(7 of 8)
On the day after his secretary's death, Calvi was found hanging in London. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, British authorities ruled Calvi's death a suicide. But some Italians saw sinister significance in the fact that he was dangling from Blackfriars Bridge: members of P2 dress in black and address each other as "friar." Both Sindona and Calvi's son Carlo, 30, believe that the banker was killed. So does Franco de Cataldo, a member of an Italian parliamentary commission investigating P2, who declared last week on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies: "It appears ever more probable that Calvi was murdered."
In the wake of Calvi's death, a number of his associates reportedly fled Italy for South America and took large sums of money with them. Flavio Carboni, the business partner who had met with Calvi in London, was arrested in Switzerland. An Ambrosiano attorney says "many millions of dollars" were transferred to Carboni's Swiss accounts by Calvi some months before the trip to London.
The circumstances of Calvi's demise are only one of the unsolved mysteries in the Ambrosiano scandal. Among the others:
> How much of Banco Ambrosiano does the I.O.R. really own? Italian financial sources suggest that I.O.R. ownership may run as high as 10%. Vatican officials insist that the figure is exaggerated, but have left open the possibility that the Vatican bank's ownership may exceed the officially reported 1.589%.
> What, if any, was the extent of church officials' knowledge of P2? Lodge Grand Master Licio Gelli, who has gone into hiding, was a business associate of Calvi's. Sindona claims that Gelli had long championed the practice of funding opponents of Communism in order to help the cause of Catholicism, and that Calvi was the paymaster for Gelli's activities.
> What is the Vatican bank's liability in the Banco Ambrosiano failure? The I.O.R. could find its creditworthiness undermined if it refuses to help make up the losses. Italian officials expect the Vatican to pay part of the losses.
Another question that the Vatican must answer, if only to itself, is: Should the church's own bank be so deeply involved in the rough-and-tumble of high-risk international finance? Pope Paul VI, feeling that the church should not only be poor, but be "seen to be poor," moved in 1969 to adopt a lower financial profile by relinquishing the church's controlling interests in Italian companies and shifting to investments outside Italy. Through the Ambrosiano scandal, Marcinkus has clearly raised the church's profile.
High-ranking Vatican sources have already suggested that Marcinkus will be staying behind when Pope John Paul II travels to Spain next month. The reason is that Vatican officials want the archbishop around to answer any questions that might arise concerning his role in the Banco Ambrosiano affair.