Vatican Spies by Yvonnick Denoël review – a head-spinning history of saints and sinners | Religion

Popes used to control vast areas of Italy – the so-called “papal states”. But when the unification of Italy was finally completed after the capture of Rome in 1870, only about 120 acres of central Rome were left in papal possession. Popes railed against the Italian state until the Lateran Pacts were signed with Benito Mussolini in 1929, when each side recognised the other and the theocratic Vatican City was created.

With a population of 764, it’s the smallest sovereign state in the world. But its reach is global, guiding the lives of more than a billion Catholics. “The Vatican is one of a kind,” Yvonnick Denoël writes in this dense study, “because of its hybrid status: it is a micro-state and, at the same time, a worldwide spiritual authority.”

Given its reputation for secrecy and subterfuge, it’s perhaps not surprising to discover that the Vatican has conducted widespread espionage and intelligence operations. Denoël traces its activities from the second world war to the present day, showing how the Vatican was not only spying but also, repeatedly, spied upon.

In theory, any advancement of the Vatican’s reach should be a force for good because its neutrality is an obvious path to peace. During the cold war, the Vatican’s prowess at dialogue and rapprochement was daring. Infiltrating priests behind the iron curtain, the Vatican also defied the CIA to open channels to the top of the Kremlin. John XXIII told a US journalist: “I am not afraid to talk to anyone about peace on earth.” Alarmed, the CIA boss, John McCone, requested an audience with him, but was told bluntly that if the US continued diplomatic relations and trade with the Soviet Bloc, so the Vatican would continue its own trade: “the commerce of souls”.

The church’s envoys frequently risked their own lives to smuggle papal messages to the faithful. A papal letter, With Burning Concern, was secretly delivered to 26 German bishops in 1937 and the public rebuke to Hitler was read during mass on 22 March. (304 priests were subsequently deported to Dachau). During pogroms and witch-hunts, Catholic priests have usually dared to provide shelter from persecution. The bravery of the Irish priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, stationed in Rome during the second world war, is just the most famous example.

But each noble aspiration had a dark counterpart. Offering refuge to the persecuted frequently morphed into providing escape routes for criminals. Alois Hudal was a Rome-based priest who organised shelter, visas, cash and connections for Nazi war criminals, including the former Treblinka commandant, Franz Stagl. Croatian Ustasha mass murderers were hidden in the San Girolamo monastery in Rome. An organisation that oiled Nazi escape routes to South America was largely staffed by Vatican insiders and associates.

Denoël doesn’t pull his punches. “There are too many traces in the archives … for one to still believe that everything that took place was the sole responsibility of extremist and marginal priests. And it would be underestimating Pacelli [Pope Pius XII] to believe he was ignorant of what was going on when, from 1944 onwards, he himself filled the role of secretary of state.”

Opposition to communism meant that the Vatican frequently offered its cassocks as cover for weapons dumps. Post-second world war, many priests allowed their churches to become stashes for the CIA-inspired “Gladio” network, intended to offer resistance in the case of a Soviet takeover of Italy but which also became connected to various far-right atrocities. “All western secret services were connected to it in one way or another,” writes Denoël. “The Vatican was no exception.”

Anti-communism also became the fig leaf behind which covert gangs gathered cash and influence. Opus Dei (founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest) was a formally recognised institution of the church. Expert in fundraising and infiltration, it was described by the East German intelligence service, the Stasi, as attempting an “apostolate of penetration” behind the iron curtain. But it also cosied up to and publicly endorsed fascist dictators in South America.

“The South American continent thus became”, writes Denoël, “the terrain for a ruthless struggle for influence between an Opus Dei ready to support military juntas of the anti-communist far right and the Jesuits who, without actually being Marxists, thought it their priority to defend the most helpless in society even if it meant taking sides politically.”

But it was with regards to money that the Vatican’s covert operations were most efficient. During the second world war, the Vatican bank, the Instituto per le Opere di Religione (or IOR), became expert at turning cash into assets and vice versa for clients who needed discretion and neutrality. After the second world war, the IOR became the go-to bank for mafia cash, taking huge commissions and even, allegedly, daring to siphon off the mobs’ money.

That led to one of the largest scandals in Vatican history. Roberto Calvi, the boss of a collapsed Milanese bank with which IOR was intimately entwined, was found hanging under Blackfriars bridge in London in 1982. Calvi’s mentor late died from cyanide poisoning in prison. The liquidator of the banking empire built by that poisoned man was gunned down. The American Archbishop who was president of the IOR remained in post, unharmed.

Despite that disgrace, the IOR is still a Mecca for mobsters. In 2000, an academic report from Australia classified the Vatican as being in the “laundering paradise” category. The US state department has put the Vatican on a list of “problem” states regarding the fight against money laundering.

The Vatican is so secretive that Denoël’s book actually becomes a modern history of the temporal acts of the Holy See. There is much blood on the carpet, but the names pile up and the reader’s head begins to spin. I found myself longing for a more structured telling, investigating particular aspects of Vatican espionage or the scriptural underpinnings of it, rather than cascading incidents of skulduggery. It’s a great read, but the words – like the Vatican’s cash – come so fast it can be hard to keep up.

Tobias Jones’s most recent book is: The Po: An Elegy for Italy’s Longest River (Apollo)