"I may be a lousy banker, but at least I'm not in jail," Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, 65, told visitors two years ago, after Italy's biggest bank failure had exploded around him. The Archbishop, who heads the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, may not make that claim so confidently in the future. Last week a Milan judge named Marcinkus in an arrest warrant as an "accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy" in connection with the 1982 collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private banking group.
The Vatican Bank was a shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano, and investigators claim that Marcinkus was linked to Ambrosiano President Roberto Calvi's diversion of some $1.3 billion from the bank through ten dummy Panamanian companies. While no evidence of personal gain has ever been alleged, authorities charge that Marcinkus allowed the Vatican Bank to be used by Calvi for his schemes. Marcinkus has strongly denied the accusation, and last Friday the Vatican came to his defense. In an unsigned statement, it expressed "profound astonishment" at the arrest warrants against Marcinkus and two senior officials.
The Vatican Bank scandal had a dramatic opening in June 1982 when Calvi, who was known as "God's banker" because of his Vatican connections, was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge, his pockets stuffed with $13,000 in / various currencies. Later Michele Sindona, the corrupt Italian financier who introduced Calvi to Marcinkus, died in jail after drinking a cup of coffee laced with potassium cyanide.
The Vatican has steadfastly denied responsibility in the Ambrosiano affair. Nonetheless, and against Marcinkus' advice, the Vatican agreed in 1984 to pay $244 million to the bank's creditors as a goodwill gesture. At issue is whether the Vatican Bank owned the dummy companies and thus was involved in the fraud. Marcinkus' defense has reportedly been that his bank just held papers of collateral against them.
Born in Cicero, Ill., of Lithuanian heritage, Marcinkus has been a member of Pope John Paul II's entourage, and for 17 years served as a papal advance man. In 1970 Marcinkus used his 6-ft. 4-in. frame to thwart a knife attack on Pope Paul VI in Manila. The Archbishop was once thought to be on the Vatican fast track, but after the Ambrosiano affair his rapid career advancement came to a stop. He was not named a Cardinal as anticipated and did not rise to become President of Vatican City, another post that he was expected to receive. He has not been the advance man on papal trips since 1982.
The arrest warrant against Marcinkus could lead to a complex standoff between the Vatican and the Italian government. Italian officials cannot enter the Vatican to serve the arrest warrant, much less retrieve their man. Since the Lateran Treaty of 1929, Italy has recognized the 108.7-acre Vatican as a sovereign state. No extradition treaty, however, exists between the two. In 1982, shortly after the Italian Justice Ministry sent Marcinkus a "judicial warning" announcing that he and his two subordinates were under investigation, the Archbishop moved inside Vatican walls. Today he lives simply in a Vatican apartment.