According to new research, at the onset of the Second World War the Vatican rapidly moved its securities and gold reserves from areas under threat of Nazi occupation to the United States from where it used its financial means to assist the persecuted Church in Europe and help the Allies combat Nazism.
It was a strategy that was “fundamentally important” to victory over the Nazis, it has been claimed.
The findings, based on the discovery of British intelligence interceptions of Vatican financial transactions dated 1941-1943, are revealed in a December 2012 article entitled “New Perspectives on Pius XII and Vatican Financial Transactions during the Second World War”, written by Patricia M. McGoldrick of London's Middlesex University.
According to a report on the findings published in tomorrow’s L’Osservatore Romano, at the centre of the story is Bernardino Nogara, a member of the board of directors of the Banca Commerciale Italiana and a friend of the Ratti family (to which Pope Pius XI belonged), who in 1929 was appointed the financial advisor to the Holy See.
Nogara, in consultation with Curia officials, was the protagonist of the Vatican's financial strategy which was “fundamentally important to the Allies' victory over the Nazis and Fascists in World War II,” L’Osservatore Romano says. “This strategy concerns millions of dollars invested in the largest banks of the US and Great Britain, by which persecuted Churches and exhausted peoples were given aid,” it adds.
The documents, preserved in the British National Archives, concern the activities of the Vatican's main financial institutions: the Special Administration of the Holy See (A.S.S.S.) and the Institute for Works of Religion (I.O.R.), or Vatican Bank.
L’Osservatore explains that the papers reveal, “beyond the regular communication with dioceses, nunciatures and global Catholic institutions, that there were also extensive money transfers to the major business banks of the USA.”
In the article, published in the December issue of “The Historical Journal”, a quarterly of the University of Cambridge, McGoldrick explains: “We learn from these accounts that at the onset of the Second World War the Vatican rapidly moved its securities and gold reserves from areas under threat of Nazi occupation to the United States, made the United States the financial hub from which it funded and administered its global church, and had, at any one time, over $10,000,000 invested in the US economy.”
Nagora, said to have had a great capacity for networking and remarkable diplomatic skills, persuaded major American banks such as JP Morgan and the National City Bank of New York to accept the Vatican’s securities. The Vatican also had accounts in Britain with the ASSS sending funds to Morgan Grenfell, the sister of JP Morgan, while the IOR had dealings with Barclays.
These activities, McGoldrick writes, "provide clear evidence” that the Vatican systematically sent its securities for safekeeping to the United States. Furthermore Washington was not only aware of the move, but exempted the Vatican from restrictions to related operations in enemy countries (US Freezing Orders), and even offered greater flexibility to requests from Rome. The securities consisted of donations, bonds, revenues from dioceses and gains from investments.
“Much of this money was intended to support the Churches in difficulty - missions, nunciatures, seminaries and dioceses on all continents,” L’Osservatore explains. “There was also a privileged channel for Europe - to bring relief to the persecuted churches during the Nazi occupation, where Catholic schools, monasteries and churches were closed or confiscated, youth organizations and Catholic publications suppressed, and many priests and religious arrested and interned in concentration camps.”
For them, the IOR maintained a separate account at the Chase National Bank of New York, the findings show.
L’Osservatore adds that the article states that when the British government tried to block one of the accounts, "the Vatican appealed directly to the U.S. government and did so with success."
Moreover, the discovered documents also reveal funding for humanitarian activities in support of the Allies, and people caught up in the war. One example was in April 1944, when Pius XII organized large shipments of flour to the city of Rome, where he had already provided over 100,000 hot meals a day, even attempting to import food from Argentina and Spain through Italy and Greece.
In addition, since 1939, through Nogara and his contacts with Washington, the Vatican had invested heavily in U.S. Treasury Bills, in large manufacturing companies and technology, companies such as Rolls Royce, United Steel Corporation, Dow Chemical, Westinghouse Electric, Union Carbide and General Electric.
McGoldrick goes so far as to speak of "a torrent of Vatican money" used by the U.S. military "that defeated the Nazis and put an end forever to the bestial murders of the Holocaust (p.1045)."
L’Osservatore cautions that it is “too early” to make precise budgetary analyses of the documents, possibly because it is aware of some questions surrounding some of Nogara's investments which may have found their way into fascist hands, though McGoldrick says this was inevitable as Vatican City State had no significant currency of its own and had to depend on lira income to function. “The financial history of the Second World War is a ‘terra incognita’,” L'Osservatore says, that “few have begun to explore [and] much of the material has yet to be discovered and studied.”
But it adds that what we can see already is “enough to make us abandon hasty judgments and ideologized visions in the reconstruction of the facts.”
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The IOR also banked Nazi gold after World War II known as the Ustasha Treasury mainly looted from Orthodox Christina Serbs. The funds mentioned above as well as Vatican gold reserves were sent to the US for safekeeping; the Vatican’s financial advisors had good reason not to trust the Mussolini regime. However, the IOR refuses to account for any of this or to anyone.
Federal Reserve documents on the Vatican Gold reserves can be read in the original here:
http://vaticanbankclaims.com/vatican gold.pdf
Edward Pentin’s claim, based on a story by a relative unknown student in Britain ‘How Pius XII’s Dollars Helped Defeat the Nazis’ is not only a gross exaggeration it is an insult to all those who fought and died on the many battle fields of WWII, not to mention the horrific deaths of more than 5 million Jews at the hands of the Nazi’s.
The money in question was scurried away to British and US banks for protection from Italy’s fascist power headed by Mussolini. The report filed by official Vatican Italian Newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano (Jan. 30/12) merely suggests that some the money was directed by US interest (not the Pope) to aid persecuted [Catholic] Churches and “exhausted people”. No mention is made of its use to benefit Jewish interest. The claim by McGoldrick that “a torrent of Vatican money was used by the U.S. military that defeated the Nazis and put an end forever to the bestial murders of the Holocaust”, is a gross exaggeration of the real facts. See also the comments from Johnathan Levy at the conclusion of this article.
This is Mr. Pentin’s third attempt and perhaps McGoldrick’s as well to find support for beautification of Pius XII. Let us listen to an several experts who worked within the Vatican during that time through the words of Fr. Hans Kung from his book ‘The Catholic Church – A Short History (2001) as follows . . . .
“ But to beatify Pius XII, like beatifying Pius IX—the enemy of Jews, Protestants, human rights, the freedom of re¬ligion, modern culture—would be a Vatican farce and a dis¬avowal of the most recent papal confessions of guilt. “No, he is not a saint,” we were told in the Collegium Germanicum by his loyal private secretary, Fr. Robert Leiber, SJ., even in the pope’s lifetime. “No, he is not a saint, but a man of the church.” “But what lies behind the wish of a pope to canonize other popes?” the international journal Concilium asked in a statement issued in July 2000. “Is this campaign aimed at re¬inforcing papal authority or is it to be understood as an at¬tempt to misuse the important act of recognizing holiness to safeguard ideological aims?”
We owe it to another pope that the situation of the papacy in respect to Judaism does not look quite so wretched. This pope is Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, elected Pius’s successor on October 28, 1958, as John XXIII. Regarded at seventy-seven as a transitional pope, he became the pope of an epoch-making transition which released the Catholic Church from its internal rigidity.”
I hadn’t previously heard of Patricia McGoldrick, either, but if her article was published in a Cambridge University quarterly, I’d suggest she’s worth knowing about.
well, if to an article published in a scientific journal and based on archival documents you can only reply quoting a 2001 book by Hans Kung (whose ‘impartiality’ is well known and who quotes in 2001 a man died in 1967) it means that the arguments are very very few.
I would like to thanks also Dr. Jonathan Levy for the document linked: it shows that all the banking transactions of the Holy See were carefully screened and monitored by the Allies: if the Holy See had done something wrong they would have know it.
The Holy See did a lot wrong, it banked in 1946 Nazi loot called the Ustasha Treasury AFTER World War II and the source of the funds from Serb victims of Croatian ethnic cleansing was well known. This was done under the watch of the same people being praised above. At that point the IOR was under no threats from Hitler and Mussolini. It seems because the crimes were mainly against co-religionists (schismatics) instead of Jews, the IOR gets a free pass? The IOR has had over 12 years to answer the allegations first in the US and now in Brussels and consistently claims immunity.
Dr Levy regarding the Ustasha Treasury the US State Department is very clear: the gold went mainly in Switzerland and in British occupied Austria. On the Vatican the Department writes that the U.S. reports about the ammount of money in Rome are “uncorroborated and speculative”.
The U.S. knew also that Ustasha leaders in Rome received money from sympathizers in the United States: This is of course inconsistent with the alleged large availability of gold there!
If you want to know why Ustasha leaders were free in Italy you could ask London, Washington and Rome before asking to the Vatican as we know that they were followed closely by the secret services of these countries.
William Gowen who was a CIC Special Agent stationed in Rome 1946-1947 was grilled for four days in a deposition by the IOR attorneys. He stuck to his story that Fr. Draganovic (the Croatian Apostalic Visitator) and Ustasha Col. Ivan Babic admitted to him under questioning in 1947 that a ten truck convoy delivered the Ustasha Treasury to St. Peter’s square in 1946. That evidence has never gone to court because the IOR claims sovereign immunity. William Gowen is still alive and ready to testify. The typical Croatian/Vatican historical revisionism is the one you cite. Same double talk as to the Vatican ratline which was financed by the Ustasha funds on deposit in the OFM San Girolamo account at the IOR under the control of Dominik Mandic OFM Treasurer. The crime here is the cover up, not the actual deposit of funds which could be explained as a Cold War necessity to keep the funds out of Tito’s hands.
Pope Pius XII lived for thirteen and one half years(13,1/2) after world
war II and not one word was said about his wartime activity until A former
member member of the nazi youth movement(and A Protestant),named Rolf Hochuth accused the Pope of indifference toward Jewish persecution.Worldwide Jewery suddenly “Woke up” and found A reason to attack the Pope without A shread of evidence. In fact much evidence was
revealed to show that the Pope actually helped thousands of Jews escape
nazi persecution by opening all monesteries and convents to hide Jews
and issuing baptisimal certificates to Jews to “prove” they were Christians.So, I ask the Jewish community,why didn’t you question The Pope
during those thirteen and one half years after the war and before he died?
June 6, 2011 Zagreb, Yugoslavia - What was Benedict thinking when he stopped here to pray at the tomb of the controversial Nazi sympathizer and Ustashi supporter Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac during his recent visit to Croatia? The fact that Stepinac operated under the watchful eye of Pope Pius XII will do little to bring about a popular sainthood for either individual. Benedict’s lack of sensitivity on these issues reveals a deep and troubling future for the church. Could this point to the reason why the Vatican is the only country that has only partially released a select portion of itswartime records.
As far as saying Benedict is not “sensitive” enough by praying at a tomb in Croatia is stupid. He may have made a mistake he certainly is only human as was Pius XII but are you perfect yourself. Benedict has a good relationship with most Jewish groups. If you want a anti-Semite Pope look at Blessed Pope Pius IX who actually took a Jewish boy from his parents and raised him a Catholic at the Vatican. Even Pius XII did not do that.
This has nothing to do with Jew. Serbs are Orthodox Christians; the crimes that can be pinned on the IOR, OFM, Pius XII, Stepanic, Montini originate with the death of 300,000 Serbs at Jasenovac concentration camp and the conduct AFTER the war when the full extent of the Ustasha war crimes were known. The Vatican at the highest levels protected both the Ustahsa and their loot.
Dr. Levy, your history is very fascinating.
The first mystery that you should explain it is why Draganovic and Babic have said those things to an American secret agent! what would be their purpose to make such confidences? were they such a fools?
Then let’s imagine the mystery of ten English flagged trucks guided by British uniformed Ustasha running throughout the North of Italy to Rome without anyone being aware of nothing. Because this is Gowen’s history!
As the Ustasha freely used British flags and uniforms in a territory controlled by the Allies, as the Americans were aware of all what happened (according Gowen’s history) maybe it is better for British and Americans that this history does not go in a tribunal!
Fortunately, apart from the imaginative versions of Gowen, the real history is not as a spy film plot!
Two last notes on Stepinac: 1) his speeches against the regime were transmitted by the Communist partisan radio during the armed resistance; 2) at the end of the war Tito offered him to become the leader of a national Church indipendent from Rome; only after his refusal he became the enemy whose reputation was to be destroyed.
William Gowen was nearly 80 years old at the time he was deposed for 4 days by the both IOR and OFM’s legal team including the Vatican’s attorney Jeff Lena. They were not able to discredit him. As for Babic and Draganovic, Babic was a British agent and Draganovic later went to work for the Americans. They had no reason not to boast to Gowen about their exploits, niether one had anything to fear. Gowen was punished for his investigations of the ratline, subjected to smears by the Congressional UnAmerican Activities Committee, and transferred to Germany for violating Vatican extraterritorality and getting in the way of James Angleton’s CIA/MI6 ratline operations in Rome. Again the Vatican has plenty of excuses but it should come clean nonetheless and quit the cover ups, lies, and half truths about its political leaders and their money laundering operations.
Dr. Levy,
You pretty much use your historical revisionism as cover for your anti-church and anti-Papal agenda. May God remove the gunk and filth from your heart you a-historical bigot!
Jonathan Levy’s offers nothing more than two fallacious arguments:
1) An Ad Hominem Abusive, attack the author not the arguments.
2) Ignoratio Elenchi, change the subject and offer an irrelevant conclusion.
Taking them in turn:
1) Who I am is irrelevant. The paper stands or falls on its own merits irrespective of who wrote it. As it happens I am a retired academic with three university degrees, my dissertation was at the University of London, and this is my eight publication. But none of that matters. What matters is whether or not the arguments put forward in the paper are backed by the evidence offered.
2) The article is about Vatican bank statements for the years 1941 to 1943 discovered in the British National Archive which show that throughout those three years the Vatican systematically transferred its gold holdings, securities and foreign assets to the United States, administered and funded its world wide Church from within the United States, invested a huge proportion of its wealth in the United States Government (by purchasing T-Bills) and in the US war economy (by investing heavily in the US armaments industry), was given a special Friendly Nation Status (General Licence 44) by the US Government which enabled it transfer Swiss Francs to Zurich to support its harassed Church in Nazi occupied Europe and run an escape line for Allied escaped POWs through the Vatican. Since there is no evidence (to date) that any funds were invested in the Third Reich, this strongly suggests that the Vatican and Pius XII were pro the Allies and the suggestion the Vatican and Pius XII were pro-Nazi is thereby somewhat challenged by these newly discovered documents and their content.
The question about the transfer of Ustashi gold in 1946 (which may or may not be true) is irrelevant to the topic under discussion. Thus if Jonathan Levy has something other than fallacious sophomoric type arguments to offer against the actual topic of the article, it would be interesting to hear them.
I have no interest whatsoever in the canonisation of Pius XII, nor indeed of anybody else. My interest is in the pursuit of truth.
Patricia McGoldrick
Dear Dr. McGoldrick - I am an attorney and a solicitor and hold an earned PhD in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati, my dissertation was on The Intermarium. I am adjunct faculty at two accredited universities. I also have devoted over 14 years to this topic. I disagree with your finding, Nogara already had a relationship with the National City bank, there was nothing heroic going on here, the IOR and APS were simply moving funds to safer places. To suggest they wanted to help the Allies is a fine thesis but to prove it you have to show that they did not invest as much or larger amounts with Axis financial institutions or with neutrals like the Swiss. Given the wartime era Vatican’s history of double dealing, I think they would collaborate with the devil himself as long Joe Stalin was kept away from the door. Pius and his Vatican were pragmatists and realists; they did what was good for the Vatican not necessarily the Allies. If Pius XII had an ounce of integrity he would have defrocked Fr. Tiso in Slovakia, denounced the Hungarian Arrow Cross n 1944 when he was already safe from retaliation and made sure that Montini and the IOR were not playing games with war criminals in the ratline to South America. Instead he was quite diplomatic about it all while millions died. To this day, IOR is a closed book, what we need here is a modicum of transparency.
Thanks to the previous prestigious commentators we can see how the Roman Catholic church was in ‘survival mode’ during the war time.
The world view of Christians, Reformed or Catholic in general needs a Pope for the 21st century.
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