tells the people: “I bless you with the blood of Jesus and with the blood of these mothers who I declare resurrected”.  In the afternoon he holds another funeral for thirty soldiers fallen in the flower of youth.

On July 30, Casaldáliga writes to the president of the Nicaraguan bishops, Miguel Obando y Bravo: “My attitude might be seen as conflictive, it is for me also. Always the Kingdom’s causes provoke us to ‘violence’. My intention, in any case, is sincerely evangelical”.

The same day, the Secretary of the Nicaraguan Episcopal Conference signs a message to the president of the Brazilian bishops, Ivo Lorscheider: “The bishops of Nicaragua believe that the ecclesiastic charity and communion is seriously damaged when some bishops of Brasil speak or act ignoring the authority of the Nicaraguan episcopate. ”

“The Nicaraguan bishops,” says Casaldáliga, “could – and should – keep its distance, evangelically critical, from the revolutionary political process. I believe, however, that they cannot avoid openly condemning the imperial aggression of Reagan”.

That is what Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, Archbishop of Sao Paulo, did in a letter to his dear friend Miguel D’Escoto, dated July 23: “I greatly respect your decision to join this fast inspired by your priestly conscience in the face of the reality of death and destruction that exists in Nicaragua as a consequence of the war of aggression that the United States has declared on us”.

Bishjop Casaldáliga received a visit from Daniel Ortega and a few other commanders: “If anyone saw me with you people,” the bishop joked, “they would certainly be scandalized… In any case, if the Pope can meet with Reagan, I can meet with you”.

At the International Court in The Hague, Nicaragua filed a complaint against the Reagan administration. Abram Chayes, a law professor at Harvard University, charged in The Hague that the United States government “conceived, created and organized” the mercenary forces of the Contra. However, the United States served notice that it did not recognize the jurisdiction of the court.

On November 28, Sergio Méndez Arceo, bishop emeritus of Cuernavaca (Mexico), and Pedro Casaldáliga write a joint letter to Cardinal Obando y Bravo, Archbishop of Managua:

“We do not find it honorable – and we believe it holds serious consequences for the future of our Church – to treat pejoratively as a parallel people’s Church and at the service of Communism all those Christian communities with their pastoral representatives - laymen, priests and nuns – and with Pastoral centers so highly and efficiently prepared. The sincerity, at times heroic, of so many brothers who form those communities and the many martyrs who, in those communities of Nicaragua and all Central America, who have already spilled their blood will judge us one day” [24] .

Finally, Bishop Casaldáliga makes some important points:

-          The truth is on Nicaragua’s side. Nicaragua is the victim: of the North American policy of Reagan.

-          “A Christian can also be a Marxist, as long as he doesn’t make Marxism his philosophy of life and uses, makes relative, Marxist analysis and prospective.”

-          “I can walk with Marx, as a companion, but the Way for me is Jesus Christ” [25] .

Commenting on these things (at the home of Jesús Martín, on August 29, 2001), we come across a passage of the prophet Exekiel that seems significant to us and which we cannot keep silent: And as for you, depraved and wicked prince of Israel, whose day is coming when your life of crime will be ended, thus says the Lord God. Off with the turban and away with the crown! Nothing shall be as it was; up with the low and down with the high! Ruin, ruin, ruin will I leave it, as never before, until he comes who has the claim against the city, and to him I will deliver it” [26] .

“Guatemala is a prolonged martyrdom, prohibited to international public opinion,” Casaldáliga denounces. “We have heard of El Quiché, of the policy of scorched villages. But what is ignored or passively forgotten is the drama of authentic extermination that sweeps across the country”, “80 per cent of cultivable land belongs to 2 per cent of the population”, “in Guatemala United States private investment is the highest in all of Central America” [27] .

At the end of February, 1999, the report Guatemala, Memory of Silence attributes the disappearance of two hundred thousand people to the Armed Forces. The document affirms that the doctrine of National Security and of anti-communism, promoted by the United States in Latin America, were the causes of the internal war in Guatemala [28] .

In El Salvador, Bishop Oscar Romero had been assassinated in 1980 on the instigation of Salvadoran military secret services because he was opposed to the brutality of the regime. The Pope praised him as a “zealous pastor”, but not a martyr. Juan Arias says that Wojtyla became irritated with him during the first Latin American visit because he spoke of the martyrdom of Bishop Romero: “That remains to be proven” [29] . On various occasions Msgr. Romero referred to the conversation that for him had led to the death of the Jesuit Rulio Grande, who was assassinated on March 12, 1977 [30] . In 1989, Ellacuría and five other Jesuits would be brutally killed, but they are not the models of sainthood that the Vatican envisions. Says John Sobrino: “If you reflect on why they killed the Jesuits and two ordinary women who symbolize the entire Salvadoran and Latin American people, you will understand also how they lived, how they worshipped, their hope and their commitment”, “the theology of liberation continues to be necessary, because Christianity must respond today with credibility – and theologically with reason – to the question that is the oldest and most recent: How do we tell the poor of this world that God loves them?” [31] .

At the beginning of May, 1979, Archbishop Romero was in Rome. After many days of waiting, he was granted a brief audience with John Paul II. Msgr. Romero presented the Pope with a dossier documenting the systematic violations of human rights in El Salvador, including the assassination (then recent) of the priest Octavio Ortiz and four young people of his oratory. John Paul II told him: “Don’t bring me many pages, I have no time to read them… And besides, try to keep in  line with the government”. Msgr. Romero left his audience crying: “The Pope did not understand me, he cannot understand, because El Salvador is not Poland” [32] .

According to Robert E. White, American ambassador in El Salvador who was replaced by Reagan in 1981, Reagan hid evidence of the assassination of Msgr. Romero. His government kept secret for three years the evidence that it had about the plot and knew the names of the Salvadorans who lived in Miami and controlled the so-called “Death Squadrons” with funds, dirty money and other support [33] .

Instead of defending the cause of Msgr. Romero (and of so many Latin American martyrs), John Paul II establishes diplomatic relations with the United States (in April, 1984) and maintains with Reagan “one of the greatest secret alliances of all time”. In  September of 1987 John Paul II made a second visit to the United States. The trip began (precisely!) in Miami, where he is received by President Reagan and by the United States ambassador to the Vatican, Frank Shakespeare, who is said to be a member of the Opus Dei and a Knight of the Order of Malta. Apparently, the American administration paid the expenses of the trip, whose cost reached 7,000 million pesetas, some 42 million euros.  

The visit of John Paul II to Chile in April of 1987 was part of a strategy to support a pacific transition to democracy in different Latin American countries. The Pope wanted to guarantee, wherever possible, the political hegemony of Democratic Christian or center-right parties, which matched exactly the vision of Reagan.

In Chile there were contacts to negotiate an agreement according to which Pinochet would call president elections or a referendum. It was part of the future agreement (reached in 1989) which would guarantee immunity to Pinochet for the crimes of his regime and leave him at the head of the armed forces.

Wojtyla favored this strategy and named Juan Francisco Fresno Archbishop of Santiago. Cardinal Fresno was much more diplomatic than his predecessor Cardinal Silva Henríquez, a brave critic of the regime and defender of the victims. Silva Henríquez had created a vicariate of solidarity that gave material aid and legal assistance to people persecuted by the dictatorship and to the families of the missing.

When John Paul II arrived in Santiago the first of April, Gen. Pinochet boasted about having saved the country from terrorism and atheist and Marxist violence. The Pope wished for a a victory of forgiveness, of mercy and of reconciliation.

            In a meeting with leaders of the vicariate of solidarity, which presented him with an album of photos of 758 missing people, the Pope declared: “The missing detainees are always in my heart!”. But during the six days of the visit he mentioned them only in passing and cited only once the torture in Punta Arenas, 650 kilometers from the capital.

            John Paul II was the second chief of state (after the president of Uruguay) to visit Pinochet at his official residence, the Moneda Palace, where in 1973 President Salvador Allende was assassinated. When the general invited the Pope to come out on the balcony to receive the greeting of the regime’s supporters, John Paul II accepted. Clearly satisfied, Pinochet prayed with the Pope in the palace chapel [34] . Several years later, in 1994, Cardinal Sodano would send an enthusiastic letter with a dedicated photo of the Pope to Gen. Pinochet on the occasion of the celebratation of his golden wedding anniversary [35] . But the attentions of the dictator would not end there.

The Vatican took “a diplomatic step” in favor of Gen. Pinochet, held in London on October 16, 1990, for crimes against humanity committed during the repression of the dictatorship. The Vatican spokesman wanted to clarify that the initiative was carried out “at the request of the Chilean government”. As was learned later, it was made from the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano, who was nuncio in Santiago de Chile between the years 1978-1988 during the military dictatorship, explained later that the measure was taken “for humanitarian motives” [36] .

Recently, the publication of several documents tie the United States to the coup d’etat against the Socialist Salvador Allende. Among the documents is a memorandum from the then National Security adviser Henry Kissinger to President Richard Nixon which speaks openly of “a clandestine plan of action”. President Nixon gave the order to “do all possible” to overthrow Allende [37] .

The testimony that retired General Joaquín Lagos Osorio gave on National Television shocked Chileans. In October of 1973 this high former officer was in charge of the Army’s First Division, with headquarters in the city of Antofagasta. In that zone 56 political detainees were arrested on the order of a high general who went to the north of Chile as a special emissary of Pinochet. Before the television cameras, Gen. Lagos expressed his sorrow for the massacres carried out in Copiapó, Calama and Antofagasat and insisted that Pinochet is the principle responsible for those acts.

Lagos gave details of the state of the bodies of those executed at the moment they were handed over to the families: “I was ashamed to look at them. They were badly mutilated. And so I wanted to make them presentable, at least leave them in a human form. Yes, they cut out their eyes with knives, they smashed their legs… At the end they delivered the final blow. They were merciless… They killed them in a way that brought a slow death. That is, at times, they shot them by parts. First, the legs; then the sexual organs: after that, the heart. In that order they fired the machine guns” [38] .

Lagos went into retirement in 1974, a few months after the killings in the north of Chile.

The words of condemnation against the violence that John Paul II had not publicly declared in Chile under the yoke of the dictatorship were pronounced in a country that had just returned to democracy: Argentina. On his arrival on April 6, 1987, he told Raúl Alfonsín, the first democratically-elected president after the end of military dictatorship (1976-1983), that human rights should be guaranteed “also in times of extreme conflict, avoiding the frequent temptation to respond to violence with violence” [39] .

Under the Argentine military dictatorship the bishops were deeply committed to the military regime: “The night before the coup d’etat of March 24, 1976, former Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla and members of his military junta who ran the dictatorship met with the top hierarchy of the Catholic Church of the time before initiating, with their blessing, the dirty war of illegal repression that led to the kidnapping, torture, killing and disappearance of some thirty thousand citizens, among them 200 babies born in captivity” [40] .

The armed forces chaplain, Bishop José Miguel Medina, still in his post on the arrival of John Paul II, had in the past even justified torture. The clergy had also kept silent when Bishop Enrique Angelelli, an annoyance to the regime, died in an accident that, according to many, was provoked.

            During the Pope’s visit the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, denounced Bishop Medina and those who “had remained silent when , with the excuse of defending Catholic civilization, the dictatorship had massacred the people”. However, the Pope did not say a single word about the commitment of the Church with the military and did not want to meet with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who had seen their loved ones disappear. In the address to the bishops he even seemed to defend implicitly their behavior: “I know of your trying interventions that saved lives”. Only on the last day of his visit to Argentina did he insert a brief allusion to the missing in a talk to young people.

Some years later, María Ignacia Cercos, wife of the missing journalist Julián Delgado, denounced in the daily Página 12 that “the Apostolic Nuncio (in Argentina) Pío Laghi (1974-1980) knew everything that happened in the Mechanics School (of the Navy, one of the principal torture centers located in Buenos Aires), could check the names of those who were kidnapped, and the Commander in Chief of the Navy, Armando Lambruschini, consulted him about whether he should spare the lives of a group of missing people that he had received from Massera – admiral and ex-member of the of the dictatorial military junta – on taking up his position” [41] .

Emilio Mignone, father of the missing Mónica María Candelaria, would be the next witness: “I saw Msgr. Laghi three times. On the first occasion he told me that er were in the hands of a government of criminals. I mentioned these words to Adm. Massera when I went to see him about the disappearance of my daughter and the admiral answered me: “I’m surprised that Laghi spoke that way: I play tennis with him every fifteen days”. The second time, Msgr. Laghi expressed more discreet opinions, and the third time – finding himself then in the United States, outside of Argentina – he told me that he had acted out of great fear” [42] .

At the present, Pio Laghi is prefect emeritus of the Congregation  for Catholic Education, patron of the sovereign military order of Malta, and member of the council of cardinals and bishops of the Secretary of State.

Another testimony. He is called Elías and requests that his name be withheld. He is Argentinean, son of a missing father. He knows from a naval official, tormented by his past, how his father’s life ended. They took the detainees to jails at the Navy’s  School of Advanced Mechanics (ESMA), tortured them and hours later they ended up in the Atlantic. Before embarking, a chaplain spoke to the condemned. He spoke to them of God and the need to separate the wheat from the chaff. A few meters away an autobus with its windows darkened awaited them. In its interior, handcuffed and half naked, two dozen young people were attended by nursing staff dressed in white robes. The condemned received a sedative injection and, once it took effect, the chaplain got on the bus. One by one he made the sign of the cross on the forehead and in the name of God forgave their sins. The military official identified the chaplain (Fr. Andrés, with two gold teeth) and the place where he practiced his ministry: Valparíso (Chile), Magdalena district, the Church of El Carmen.

That Sunday the 11:00 o’clock mass was filled. Elías had the chance to see for the first time the man who had made the sign of the cross on the forehead of his father before he was thrown into the ocean. The priest spoke of God and his compassionate nature. The mass ended and Elías went into the sacristy. He said good morning and, without waiting for an answer, said he was from Buenos Aires. He added that his father had been held in the ESMA. The priest went pale and fixed his eyes on the bare hands of the man before him. There was an instant of silence. Fr. Andrés shook his head and muttered something about never having been in the ESMA and that he had been many years in Chile. He repeated this over and over. Sweating, he speak for eight or ten seconds, and Elías could see the two gold teeth inside his mouth. That was enough [43] .  

On January 15, 1992, the Vatican made news by naming Lorenzo Baldassari as nuncio in Haiti when the country was under the control of Gen. Cedras, author of a coup d’etat in September of 1991. The coup had obliged the legitimate president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first to be democratically elected (in December of 1990) to go into exile. The Vatican was then “the only state to send an ambassador to the usurper and dictatorial regime of Raúl Cedras” [44] .

On January 21 of 1998, John Paul II arrived in Cuba with a double message: Cuba should open to the world, the world should open to Cuba. On January 24, in Santiago, the Pope called for the release of political prisoners. Defending religious freedom, “the Church defends the freedom of each individual, of families, of different social units, who are living these realities as a right to their own sphere of autonomy and sovereignty”.

On January 25, in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution, the final mass of the Pope’s visit was celebrated. John Paul II criticized the economic embargo of Cuba imposed by the United States, reiterating that economic embargoes are unfair  because the people suffer. It was only a comment in a homily that lasted half an hour. Cuba, said the Pope, has a Christian soul that has granted it “a universal vocation”, a vocation to “overcome its isolation” and to “open itself to the world”, “it is the time to open new roads” [45] .

Panama was “the major terminal for the trafficking of Calvi and of Marcinkus”, the fiscal paradise of the so-called “Panamanian companies”. The United States demanded reports of everything that happened in Panama, especially of money laundering, the most outstanding of the local economic activities. That is how Manuel Antonio Noriega, who in 1983 would seize power, “compiled impressive files  on thousands of businessmen and firms who operated in the fiscal paradise, including the dossier concerning Calvi, the Ambrosian Bank and Marcinkus”. From 1983 Noriega controlled everything: “His abundant files made up a type of security for the future. And he remembered them on Christmas Eve of 1989”.

In February 5, 1988, in two Florida courts (in Tampa and in Miami), serious charges were made, all related to drug trafficking: illegal association, extorsion, drug importing in combination with the Medellín cartel. President George Bush set in motion the “Just Cause” operation which aimed to overthrow Noriega. But the latter took refuge in the Nunciature. The United States contacted him through the Vatican, assuring that they would not harm him. At last he ended up in a Miami jail.

 Juan Sebastián Laboa had been named nuncio on December 18, 1982, and had prepared the visit of Pope Wojtyla to Central America in March of 1983. According to authors Coen and Sisti, “the secret card of Noriega was called IOR, and it was an ace up the sleeve that the dictator had from some time back, since, in the office of the law firm Arosemena, Noriega and Castro, the eight Panamanian companies partially responsible for the Ambrosian bankruptcy were created” [46] . In this regard it was said that he had “the Vatican in his hands with a document related to the Panamanian companies and the IOR”. “Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous” was the denial of Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro Valls. But his words seemed too weak [47] .

As we have seen, on July 1, 1991, the world learned of the scandal of the Bank of Credit and International Commerce, safe deposit of terrorism and global arms dealing, the personal bank of Manuel Antonio Noriega. Italian Judge Carlo Palermo of Trent, looked into it. At last, the investigation was taken from him and transferred to Venice, losing on the way all its principle suspects: “It is important to remember that the principle people involved will be implicated later in the affairs of Calvi-Ambrosian and the attempt on the life of Pope Wojtyla ” [48] . It is a lead that no one wanted to dig into.

Vatican policy has shown numerous signs of the direction it preferred to adopt, depending on the Opus Dei and other conservative movements. In 1991 Leonard Boff wrote; “The Roman strategy weakens the commitment of the Latin American churches in favor of the liberation of the poor, in the face of denunciations and political injustices, murders of peasants and the oppression of workers”, “Christianity will be liberated or, on the contrary, an accomplice in maintaining injustice and, moreover, exposed to the disdain of aware people” [49] .

The Brazilian theologian also says about the pontificate of John Paul II: “I don’t want to speak of the positive because there are so many flatterers of the institution who will do so out of duty and possibly with conviction. I want to speak of the scandal that this pontificate has provoked in many Christians and, worse, in many of the poor who are in communities and follow the way of the Church”, “I did not want to be in the skin of the Pope to defend the judgment of the poor, because they will be our judges at the end of life. I ask mercy for Pope Wojtyla, that God and the poor have mercy on him. When he appears before the supreme judge, I know that the poor will shout: he did not understand, he had a bad experience, he has known only dictators and totalitarian regimes, Nazism, Stalinism and, finally, Romanism, and he is a victim of all that” [50] . 

In January of 1991, Pope Wojtyla opposes the American war in the Persian Gulf. He considers it not a just war, makes several calls to presidents George Bush and Sadam Hussein to avoid war, claims that western powers have not made appropriate attempts to negotiate a pacific solution with Iraq, after this country had invaded Kuwait in August of 1990. Finally, he condemns “deplorable bombings”: “the enormous deployment of equipment and weapons leads one to think of very serious consequences”.

In October of 1993 the Pope says: “I have understood what exploitation is and  immediately have placed myself on the side of the poor, of the underprivileged, of the oppressed, of people who are outcast and without defense. The powerful of this world do not always see with kind eyes a Pope of this kind. Sometimes, they even see him with evil eyes because of the question referring to moral principles. They demand, for example, a green light to abortion, contraception or divorce… something that the Pope cannot do because his mission which has been entrusted to him by God, consists of defending the person, his dignity and his fundamental rights, the most important of which is the right to life”.

Between June and September of 1994, there is a notable increase in tension in relations between the Vatican and the United States over the problem of world demographics. Received in audience in Rome, President Bill Clinton indicates everything that separates him from the Vatican , which at that moment is launched on a major campaign at the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo” [51] .

The Dream of Compostela

On several occasions and different places, from the first days of his pontificate, Pope Wojtyla never ceases to preach the “Christian vocation of Europe”, denouncing the situation of crisis it finds itself:

-        The Pope says that Europe is on the wrong path and foresees “in this society more and more secularized a march to failure and to ever greater chaos” (Spira, 1987). It cannot continue ignoring the decline in the birth rate or the ageing of the population or consider them as a solution to the problem of unemployment.

-        The Pope says that Europe today “is a man dedicated to building a secular city which has lost sight of or voluntarily excluded from its horizon the city of God” (Rome, 1985).

-        “The remolding of European culture,” says the Pope, “is the urgent and decisive task of our time”, “we must try to reconstruct Europe in its true identity which is, at its original roots, a Christian identity” (Rávena, 1986).

-        Creating “a united Europe united from the Atlantic to the Urales” (Spira, 1987), there is the authentic way to honor “the legacy of our ancestors”.

But it was in 1982 in Santiago de Compostela where John Paul II made an interpolation directed to Europe that has been called the dream of Compostela: “I, Bishop of Rome and Pastor of the universal Church, from Santiago de Compostela, deliver to you my cry of love, old Europe. Find yourself, be yourself, rediscover your origins. Return life to your roots. Adorn yourself with these authentic values that have built the glory of your history. Other continents observe you and wait from you the answer that Santiago gave to Christ: Yes, I can”.

            For some moving, for others pathetic. Despite everything, western Europe (and, in general, The West) will be “the only model of credibility in the eyes of the people of the Communist East.” [52] .

The Top of the Pyramid

At the end of 1943 much of Italy was occupied by Nazi and Allied troops, and the United States had begun to combat what would be its future adversary, communism. The Office of Strategic Studies (OSS), headed by H. Stuart Hughes, sent reports periodically to Washington about the Italian Communist Party (PCI), province by province. In the same period the first anti-communist formations were already financed, while old fascists, in Italy as in the rest of Europe, were recruited in those clandestine networks which, after the wear, would represent the framework of Gladio [53] , a resistance network of NATO ready to enter into action in case of an invasion from the communist block or a communist subversion in Italy. It was also called Organization X and Rose of the Winds.

Contemporary Italy is a state born in an area of North American influence and, nevertheless, a country had the strongest communist party in Europe and through which the left had the possibility to reach, by democratic election, the government.

* The only political force capable of containing the communist advance was Christian Democracy (DC). In reality, the United States did not always trust the DC, which was linked to Vatican policy. But what other electoral weight did the others have? Although the DC has been a group of parties united under a single symbol, the Atlantic wing has always been well represented.

Besides, the United States found strong support in the Vatican. Pope Pius XII contributed a radio message in 1947: “Who gives his own support or own service to those who reject God is a deserter and traitor”. In Catholic churches the following warning was circulated: “The authority of the Church has condemned Communism  because it is Marxist, that is, materialistic and atheistic. Therefore it is a serious sin: to join the Communist Party and those parties that make common cause with it; to support it in any way, even if only with a vote; to read and distribute its press. Therefore, no one can receive absolution if they are not repentant and firmly decided not to relapse into the same mistakes mentioned above. The Lord reveals and concedes full repentance to the guilty in matters so serious, because the eternal salvation itself is in danger. [54]

On February 8, 1948, Prof. Luigi Gedda, president of Catholic Action, founded an organization called Civic Committees, which worked to get all anti-communists voters to go to the polls, with the blessing of the Vatican and the CIA. The organization recruited close to 300,000 agents from 22,000 parishes. A CIA report on Gedda’s action testified that the organization was a decisive factor in the elections, so much so that it remained later as a “model and permanent body of anti-communist propaganda” [55] .

Thanks to the decisive support of the Church, the DC achieved an absolute majority in the elections of 1948: 305 seats of 574. At the time, young Christian Democrats belonging to a clandestine, armed organization could carry weapons. Forty-four years later, as President of the nation, Francesco Cossiga admitted that he was integrated into “formations of young, weapons-bearing Christian Democrats, armed by the police, to defend party offices in case the Communists, having lost the elections, should try a coup d’etat”. And if they had won? It’s possible that the DC “would have become an armed corps ready to drag Italy into a civil war to stop the Communists from governing” [56] .

However, the United States’ lack of confidence in the PC has always remained: “Beyond the provincial search for consensus, Christiana Democrat reliability has always been an open question and has fostered a double loyalty inside the same institutions.  The secret service, for example, must account for its actions above all in the Atlantic headquarters. The generals take orders from NATO commanders before the national government. And the same can be said of anomalous chains of command which have also have a function, from the end of the sixties, to provoke the strategy of tension” [57] .

           

* Another form of de facto powers in Italy is masonry. Masonry is the only real and effective party that the middle class has had in a long time. This claim continues to be basically applicable to other countries, like the United States and England, where masonry has a direct influence determining political and economic options. The traditional secular vocation of masonry has suffered an abrupt acceleration with the start of the tension strategy, and Italian Masonry has been called on to fulfill the role of coordinator in the middle of different anti-communist sectors.

            It’s necessary to point out the deep Atlantic reconversion of the lodges and the ascent of the more “American” of all the masons, Licio Gelli, great elector of Ronald Reagan and of George Bush, named since 1971 secretary of the P2 lodge. Already in 1971 a meeting of the P2 discussed the following matter: “the threat of the Italian Communist Party, in relation with clericalism, in the event of a conquest of power”. The threat was even more serious considering the fact that, according to Gelli, in Italy there was no class of leadership capable of controlling conflicts.

In a statement to the anti-terrorist commission, Gen. Gianadelio Maletti, who was head of D service of the SID and aligned with the P2, Gelli’s lodge could be defined as “a pro-American center”. Maletti would also say: “The Italian submission to American secret services was total”, “certainly, even the killing of Aldo Moro, as with the very actions of the Red Brigades, was without doubt fed by the USA services. Simply letting it happen” [58] . 

At the end of the seventies, there were organic links among the mafia, masonry and secret services. Although obstinately denied in the eighties, cases such as Michele Sindona or the president of the Ambrosian Bank, Roberto Calvi, must have made people realize that there were very complex mechanisms in action:  “At the end of the sixties, Aldo Moro assassinated and the P2 in its splendor, the lodges have opened directly to mafiosos. And they have converted themselves more and more in spaces that have little or nothing to do with the proclaimed utopía masónica” [59] .

On an Italian television program (Tgl, June 28 – July 2, 1990) journalist Ennio Remondino revealed aspects of the international dimension of the P2: “The former collaborator of the CIA Richard Brenneke claimed that Gelli and the P2 had worked for the CIA, receiving in return enormous sums that Brenneke himself claimed had once been delivered personally to the head mason, money used to feed the terrorism of the seventies, for unmentionables (drug and arms dealing), and above all to destabilize the Italian political structure. As support of his statements, the former CIA agent had delivered to Remondino numerous documents, including names of groups used for financing, such as Amitalia, with several savings accounts in the Union of Swiss Banks of Zurich, documents which the journalist had given to the judicial authority in Rome” [60] .

*Another de facto power in Italy is the mafia. Its traditions are deeply rooted in the two hundred years of foreign occupation in Sicily. The mafia frew out of tribal groups that adopted from their Arab chiefs the view that life is cheap, vengeance killing is honorable and justice possible only for he who has money and influential friends. In each city the “padrone” filled the vacuum of social injustice: “Mussolini’s violence, the second world war and the United States invasion of Sicily made the mafia the true center of power on the island. Later, the mafia transferred the power to Christian Democracy, whose members agreed to protect the interests of the mafia. With time, this decision led to the right wing of the Christian Democrats being synonymous with the mafia [61] .

Preparing for the landing in Sicily during the second war, American intelligence made a pact with mafia bosses. The request for mafia aid could be justified as demands of a military character, understandable in a time of war: conquer Sicily quickly with the least bloodshed. The Cosa Nostra was legitimized as an anti-communist organization, it had a territory to administer and was granted wide impunity. In the secret protocols of the peace treaty, the island received a special status which foresaw a level of sovereignty removed from the federal government, which, did not have full power in the rest of the peninsula. Sicily was strategically indispensable to the military demands of the Atlantic Alliance: “In 1948, with the victory of Christian Democracy, any doubt of the permanence of Italy in the Atlantic orbit disappeared and it was opportune to deliver an integrated State to the new governing class and, above all, a reserve of votes to use in holding on to  power. Then the separatist army was rapidly disarmed, the mafia moved as a block to Christian Democracy, and Giuliano (the separatist commander) was assassinated by thugs of the Cosa Nostra” [62] . Until the fall of the Berlin wall, the pact between the mafia and the Italian state, made under the Atlantic umbrella, has not been seriously questioned.

General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesaa was named prefect of Palermo on April 30, 1982. He writes in his diary on April 6: “Yesterday the honorable Andreotti has also asked me to accept and naturally, given his electoral presence in Sicily, he has made his interest in the problem known through indirect channels. I have been very clear and I assured him that I will not show considerations to that electorate to which most of his voters belong.” [63] .  On September 3, 1982, Gen. Dalla Chiesa, his wife and an agent were riddled with bullets in Palermo.

Shortly after, on December 20, Pope Wojtyla traveled for the first time to Palermo and special measures were needed for his security. Well, the Pope’s car, (a white convertible) was driven by a Sicilian building contractor named Angelo Siino  whose hobby was automobile racing. His duties lasted nine hours. At the time he was an unknown celebrity, but only ten years later he would be a “very important reference for the mafia,“ a species of minister of public relations of the mafia chief Totò Riina. Enzo Mignosi, Palermo correspondent for Corriere della Sera would comment on it [64] . The following May 9, on his second Sicilian visit, the Pope would shout en Agrigento: “Mafiosos, be converted” [65] .

Cesare Caselli is the prosecutor that brought Giulio Andreotti before the courts for his relations with the mafia. At the beginning of May, 1999, during an even held in the Vatican, Andreotti also was present. When he greeted the Pope before the cameras and kneeled before him, the Pope blessed him in a way so apparent that days later the prosecutor’s office in Perugia felt obliged to indicate to the Vatican that it is not convenient to become impressed by a gesture of this type. The verdict of October 23, 1999, in Palermo acquitted Andreotti “for lack of evidence” [66] .

* Everything (the P2, corruption and the pact among the mafia, masonry, politics and finances, with the aid of the secret services) was done on behalf of political strategy, that is, on behalf of the demands of the top of the pyramid which were to keep Italy inside the limits of Yalta. The treaty of Yalta (1945) established the division of Europe in two geopolitical blocks. Accordingly, the American would not have interfered in the Soviet invasion of Checkoslovakia o Hungary, but would not tolerate the invasion of a western country nor the entrance of a communist party in any of them.

Thus, at the top of the pyramid is the United States. On May 1, 1981, Assistant Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger put his cards on the table, responding to a question by the weekly Il Tempo about the Reagan administration’s opinion of a possible communist participation in the Italian government: “We and our allies believe in democracy. We are convinced that the communists don’t share this value”, “the United States, during the Republican administration as well as during the Democrat one, has been always opposed to the participation of the Communist Party in whatever form of government. We wanted communist influence to be reduced to the minimum expression in each government of western Europe. This conviction has been always firm and clear since the post-war, and we have no intention to modify it”.

            Equally, the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, Senator Henry Jackson, warned on March 3, 1976, of the irreparable consequences of an eventual access to power by the Communist Party: “I have studied the problem in depth and can say that the United States would not stand idle. Let it be perfectly clear that, if disastrous consequences want to be avoided, Italian communists should not join the government” [67] .

William Colby, who was head of the CIA between 1973 and 1976, has said in his memoir that he was sent to Italy in the fifties to lead “what was without doubt the biggest political operation taken on by the CIA until then, prevent the communist advance in Italy in the 1958 elections, and thus keep NATO from being threatened politically by a subversive fifth column, the PCI” [68] .

On October 31, 1974, Gen. Vito Miceli, then head of the SISMI, was arrested and accused of attempting a coup d’etat. The arrest warrant, signed by judge Tamburino, mentioned the existence of a security organization which, in reality, operated “to prevent changes in domestic and international politics”. The judge declared that the organization resorted to “secret, violent and illegal actions” that threatened the nation’s sovereignty. Miceli defended himself by appealing to his fidelity to institutional duties, and of which he could not speak because they were protected by State secrecy, although he affirmed that the organization in question, known from then on as “Parallel SID”, had been created in virtue of secret agreements with the United States and the inner workings of NATO [69] .

The electoral growth of the Communist Party in Italy matched the progressive ideological distancing of Moscow and the option of Euro communism. The parabolic growth of the PCI was followed step by step by an increase in terrorist activity in Italy: “In 1969 there were 398 attacks, which rose to 595 in 1972 and 1,353 in 1976. In all, the subversive apex was reached in the next trimester: 1,926 attacks in 1977, 2,379 in 1978, 2,513 in 1979. After 1980 (1,502 attacks) the figures descended slowly to 634 in 1981, 347 in 1982, until dropping below a hundred in 1984” [70] .

But Yalta ended, the Berlin wall has come down and strategic demands have changed. Political leaders, who until then controlled the destinies of Italy, have been embroiled in judicial investigations that have signalled their political deaths. Such is the case of Giulio Andreotti, Bettino Craxi and Arnaldo Forlani.

The Mori Crime

It was March 16, 1978, the same year (and the same scenario) of John Paul I, “the year of Europe”, which for U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger signified placing itself “in the context of American policy” [71] . The President of the CD, Aldo Moro, faces the chamber of deputies that same morning where the voting for investiture of the new government will take place. A commando, dressed in civilian  pilot uniforms, are awaiting him on the Via Fani: they kill two of his bodyguards and kidnap Moro, architect of the new government in which for the first time the Communist Party of Italy reaches power.

The Red Brigades assume responsibility for the kidnapping and demand the liberation of thirteen prisoners as condition for the rescue. Otherwise, Moro will be executed. In other cases with a happy ending, the CD negotiated with terrorists [72] . Now it rejects any negotiation. The PCI maintains the same position. On May 9, after 55 captive days, Moro is executed. His body is left on Via Caetani, near the headquarters of the CD and of the PCI, in the trunk of a car.

The journalist Mino Pecorelli,  who had close ties to the Italian secret services, described in different media the tragic fate of Moro. Here are some examples:

 

* On November 19, 1967, in the weekly Il nuovo mondo d’oggi, he publishes an article titled Moro Must Be Killed (Debía matar a Moro). He said that in 1964, at the time of the first government which included the socialists, Lt. Col. Robert Potestá had been elected, after a conversation with an ex-minister of Defense who was backed by other political personalities, to lead a commando that “must eliminate the bodyguards protecting Moro, then president of the Council; Moro would be taken prisoner and transferred to an unknown locality; the plan foresaw the elimination  of President Moro and a maneuver to make the blame fall on leftist elements” [73] .

* On September 13, 1975, Pecorelli writes in his press service (OP): “Someone in Ford’s entourage, visiting Rome, said: It looks bad. There’s a Jacqueline in the future of your peninsula”.

* On March 15, 1978, the day before the kidnapping, Pecorelli publishes the following report, a prophetic obituary: “A total 2022 years from the Ides of March, the genius of Rome honors Caesar 44 B.C. - 1978  A.D. Precisely in the Ides of March of 1978 the government of Andreotti takes oath at the hands of Leone Giovanni. Should we expect a Bruto? Who will it be?”

* Pecorelli is informed about the letters that Moro writes from captivity, even  before they are published. Thus, for example, in the letter of April 18, he reads these words directed to the men of the CD: “my blood will spill on you”.

* On May 2 he denounces: “The ambush on Via Fani bears the seal of a clear-eyed superpower. The capture of Moro represents one of the biggest political operations carried out in recent decades in an industrial country, integrated into the western system. The primary object is, nothing else, to distance the Communist Party from the area of power at the moment when it makes its big step, direct communist participation in the government of the nation. It is a fact that this is not desired”. And also: “The brain behind the capture of Moro has nothing to do with  the traditional Red Brigades. The commando of Via Fani displays in an unheard-of, but effective, way, the new political strategy of Italy”.

* On October 17 he writes: “The minister of police knows everything, he even knows where he was held prisoner, in the part of the ghetto”. And he adds enigmatically: “Why hasn’t he done anything? The minister can’t decide anything himself; he has to listen to higher-ups. How higher up?”.

On January 16, 1979, Pecorelli makes new revelations, but two months later he is assassinated: two shots and a stone in the mouth, for talking too much.

Alberto Franceschini, one of the founders of the Red Brigades, who did not take part in the kidnapping because he was in jail, told L’Unita on August 6,  1991: “At one moment I began to ask myself: Whose game are we playing? My doubts started when sectors of the CD began to visit us in prison. We thought that they came looking for our help in shedding a bit of light. However, no: I realized that they came to gain our silences” [74] .

Brigade member Prospero Gallinari admits that they came under outside orders: “There was then someone who had to look for us but, nevertheless, he couldn’t do it because he was from the P2, because the death of Moro was convenient for them” [75] .

Besides, there were spies within the Red Brigades from the beginning. Gen. Giovanni Romeo, head of Department D of the military secret service in the years 1975-1978, tells the anti-terrorist parliamentary commission: “When everyone was talking about combating terrorism through infiltrations, Department D had already done so.” [76] .

Mario Moretti, considered the mastermind of the kidnapping, phoned Moro’s home and told the daughter: “You have been a bit duped and are reasoning over an equivocation… The problem is political, the CD has to intervene… We have already taken a decision, in a few hours the inevitable will happen” [77] .

On March 28, 1978, an anonymous informer provided clues that with much delay (forty days after) would lead to the printing shop of the Red Brigades [78] , run by Moretti. Police Chief Antonio Fariello told the commission that he preferred to wait in order to surprise Moretti as well. However, in the shop it was discovered that the printing machine came from the secret service (the RUS, Raggruppamento Unità Speciali) [79] .

In April of 1979, Padua Judge Pietro Calogero took testimonies that implicated in subversive activity leaders of the Hyperion Institute, a “language school” founded in Paris in 1974 by Corrado Simioni, Giovanni Mulinaris, Duccio Berio, Franco Troiano, Françoise Tuscher and Innocente Salvoni. The directors of the school had obtained the approval of the French secret police and enjoyed the support of the Dominican Felix Andrew Morlion, founder of the Vatican secret service Pro Deo and CIA agent. The Hyperion Institute has (or had) its center in Paris [80] .

At the beginning of 1978, the Institute opened its headquarters in Rome [81] , in the same building where some SISMI cover groups operated. And it opened in Milan. Both centers were closed after the Moro affair. Among the photos released after the kidnapping, two witnesses recognized Innocente Salvoni (member of Hyperion) as one of the brigade members of the Via Fani, but Col. Antonio Cornacchia (a man of the P2) declared both testimonies unfounded.

On February 22, 1982, Michele Galati testified before Judge Dragone of Venice that “contacts were frequent between Moretti, Vanni Mulinaris and Corrado Simioni” in Italy o in France [82] .

In November of 1992, Simioni (with Abbot Pierre, uncle of Françoise Tuscher, the wife of Salvoni) is received in private audience by Pope Wojtyla [83] . In the material seized after the arrest of Valerio Morucci and Adriana Faranda, brigade members who took part in the Moro operation, police found the address and telephone number of Marcinkus, president of the IOR, as well as the number of Fr. Morlion [84] .

On April 8, 1985, Nara Lazzarini (secretary of Licio Gelli) declared before Judge Libero Mancuso of the Bologna court that on the same morning of the Via Fani massacre the head of the P2 received a visit from two people at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome and during the conversation she heard it said: “The most part is done. Now let’s see the reactions”.

The parliamentary anti-terrorism commission requested from the Interior Ministry the documentation corresponding to the Moro Kidnapping and the attempts made to save him, but Minister Vincenzo Scotti responded: “There is no documentation concerning the so-called crisis committees created during the kidnapping of the honorable Moro nor documentation showing the names of the effective participants in those committees. From a close examination of the existing acts in this office, there have been found copies of notes made at the time by ‘experts`, and precisely by professors Ferracuti, Silvestri, Pieczenik, Conte Michel ” [85] .

Franco Ferracuti is a criminologist affiliated with the P2, Stefano Silvestri is a scholar of military affairs, Giulia Conte Micheli is a graphologist and Steve Pieczenik is head of the Antiterrorism Service of the American State Department, a close confident of Henry Kissinger. The American expert, called secretly by the Interior Minister (Cossiga) without even the American ambassador’s knowledge, advised sticking to the “strategic point” synthesized in the motto: “No concession, no blackmail, no negotiation”. It had to be “shown that Moro was not indispensable to the government’s activities”, to minimize Moro’s importance and demonstrate through the press that he was not directly responsible for what he was writing and that, in effect, he had been brainwashed” [86] .

In 1974, being Foreign Minister, Moro accompanied President Leone on a visit to the United States. The meeting with Kissinger was very hard and Moro was on the verge of leaving politics. His wife informed the parliamentary commission of what he had said about that: “It is one of the very few times that my husband told me in precise detail what had been said without revealing to me the name of the person… Now I try to repeat it as I remember it: Sir… you have to set aside your political plan to have all the forces of the country work together directly. Here, or you abandon your plan or you will pay dearly. Interpret that as you please” [87] . In this context, Moro told a student of his, Maria Luis Familiari, these significant words: “But do you think I don’t know that I can end up like Kennedy?” [88] .

Francesco Cossiga was the Minister of Interior during the kidnapping of Moro. Many of his advisers and collaborators were tied to the P2 lodge. In his memorial from prison, Moro had some critical words for him: his position is “evoked by suggestion and, in some way, unconsciously imposed”, “he has the limit  of contacts outside the ministry”. [89] However, his hardest words were for Andreotti: “a director who is cold, impenetrable, without doubts, serene, without a moment of human mercy”, “of whom all others are obedient executors of his orders”.

Moro has been described as a weak man, yielding to his captors with the so-called “Stockholm syndrome”. The need to forget Moro was even openly expressed in an article that began this way: “We would have preferred to have never heard anything more said about Moro” [90] . While Moro is presented as a “despicable being” who “has to be forgotten as soon as possible”, his killers are publicly rehabilitated: “They were brave and had ideals”, “they had political aims that were not completely ignoble and they were militants who should be respected and in a certain way awarded with the procedures of clemency” [91] .

On October 31,  2000, John Paul II proclaimed St. Thomas Moro (1478-1535), who paid with his life for his fidelity to his own conscience, “patron of politicians and rulers”. Pope Wojtyla accepted the proposal raised in 1985 by the then President of the Italian Republic Francesco Cossiga, and two of his predecessors, devoted to the English saint. “The election of Moro,” declared Cossiga, who presented the new patron to the Vatican, “finds a general consensus among politicians, be they Catholics or Anglicans, and even among agnostics” [92] . Well then, what surprises is that the sponsor and presenter had been Cossiga, who had Moro so close to him, Aldo Moro, a modern example of political honesty. All of this was honored in the context of celebration by the politicians, with a group of 260 Italian deputies and senators, presided over by Andreotti, taking part. [93]

One more item. In the days of the Moro kidnapping, Tina Anselmi told the patriarch Luciani: “Do you know that your words were a great comfort to the honorable Moro before the fatal March 16?”. “What words?” “Those that you said to me and which I had occasion to transmit to Moro in the days of laborious and extenuating negotiations for the new government”.

Luciani tries to remember: “Yes, I spoke with Anselmi, but it was a small matter: I pointed out that the bishops don’t pretend to interfere in normal politics nor make difficulties for politicians especially when, in delicate and difficult situations, they know how to choose the lesser evil… Saying this to Anselmi, I didn’t think of Moro; if my humble words, passed on, gave a drop of relief before that wave of anxieties swept over the poor man, I am pleased; still, I am almost ashamed to mention them now that his long ordeal has ended tragically in a barbarous and cruel execution. With Moro’s martyrdom fulfilled, we can only pray so that his blood, as that of ancient martyrs, be the seed of good and loyal citizens in this tormented Italy” [94] .

Finally, in a book titled State Secret, Giovanni Pellegrino, president of the anti-terrorist commission since 1994, complains of having found man difficulties in his job. The same has happened to judges: “Whenever a magistrate discovers a clue that could link the possible material executors to a higher level, he is obliged to halt before the State secret imposed by the government” [95] .

Without Learning the Lesson

            On March 27, 1995, in Loreto, Cardinal Ruini delivered his epitaph on the forty years of the Church’s confusion with political power: “The process that, in the space of some years has seen the commitment to organized unity become diluted in the name of politics, seems practically concluded. The objective of not confusing Church and politics is now, at least in appearance, easier to achieve”.              

            Ruini, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, reached this conclusion with the feeling of a personal political defeat. Precisely in the same place ten years before (Loreto, 1985), all efforts had been focused on ensuring for Catholicism “a leading role and an attractive strength”, following the recommendation of Pope Wojtyla: “The episcopate had renewed its support for Christian Democracy at the worst moment: when this party, after its official anticommunism role became obsolete, found itself dragged along by the entire political system that governed Italy for 40 years and at the precise moment when, thanks to investigations of magistrates, the public perceived the extent of corruption and criminality in which enormous sectors of the ruling class had fallen, including its Catholic fraction, with the blessing of the Church”.

Without learning the lesson of history, Ruini had insisted on replacing Christian Democracy with a different and “clean” party (whose leadership was immediately confided to some representatives of Communion and Liberation) and his intervention had the effect of tightening still more the ties between the Church and politics: “These leaders sealed, actually in the month of March, 1995, a political alliance with the right wing of Berlusconi and of Fini, provoking thus the collapse of Christian Democracy and, as a result, the dissolution of the whole political-religious system that rested on it”. It was the moment to remember the principle defended by Cardinal Lercaro, one of the fathers of Vatican II: “The Church cannot and must not be the arbitrator of political disputes. But neither can it be neutral before evil, wherever it arises. Its way is not neutrality, but prophecy. And, therefore, it must judge”.

In the elections of 2001, Berlusconi won an absolute majority. He concentrates a power without precedents and controls communication media, both public and private. Few independent media remain. With more than a half dozen legal actions taken against him for diverse corruption cases, he is the richest man in Italy.

 The German journalist and investigator Jürgen Roth accuses him: “Bettino Craxi, then president of the nation and of the Italian socialists, was corrupted with a million dollars from the P2. In line with the plans of the P2, in his four years in power, he secured through government decrees, among other things, the media empire of the P2 member Berlusconi”.

But not only that. From the beginning of August, 1977, E.S. (only initials are given) is in charge of transporting money in cash of different companies in the Berlusconi empire from Milan to Liechtenstein, to a well-known private bank: “It’s not petty cash but daily amounts of  some five million Swiss francs. Supposedly, the money comes the drugs and arms deals of the Cosa Nostra” [96] .

Hans See, professor of economic criminality, describes how the fiscal paradise system works: “Liechtenstein is the dark room of international finance, especially of underworld finance. Inside, projects can be developed on the margin of democratic systems” [97] .

And so, Cardinal Martini, Archbishop of Milan, did not share the strategy  outlined by the Vatican and by Ruini: “We have spent a great deal of energy in building Christianity: it is time to become Christians”. To Martini it seems  unacceptable  to try and combat secularization with a Church that has ended up covering itself in the political dress of this secularization and to risk giving the impression of wanting to share the winner’s circle for the moment. 

From his position in Milan, to which he was named by John Paul II on December 29, 1979, Martini embodies the option for another form of Church visibility, a concept not mundane of its effectiveness throughout time. Only a Church capable of reuniting with its soul, of focusing on its own resources, of freeing itself from power, could recover the necessary strength to still declare, in a secularized society, “the word of God in such a way that the world would be transformed and renovated by it”.  After three millenniums of Christian prophecy, the “conversion of the heart” is imposed with greater evidence. “A return to Christian origins”, says Martini, “such is the major crossroad that we are now living. From there, the main inspiration of his program: “To serve the word of God in such a way that it stirs up, interprets, purifies and saves the historic adventure of human liberty” [98] .