[The Vatican, The Mafia, Masonry and Corruption! It’s astonishing some of you still respect the Church.]
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Three Italians and an Austrian were ordered yesterday to stand trial for the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, a banker tied to the Vatican whose death in London is one of modern Italy’s most mysterious unsolved crimes.
The four are Pippo Calò, a Cosa Nostra boss already imprisoned for Mafia activities; Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian wheeler-dealer who arranged for Mr. Calvi’s fateful trip to London 23 years ago; Ernesto Diotavelli, a Roman underworld figure and Manuela Kleinszig, Mr. Carboni’s Austrian girlfriend.
Mr. Calvi’s corpse was found hanging in June 1982 under London’s Blackfriars Bridge, his pockets filled with bricks and wads of Swiss francs, soon after Banco Ambrosiano, a bank of which he was chairman, had been taken into compulsory liquidation. Banco Ambrosiano’s close relationship with the Vatican earned Mr. Calvi the nickname “God’s banker”. By chance, yesterday’s decision by a judge in Rome was announced on the day Catholic cardinals began a conclave to pick the next pope.
Prosecutors suspect Mr. Calvi was murdered partly because he knew too much about how Mafia funds had been laundered through the Vatican’s own bank and Banco Ambrosiano. They allege that Mr. Calò ordered Calvi’s murder, and that the banker was lured to London by the other three suspects. The Vatican denied legal responsibility for the bank's downfall but acknowledged "moral involvement", and paid $241m to creditors. The bank collapsed in a scandal that implicated the Mafia and international freemasonry.
Paul Casimir Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank was later indicted in Italy as an accessory in the $3.5 billion collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, but never came to trial in Italy, where courts ruled that as a Vatican employee he was immune from prosecution. He now is retired and lives in Arizona.
An initial coroner’s inquest in London concluded that Mr. Calvi had committed suicide, but a second left open the question of whether it was suicide or murder. Italian prosecutors said two years ago that they had evidence it was murder and linked the four suspects to the crime.
Mr. Carboni yesterday dismissed the suggestion he was involved. “I think that Calvi committed suicide,” he said. “I am satisfied with the judge’s ruling because it will let me demonstrate that I had nothing to do with it.”
Mr. Calvi's son, Carlo, was 29 when his father died and now lives in Canada. He says he has said all along that the Mafia was responsible for his father's death. “From the beginning we had identified criminal elements of the Mafia living in London, as having organized my father's murder," he told the BBC. "Of course we think that this is at the level of the executioner and that the murder was organized by politicians. The Mafia had simply the role of carrying out the murder."
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Three Italians and an Austrian were ordered yesterday to stand trial for the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, a banker tied to the Vatican whose death in London is one of modern Italy’s most mysterious unsolved crimes.
The four are Pippo Calò, a Cosa Nostra boss already imprisoned for Mafia activities; Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian wheeler-dealer who arranged for Mr. Calvi’s fateful trip to London 23 years ago; Ernesto Diotavelli, a Roman underworld figure and Manuela Kleinszig, Mr. Carboni’s Austrian girlfriend.
Mr. Calvi’s corpse was found hanging in June 1982 under London’s Blackfriars Bridge, his pockets filled with bricks and wads of Swiss francs, soon after Banco Ambrosiano, a bank of which he was chairman, had been taken into compulsory liquidation. Banco Ambrosiano’s close relationship with the Vatican earned Mr. Calvi the nickname “God’s banker”. By chance, yesterday’s decision by a judge in Rome was announced on the day Catholic cardinals began a conclave to pick the next pope.
Prosecutors suspect Mr. Calvi was murdered partly because he knew too much about how Mafia funds had been laundered through the Vatican’s own bank and Banco Ambrosiano. They allege that Mr. Calò ordered Calvi’s murder, and that the banker was lured to London by the other three suspects. The Vatican denied legal responsibility for the bank's downfall but acknowledged "moral involvement", and paid $241m to creditors. The bank collapsed in a scandal that implicated the Mafia and international freemasonry.
Paul Casimir Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank was later indicted in Italy as an accessory in the $3.5 billion collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, but never came to trial in Italy, where courts ruled that as a Vatican employee he was immune from prosecution. He now is retired and lives in Arizona.
An initial coroner’s inquest in London concluded that Mr. Calvi had committed suicide, but a second left open the question of whether it was suicide or murder. Italian prosecutors said two years ago that they had evidence it was murder and linked the four suspects to the crime.
Mr. Carboni yesterday dismissed the suggestion he was involved. “I think that Calvi committed suicide,” he said. “I am satisfied with the judge’s ruling because it will let me demonstrate that I had nothing to do with it.”
Mr. Calvi's son, Carlo, was 29 when his father died and now lives in Canada. He says he has said all along that the Mafia was responsible for his father's death. “From the beginning we had identified criminal elements of the Mafia living in London, as having organized my father's murder," he told the BBC. "Of course we think that this is at the level of the executioner and that the murder was organized by politicians. The Mafia had simply the role of carrying out the murder."
