“A
Very Wealthy Church-State”
By Darryl Eberhart, Editor of ETI & TTT // Website: www.toughissues.org
A 2-Page Handout // All emphasis is mine unless otherwise stated. //
October 16, 2009
The
Roman Catholic Church-State (i.e., Papal Rome) is the wealthiest
organization that the world has ever seen. Its wealth (e.g., gold, stock
shares, banking assets, real estate holdings, precious art treasures and
manuscripts, etc.) is incalculable. Please carefully consider the following
information provided on the back cover of the book, “The Vatican Empire”,
by Nino Lo Bello (published by Simon and Schuster, New York, New York in 1968):
“The
extent of papal wealth has traditionally been cloaked in secrecy. Even
within the Vatican’s own walls there is no one individual who has an overall
view of its infinitely ramified financial operations. In ‘The Vatican Empire’,
Nino Lo Bello, former Rome correspondent for ‘Business Week’, presents the
first comprehensive and authoritative report on the Vatican as a nerve
center of high finance. The picture that emerges is one of awesome fiscal
power.
Mr. Lo
Bello describes in fascinating detail Vatican investment in real estate – one
third of Rome is owned by the Holy See – electronics, plastics, airlines, and
chemical and engineering firms. He also gives evidence that the Vatican is
heavily involved in Italian banking and that it has huge deposits in
foreign banks. Many of these are in Switzerland, since the Vatican financiers
prefer numbered Swiss accounts where anonymity is maintained and where they can
gain control of foreign corporations far from the public eye.
In
addition, Mr. Lo Bello shows that the Vatican is one of the world’s largest
shareholders, with a stock portfolio that can be conservatively estimated
in billions of dollars.”
Note: These following
quotations were taken from Avro Manhattan’s book “The Vatican Billions”.
(Please remember that the figures given below are over two decades old!):
“The
Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France
and America, with the Hambros Bank, [Ed.: and] with the Credit Suisse in
London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with
the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York,
the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions in
shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell,
General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business
Machines [IBM], T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to
more than 500 million dollars in the USA alone.” – Avro Manhattan (“The
Vatican Billions”)
“In a statement published in connection with a bond
prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and
Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This
leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one Million dollars
($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of
the [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church, once we add the riches of the
twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the USA, some of which are even
wealthier than that of Boston.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”)
“Some
idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the [Ed.:
Roman] Catholic Church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New
York Catholic Conference, namely ‘that his church probably ranks second only to
the United States government in total annual purchase.’ Another statement, made
by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. ‘The
Catholic Church’, he said, ‘must be the biggest corporation in the United
States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real
estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel
combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax
rolls of the United States government’.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican
Billions”)
“The [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church, once all her
assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the
world. …The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican’s financial
deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in
lots of a million or more dollars at one time.” – Avro Manhattan (“The
Vatican Billions”)
“The Vatican’s treasure of solid gold has been estimated
by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars.
…But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in
the U.S. alone is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations
of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and
shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the [Ed.:
Roman] Catholic Church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational
assessment.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”)
“The [Ed.: Roman] Catholic Church is the biggest
financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in
existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other
single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, GOVERNMENT or STATE of the
whole globe.” – Avro Manhattan (“The Vatican Billions”) [Ed.: End
of quotations from “The Vatican Billions”]
Please
consider also these following quotations:
“[Ed.: Chicago Mob boss Sam] Mooney [Ed.:
Giancana] confided that through their Vatican connections and shady
banking deals, he and [Ed.: New York Mob boss Carlo] Gambino had
assisted the CIA in pouring millions of illegally earned dollars into [Ed.:
Vatican consultant Michele] Sindona’s illicit ‘slush funds’. In
exchange, the CIA contributed heavily to [Ed.: Roman] Catholic
charities – some legitimate, others not.” – Sam and Chuck Giancana (“Double
Cross”; 1992; P. 431)
“The ostensible wealth of the 108.7-acre enclave [Ed.:
i.e., Vatican City] inside the sturdy Leonine Walls – the magnificent
church buildings, the land, the many thousands of art treasures and precious
manuscripts – serves only as the visible tip of the [Ed.: Vatican’s]
financial iceberg. The largest chunk of the Vatican’s [Ed.:
financial] empire lies below the surface. There it continues to grow,
in spire of changing currents.” – Nino Lo Bello (“The Vatican Empire”;
1968; Page 18)
“Perhaps the most lucrative of the Vatican’s direct
sources of income is ‘Peter’s Pence’…derived from contributions
made in all parts of the world, wherever there are Roman Catholic Churches or
dioceses. …Another form of direct revenue for the Vatican comes from private
contributions and legacies left by devout Catholics. This is considered by
some insiders to be among the Vatican’s largest sources of direct income.”
– Nino Lo Bello (“The Vatican Empire”; P. 23, 24)
“Every year millions
of dollars are paid to obtain relief from this imagined suffering [Ed.:
in purgatory].” – Dr. Loraine Boettner
(“Roman Catholicism”; 1962; Page 222)
“Most [Ed.: i.e., a sizable chunk] of [Ed.:
Papal] Rome’s wealth has been acquired through the sale of salvation.
Untold billions of dollars have been paid to her by those who thought
they were purchasing heaven on the installment plan for themselves or loved
ones. The practice continues to this day…There are the further [Ed.:
Roman Catholic Church] abominations of corrupt banking practices, laundering
of drug money, trading in counterfeit securities, and dealings
with the Mafia (fully documented in police and court records), which the
Vatican and her representatives around the world have long employed. Nino Lo
Bello, former ‘Business Week’ correspondent in Rome and Rome bureau chief for
‘New York Journal of Commerce’, writes that the Vatican is so closely allied
with the Mafia in Italy that ‘many people…believe that Sicily…is
nothing more than a Vatican holding’.
The Roman Catholic Church is by far the WEALTHIEST
institution on earth.” – Dave Hunt (“A Woman Rides the Beast”;
1994; Pages 75 and 76)
For Further Research:
Please do a “google-style” search on the Internet for books mentioned in this
handout to learn more about Papal Rome’s great wealth and about the Roman
Catholic Church-State.
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