Jubilant Communists this week were busily plastering Rome's walls with the picture of a Roman Catholic priest. The caption: "One vote the Christian Democrats won't get. Monsignor Cippico, Vatican official, can't vote because he's in jail. He would have voted Christian Democrat —if he hadn't been caught!"
"Very Surprising." Monsignor Cippico's exposure, the only major Vatican scandal since 1915,* began last August. Pope Pius was at his summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo, deep in the Alban Hills. Beneath his long hand on the light walnut desk lay the morning's mail, with all the envelopes personally addressed to the Pope still unopened. Many begging letters Pius XII marked with a gold pencil, so that help should be sent immediately. Then he came to a letter from an industrialist who complained of the excessively high commissions charged by the Vatican for personal loans of $450,000 and 90,000,000 lire; he mentioned interest rates as high as 45%. Incredulous, the Pope glanced at the clock which, together with a tall white crucifix and a telephone, was the only ornament on his desk. There was just time to reach Monsignor Domenico Tardini, State Secretary for Extraordinary Affairs, before Tardini's daily siesta. Shown the letter, Tardini raised his eyebrows. "Banking and industry!" he exclaimed. In all his long diplomatic career he had never had anything to do with either. "Very surprising!" he said.
Tardini summoned tall, bent Monsignor Giulio Guidetti, administrator of Holy See property. Hobbling in on his cane, Guidetti said yes, he had supplied loans to the industrialist, but had taken no commission whatever. He had handed the money to Monsignor Cippico as directed in orders signed by Tardini and Monsignor Giovanni Montini, Substitute Secretary of State.*
Afternoon by the Bay. A five-man papal inquiry commission soon established that Tardini's and Montini's names had been forged to the orders. Their findings led directly to blond, youngish Monsignor Eduardo Prettner Cippico, a well-born native of Trieste and a Vatican archivist. Though his salary was meager, Cippico owned an 18,000,000-lire apartment in Rome, an Alfa Romeo, a Fiat and a Chrysler. He liked to entertain expensively. The day before Easter last year, waiters at a fashionable restaurant at Posillipo, near Naples, had their hopes of an afternoon off dashed when Cippico phoned that he would be lunching there at 3. He spent the afternoon beside the Bay of Naples with an operatic soprano. He said she was a relative.
While under investigation, Cippico gave his word not to leave a suite in the Vatican, and a papal gendarme was placed at his door to bar strangers. One evening last week Cippico asked his guard to help him move some books from one room to another. Loading the obliging gendarme's arms with volumes, Cippico held open the door. When the guard entered, Cippico closed the door and locked it. He slipped into the shadows of Saint Peter's and out into the Piazza di San Pietro, where a waiting automobile whisked him off into the Roman night.