

Many–including Pope Benedict's brother–believe the stress from these accumulating scandals contributed to Benedict's decision to resign from the papacy. Even wilder, though, is– as The Guardian explains–when the Vatican started an internal investigation into the leak of these documents, they uncovered that individuals outside the Vatican were blackmailing an underground "network of gay prelates" who were allegedly holding gay orgies in villas, beauty parlors, and saunas in and around Rome. This leak scandal became known as Vatileaks, because of course it did.

If you think gambling on the lives of Jewish people, stealing from their heirs, and directly profiting from the Holocaust is the most ghoulish thing you can think of. Because the Vatican was just an investor and not the direct insurer, they didn't have to pay back any of the money they made in this scheme.
#Scandal in the vatican part 2 full
The Vatican's financial advisor Bernardino Nogara, the founder of the Vatican Bank, is said to have potentially been on of the Third Reich's spies in the Vatican, and–though the destruction of war-time records make the full scope of his plan unclear–he and the Nazis are alleged to have instituted a scheme wherein the Vatican invested in Italian insurance companies which kept all the assets from life insurance plans of murdered European Jews. In his book God's Bankers, however, Posner investigates the possibility the war-era Vatican was up to something that was–shockingly, impossibly, somehow–even grosser than helping Nazis keep looted family heirlooms they had stolen from their murder victims. In the 1970s, it's alleged the Vatican tried to purchase $900 million in counterfeit bonds and securities from a Mafia-linked operation, and in 2013 a priest was arrested for trying to use the Vatican Bank to smuggle millions of euros for the mob. The bank was created during World War II to avoid the restrictions placed on financial transactions by the Allies, and as a result the Vatican Bank, being exempt from such restrictions, became the "world's best offshore bank." Since that time, the Vatican bank has become pretty notorious for its connections to organized crime, who use the Vatican's sovereignty to escape the scrutiny of world banks. The Catholic Church's primary financial institution has been embroiled in so many scandals since its founding in 1942, Business Insider was able to make a tidy little top five list based on the 2015 book God's Bankers.

#Scandal in the vatican part 2 pro
The Vatican Bank, formally known as the Institutum pro Operibus Religionis ("Institute for the Works of Religion") or IOR, is a financial body riddled with scandal. Setting aside conspiracy theories about aliens or Templar treasure and the abuse scandals you have definitely heard about, there are plenty of pretty gross things the pope and his pointy-hatted entourage would certainly prefer you not know about. And as the heart of the world's largest religious denomination, it's theoretically a sacred and holy place, where, like, God is present and stuff.īut reaching back to some of the Middle Ages' less savory popes and through the Vatican's independence from Italy being granted in 1929 by notoriously chill dude Benito Mussolini, there are definitely some less than holy stains on the Vatican's history. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museums, Vatican City is also a major cultural center. As the home of the Holy See, the jurisdiction of the pope, Vatican City is the center of leadership for the Catholic Church, the world's oldest and largest continuously operating religious institution. With an area of about 110 acres and a population of around 1,000 people, Vatican City is the smallest country in the world, contained fully inside the city of Rome, but its small physical size belies its somewhat outsized influence and power.
