The recent exoneration of Cardinal George Pell by the High Court of Australia is likely keeping many Vatican officials up at night, since he is one of just a handful of men in the whole world who has seen the books of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank. I believe that Cardinal Pell was framed with allegations of sexual abuse of minors in order to prevent leaks about the criminal financial activities of the Vatican Bank.
To understand how the Vatican bank got to where it is today, we need to go back to Operation Gladio in the aftermath of WWII. We’ve talked before on the show about how the world is not oppressed by a single, grand conspiracy, but rather that there are many different factions that vie for power. There’s a lot of gray in this story and not much black and white. Operation Gladio was an effort by many Western governments, intelligence agencies, mob bosses and the Catholic Church to resist the Soviet Union. Criminal activities funded anti-communist political campaigns and the arming of militias made up of fascist groups that survived the war. Frank did a deep dive into Operation Gladio last April:
Much of these funds were laundered through the Vatican Bank, which to this day has been able to fund criminal activity with impunity, as it is not subject to any oversight by a governing body. As its power grew over the decades, calls for transparency from public officials increased. Instead of reforms, though, investigations mostly yielded corpses, including Pope John Paul I. There is strong evidence to suggest he was poisoned only one month into his reign after he resolved to end the corruption in the Vatican Bank.
Less violent means to achieve a similar end were likely the driving force behind the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. In 2009 Benedict appointed Archbishop Carlo Viganò to audit the Vatican Bank, and Viganò’s discovery of hidden accounts turned a $10 million deficit into a $45 million surplus. Viganò was then tasked with uncovering the actual sexual abuse of minors by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, DC, who also had a long history of directing the flow of Vatican finances. Hours after Pope Benedict announced his (likely forced) resignation, lightning struck the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica twice, during one of the strangest turn of events in papal history. As for Archbishop Viganò, he remains a vocal critic of Vatican scandals but is now in hiding.
That brings us back to Cardinal Pell. Soon after his election, Pope Francis created a new dicastery called the Secretariat of the Economy, which oversees all the economic activity of the Holy See, and named Pell as prefect. This made Pell the third most powerful man in the Vatican, the second being the prefect of the Secretariat of State. Like Viganò, Pell also uncovered hidden accounts, this time finding a whopping $1 BILLION. Pell was then convicted of sexual abuse in (my opinion) a kangaroo court in 2019 and was incarcerated until his exoneration a couple weeks ago.
Here is a more detailed timeline of events surrounding the Vatican Bank, which was used during a recent Taylor Marshall podcast discussing the issue:
Finally, it is noteworthy that it was the government of Australia which overturned Pell’s conviction, because Australia was one of the countries deeply involved in Spygate. DOJ officials also made numerous trips to Italy, presumably to investigate that government’s role in the origin of that scandal. If justice is coming as we all hope, don’t be surprised if Vatican funds are uncovered as part of the vast web of corruption. Was Pell freed in order to testify as part of a deal with Australia? Just a thought. Time will tell.
