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The Vergil who first guided Calvi through the descending circles of these and other transactions was Michele Sindona. A onetime Italian financier and Vatican financial adviser, he is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud in connection with the 1974 collapse of New York's Franklin National Bank (see box). Sindona became connected with the Vatican in the mid-1960s and later helped Pope Paul VI divest the church of its holdings in several large companies.
In 1971, Sindona introduced Calvi to Marcinkus. Sindona and Calvi hoped to use Marcinkus for their own purposes, and the bankers and the churchman obviously found it advantageous to do business together. Although the Vatican bank denies it had much to do with either Sindona or Calvi, the I.O.R. eventually became Banco Ambrosiano's fourth-largest stockholder, acquiring over the years at least 794,390 shares, or 1.589% of the bank's stock. A few months after Sindona and Calvi set up the Bahamian bank in 1971, a "Mr. Paul Marcinkus" was listed as a director. "We used his name a lot in business deals," Sindona said. "I told him clearly that I put him in because it helps me get money."
What the I.O.R. may have obtained in return remains to be learned. But according to Sindona, the Vatican bank initially received 2.5% of the Bahamian bank's stock. Vatican officials told TIME that the stake in the Bahamian bank eventually rose to 8% and that the church's interest in Banco Ambrosiano Holding in Luxembourg was 4%.
The I.O.R., according to Sindona, regularly moved funds out of the country for Banco Ambrosiano, which was restricted from acting on its own by Italian law. Sindona also asserts that in return for such favors, Calvi's banks paid the I.O.R. an interest rate on its deposits that was one percentage point higher than the rate other customers received. Vatican officials flatly deny that the I.O.R. ever helped transfer funds abroad for Italians.
As Sindona's fortunes fell (his Banca Privata Italiana collapsed in 1974, the same year that his American operation fell apart), Calvi's rose. He was named president of Banco Ambrosiano, and acquired more and more companies. The press dubbed the publicity-shy Calvi "God's banker" for his ties to the I.O.R. He became known as the man who had taken over the disgraced Sindona's role as the Vatican's lay financial partner.
But Calvi's luck soon ran out. In the late 1970s, suspicious of the way in which he was operating in the international money market, the Bank of Italy ordered him to put his confusing array of banks under the single name of Ambrosiano. Some Italians also became nervous about another Calvi acquisition: his purchase of 40% interest in Italy's 73-year-old Rizzoli publishing company and with it a piece of the Milan-based Corriere della Sera, Italy's largest, most respected daily newspaper. Businessmen who were already uneasy about Calvi's connections with the Vatican feared that he might turn the independent Corriere to his own purposes, perhaps to punish his enemies with unfavorable coverage or commentary. Some Italians believe that Calvi's growing power led influential businessmen and public officials to begin to push for his downfall.