“A Very Wealthy Church-State” By Darryl Eberhart, Editor of ETI & TTT // Website: www.toughissues.org

“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.