Clandestine priests smuggled into England hunted by spies from the royal court and martyred are prominent within English Catholic memory of the 16th and early 17th century. Priest-holes, the pejorative term ‘Jesuitical’, and the exclusion of Catholics from succession to the throne, remain a minor remnant of that time. In the 20th century, Nazi Rule, Communism, and the military dictatorships of Latin America, evoke a similar memory of spies, clandestine missionaries and martyrdom. Plus ça change.
Yvonnick Denoël’s Vatican Spies:From the Second World War to Pope Francis (Hurst £25), covers the period from 1940 to 2023 . The author is a French journalist who has written books about Intelligence Services including the CIA, MOSSAD and MI6. But this new book is not just about Vatican spies as the title suggests, but also covers other newsworthy elements of recent Church history - a discreditable litany of scandals. As a historian of the Church, Denoël leaves much to be desired. We get, for example, three pages on Rwandan history and the 1994 genocide. But no mention of Pope John Paul’s repeated passionate appeals, just three days after the massacres began: “Everywhere hatred, revenge, fratricidal killing. In the name of Christ we beg you, lay down your arms”. Nothing either about the Nuncio for Rwanda in Kigali, Monsignor Giuseppe Bertello, who supported Rwandan human rights organisations and had alerted the Pope to the danger. Plenty of detail about the complicity of the local Church. But what has this got to do with the Vatican and spies? Denoël does provide many vignettes and longer, indigestible accounts of agents of Intelligence Services trying to extract information from the Vatican, Cardinals and Curial officials, bishops, priests, lay Catholics and Catholic organisations. Many of his clerical dramatis personae have dodgy friends and vulnerabilities to manipulation: ambition, sometimes homosexuality and, in certain instances, strong ideological or political sentiments. Several show considerable courage or, at least, tolerance of high levels of risk. At 434 pages, you ‘d need a spy’s training to remember all the names. Denoël expands the definition of spies to mean not only handlers and agents, and their spying, for example, bugs in the office of Cardinal Luigi Maglione, Vatican Secretary of State during the War, (phones tapped also). Spying is treated in the generic sense of activities involving collection of sensitive information through cultivation of personal relationships, or picked up in the course of their work by Curial officials and Nuncios. And there is no doubt that Church officials did pass on information to Governments and, inadvertently or deliberately, to people who were Intelligence agents. Vatican Spies has no strong overarching themes beyond fear of, and reaction to, communism and money the root of all evil. Denoël justifiably points the finger at the Vatican’s management of its bank the IOR, Instituto per le Opere di Religione (the works of religion - for which, too often, read money-laundering). Alongside good works, over the years the IOR has served the Mafia, the sinister P2 Italian Masonic Lodge, and the CIA . Chronic incompetence, naivete or illicit financial benefit? All of the above. The larger than life American Monsignor, later Archbishop, Paul Marcinkus, who was IOR President from 1971-1989, weathering several scandals, owed his career to the then Archbishop Montini, later Pope Paul VI (1963-1978), whose pastoral work in Milan he assisted financially. Marcinkus was also director of the Nassau, Bahamas, Banco Ambrosiano Overseas of which the IOR was the main shareholder. Its chairman was Roberto Calvi who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge (definitely not suicide) when the bank collapsed in 1982. Enough to make St. Ambrose turn in his grave. In 1969 Pope Paul VI asked the Sicilian tax lawyer and banker, Michele Sindona, another benefactor from his Milan days, to liaise with Marcinkus in investing Vatican money offshore to avoid Italian tax. Unfortunately, New York Mafia boss Gambino’s heroin profits were also handled by Sindona who died in prison of cyanide in his coffee. Only under Pope Francis have serious inroads into cleaning up this inglorious Augean stable made much progress. The glory days for undercover work in the Vatican were the nine months of Nazi occupation of Rome October 1943 to June 1944. Escaped Allied troops were found sanctuary. A former Irish boxer from Cork, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, confined in the Vatican to avoid arrest, organised an extensive rescue network supported by the British Ambassador, Francis D’Arcy Osborne. The American Cardinal Eugene Spellman acted almost openly as a CIA asset, funneling in money to help. When deportation of 1,259 Jews from Rome to Auschwitz began on 15 October 1943, Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, protested to the German Ambassador. The Vatican ordered Rome’s 100 convents and 45 monasteries to provide sanctuary; they hid 6,000 out of the capital’s 8,000 Jews, some in churches and some in the Vatican itself. Meanwhile, the Gestapo worked to infiltrate these Catholic networks. There were, of course, exceptions to this risky support for Allied forces and Jews. Some in leadership positions were pro-German. At the end of the war, Pius XII (Pope 1939-1958) appointed the rector of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, pro-Nazi Bishop Alois Hudal of Graz, to ensure pastoral care of Germans interned in Italy. But the care included organizing ‘ratlines’, escape routes for Nazi war criminals to Argentina. Like those O’Flaherty saved from Nazi capture, most were hidden in Church properties. The Americans weren’t bothered. By late 1944, their mistrust of the Soviet Union was becoming dominant. The key is the Vatican’s fear of, and enmity towards, Communism, a theological dimension of the Cold War. In Poland from 1945-1953, some 2,200 priests were deported, imprisoned, and some executed. (Over 1,800 had already died in Nazi concentration camps). As the Communist government established itself in China, out of the 3,000 priests in 1949 some 500 were expelled, 500 imprisoned and 200 were executed. These experiences weighed heavily on successive Popes and directed ongoing diplomatic priorities. During the Cold War, the CIA - fearing that the Italian Communist Party would win the 1948 elections and supporting Pius XII’s perennial attempts to infiltrate priests into Soviet-controlled eastern Europe - were close collaborators with the Vatican, if not acknowledged allies. James Angleton, CIA station chief in Rome during the war, brought $10 million in sacks partly for Monsignor Montini (later Paul VI) to deposit in the IOR, financing the Vatican’s contribution to a massive political campaign for the Christian Democrats organized by the Italian Church. Pope St. John XXIII’s Ostpolitik of detente, his warmth towards Khruschev’s family, was a new approach to an old problem. It worried the Americans. JFK avoided emphasizing his Catholic identity. But a Polish Pope, St. John Paul II (1958-2005), who embodied the struggle between Catholicism and Communism, offered exceptional opportunities. John Paul II did not cause the collapse of the Soviet Union but he contributed towards it bravely and skillfully. In the 1980s, according to Tomas Turowski, Polish Ambassador to the Vatican: “There were more spies in the Vatican than in the James Bond films”. The Catholic Church is a global communications network. Information flows through it to journalists, NGOs and Governments, sometimes for the common good. So, in Denoël’s sense, many Catholics are spies…. and a few are spies in the usual sense. While working undercover for Swedish Government against the apartheid regime in the 1980s, I had smuggled into South Africa a debugging device for the non-violent political coalition, the United Democratic Front. It featured as ‘agricultural equipment’. Well, it equipped them to get rid of bugs. Vatican Spies puts Church leadership in a discreditable light. The book is a potential arsenal for anti-Catholicism. In the words of the Mass: “Look not on our sins but on the Faith of Your Church”. See TheArticle 24/01/2025
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Now that President Trump has taken office, Jo Biden’s parting shot warning of the danger to American democracy posed by an oligarchy of the super-rich – assembled by President-Elect Trump –seems all the more timely. But it is not the only threat. The rule of law is the institutional foundation and safeguard of democracy. Once it is undermined democracy crumbles. There is now a real danger that politicization of the American legal system will weaken this vital safeguard.
During the 2016 American election campaign, Stephanie Clifford, a go-getter, not to say a hard-worker known as Stormy Daniels in what is politely known as adult entertainment, was given $130,000 to deny an affair with the future President of the United States. Michael Dean Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and fixer from 2006-2018, attended to the fraught details of paying Daniels for a non-disclosure document (NDA). Playboy model Karen McDougal had an affair with Trump at much the same time, not long after Trump’s third marriage - to Melania Knauss - and received $150,00 from another source. Not long before how to pay hush money gets onto the standard business school curriculum. Daniel’s NDA payment would prove a transaction too far in Trump’s transactional politics. In 2018 Cohen was found guilty under campaign finance laws for attempting unlawfully to influence presidential elections and was fined and sentenced to three years in a federal prison in which he served thirteen and a half months. In 2021 New York State’s Attorney General Office and the Manhattan District Attorney Office initiated a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s business activities. In March 2023 a New York Grand Jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide the origins of the hush-money he paid via Cohen (prosecutors serve up a fraud in several parts corresponding to key documents). A week or so ago Judge Juan Merchan, despite an additional contempt of court conviction, gave Trump an unconditional discharge. Trump escaped even the $50,000 fine given Cohen. Until an appellate court finds otherwise, Donald Trump may be described as the first convicted felon to be inaugurated President of the United States. Andrew Weissmann is a former US federal prosecutor appointed by President G.W. Bush in 2004 as leader of the Enron Task Force investigating massive accounting fraud in the over $60 billion oil company bankruptcy. He was also Chief of Fraud Investigations in the Justice Department 2015-2017. Weissman said this of the unconditional discharge. “Judge Merchan made it clear that it was only because of the presidency, not Donald Trump, that he was getting this”. Weissman went on to say: "And all of that is an undermining of the rule of law. It's an undermining of who we think we are in this country, but also in the rest of the world, which I think is going to have lasting damage”. Very true. But the problem is even deeper than that. Entry into the judiciary in the American system, unlike the British, is not independent of its two major political parties. A wide variety of processes for judicial appointments exist. For example, the President nominates and the Senate confirms the appointment of Federal Supreme Court justices, Courts of Appeal judges and district (regional) courts. In 13 States, partisan elections are held to select all or most State and local judges. About half the US States hold elections for their own Supreme Courts and appellate courts. Perhaps fine in an ideal democracy. But at times of intense polarization in society this is neither in the interests of the rule of law nor the common good. Recent partisan judgements by the US Supreme Court and judiciary are worrying. The Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 by 6-3 that a US President was “entitled at a minimum to presumptive immunity from prosecution” for acts on the official and unofficial borderline committed while President. And complete immunity for official acts. In other words Trump is given almost free rein to do what might land ordinary mortals in jail. The three dissenting Judges described the ruling as making the President “a king above the law”. It is unlikely he will ever face charges connected with the mob violence at the Capitol on 6 January 2020. Rulings of the Supreme Court can have profound impacts on American society. On 29 June 2023, in a landmark case, Students for Fair Admissions v University of Virginia, the justices voted 6-3 against affirmative action on the grounds that certain policies violated the equal protection clause within the Constitution’s 14th. Amendment. In the case of Harvard University, decided at the same time, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former Harvard student and member of its Board of Overseers, recused herself making it a 6-2 vote. Two rulings which have the potential to strike at policies supporting diversity, equity and inclusion. Comparable to the Court’s ruling on Presidential immunity, this looks like a further consequence of the prevailing opinions of the justices appointed by Trump. Not all the Supreme Court’s consequential rulings, of course, can be attributed to the peculiarities of a particular Presidential appointment. Going back further to 2010 and thus before Trump’s appointees, the court in the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission overruled a lower court’s prohibitions on independent expenditures (advertisements expressly for a named electoral candidate on a range of platforms) by corporations and other bodies, thus competition for office remained at least partially a financial battle between Republican and Democratic elites. Citizens United won 5-4. Justice Anthony Kennedy, deemed a moderate, voted with the conservatives owing to his fears of its effect on freedom of speech particularly its impact on newspapers, radio and TV spending. The focus was on transparency countering corrupt practice. The verdict reversed a century of restrictions blocking unlimited electoral funding, opening up a future in which corporate America could buy elections. With a President who shows sociopathic symptoms, the inherent weakness in the judicial system, its susceptibility to political influence, becomes more dangerous. Trump began his campaign to re-enter the White House facing 12 Congressional, 10 Federal criminal plus 8 State and local investigations. In four major cases during just a few months in 2023 he was indicted for criminal conduct in and after his first term of office. Perversely, he has talked a significant number of Americans into believing that this was because there is a conspiracy to stop him becoming President. Not because he has contempt for the law, the courts and constitution. Most lies, if they become widely believed, contain a grain of truth. But the alleged conspiracy is upholding the principle that in a democracy no-one, however powerful, should be above the law. The Presidential inaugural oath sworn by Trump contains the following words: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States”. For many the hallowed words now sound hollow. In those few seconds on 20 January Trump may mean what he says. But, the most worrying thing may be, with vast sums of money at his disposal, he has seriously begun to believe his own lies and will continue to undermine the institutions which safeguard the world’s most powerful democracy. See TheArticle 20/01/2025 New Year’s Eve was a slow news night. You could tell because a story about Africa was the BBC lead item. It sounded a bit like Schadenfreude: the Ivory Coast and Senegal had told their longstanding French garrisons, in the nicest possible way, to pack up and go home. Both countries have important economic links with France. French troops had previously been told to leave Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali where they had been fighting jihadists. An opportunity not to be missed.
During Prime Minister John Major’s entente cordiale with President Chirac in 1995, I attended a joint meeting on Africa, not much publicized, held in Paris. Apart from the fabulous, ever more sumptuous connecting rooms, ornate Louis XV furniture, and some threatening chandeliers – the venue was the Elyseé Palace – the most notable feature was a difference between the delegations. We Brits were a motley crew of anthropologists, NGO-bodies involved in international development, civil servants from FCO and DfID (now absorbed by the Foreign Office), plus the odd intelligence officer. The French partially matched these, but, pursuing their own priorities, fielded an impressive array of military figures. The colonial Tirailleurs Sénégalais formed in 1857 who fought on the Western Front during the First World War reflect a long and deep relationship. The expulsion of the French armed forces from West Africa is an historic blow to President Macron who cherishes his role in international affairs. The expulsion of the French was also a significant sign of the times. The Russians’ arms-length mercenaries, the Wagner group, moved into the Central African Republic in 2017 where they brokered a peace agreement between the warring factions - which later fell apart. In North Africa after the fall of Gaddafi, they began operating with ‘Marshal’ Khalifa Haftar’s militia in Benghazi, Libya, in 2018. Support of West African military juntas came next beginning in 2021 with Mali in where in 2022 they contributed to the execution in the Mopti region of some 500 people by the Malian armed forces. Then in 2024 Wagner was invited into Burkina Faso and Niger. Wagner, recently renamed the Africa Corps, is now under the Russian Ministry of Defense. Africa is becoming a Syria-substitute playground for Russia and Putin. The Mali story is extraordinary. The towns of Timbuktu and Gao are on the desert-edge in the Bilad-al-Sudan (from the medieval ‘land of the blacks’) that extends east as far as Darfur in Sudan. They are major targets for jihadist Al-Qaeda and ISIS linked groups and so in turn targets for the Wagner group. In Mali’s North-East Tinzaouten province abutting the Algerian border, a separatist coalition of nomadic Tuareg has on occasion been aligned with jihadists against the junta forces. The Tuareg are known as horsemen and cattle herders whose men famously wear a face-covering. They suffer particularly from the climate induced encroachment of the Sahara. Le Monde has been reporting on Ukraine’s support for the Tuareg coalition against the Russian mercenaries. In July 2024, 84 Russians and 47 Malians were reported killed in an Tuareg attack involving light quadcopter drones supplied allegedly – Kyiv denies this – by Ukraine. Well, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. A further chapter in the Scramble for Africa has opened. This time it’s Russia and China. There is something almost fitting that the two vast militarized authoritarian giants wish to engage with more or less militarized, authoritarian regimes in Africa. From Grozny to Gao jihadism is a menace, and from Beijing to Bamako railways and infrastructure are basic to economic progress. Russia and China seek Africa’s rare minerals and metals, gold and diamonds, cashew nuts and cocoa. Gold remains a lure. It is estimated that Russia has been taking out £1 billion worth of gold each year from African countries. The Wagner mercenaries took over a gold mine in Mali only last year. Everything in the West African garden wasn’t lovely before the new arrivals (the Chinese not so new). The northern borders of these West African states are highly permeable to people, weapons and smuggled goods. Travel north west from Maroua in Cameroon, you aren’t far from Maiduguri in Nigeria, birthplace in 2009 of militant Boko Haram which forged links with ISIS and, in 2015, sought to form a Caliphate. Travel north east to the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, and you go through territory infested with militia of the Islamic State in West Africa, and the remains of Boko Haram. Go south you have miles of border with Nigeria, a smugglers paradise for vehicles and arms. And since 2018 there has been a debilitating civil war in Cameroon. Failure both to alleviate poverty and command the confidence of citizens are contributory causes of jihadism. The high-flown titles of such armed groups can give a false impression. The foot soldiers of such militias have little knowledge of Shari’a and the Qur’an. They are in the employ of better educated jihadists, given a Kalashnikov, earn a living and eventually can pay the bride-price for a wife. The corruption in African States, the siphoning off of national wealth, the absence of reward for competence and merit, is not news to their citizens. I was being driven south from Makeni to Freetown in Sierra Leone and noticed a new railway running parallel with the road …. “Where does that go”, I asked the driver. “Beijing” he replied. I could see him grinning in the rear-view mirror. Neither Russia nor China are particularly bothered by the high level of corruption in sub-Saharan Africa. Russia’s kleptocrats would find it amateurish. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index is a standard measure of public sector corrupt practice. The lower the score the higher the corruption. Denmark does best with 90. But 44 out of 49 sub-Saharan African countries score below 50. Nigeria gets 24, Cote d’Ivoire with 40. Botswana, something of a worthy exception at 60. To Russia and China diplomatic support, for example at the UN, and valuable, often scarce, commodities, are what matters from client states. In the face of the deteriorating situation in West Afrika, and economic pressures in Europe, not a great deal is currently to be expected from either the UK and the EU. It is true that since 2015, there have been British troops training the Nigerian army, and personnel advising on counter-terrorism in North-East Nigeria, the Chad Basin and Cameroon in response to the ISIS threat in the region. There has also been some police training. But both the EU and UK, by cutting spending on Aid, are simultaneously undermining their own soft power and weakening the challenge to poverty. A great deal of the UK Aid budget is now diverted from poverty reduction abroad to covering the cost of asylum seekers in UK, including hotel accommodation, or on stimulating and facilitating trade. This as climate change brings ever severer immiseration to millions. The current, declining, birth rate in Africa is 31 per 1,000 people. Though, the UN estimates, there will be 2.5 billion Africans by 2050, making up a quarter of the world’s population. There is need to focus a little creative attention and action on this great continent beyond Schadenfreude at France’s reverses. ‘Waging Peace, Fighting Disease and Building Hope’ - the Motto of the Carter Center in Atlanta, founded by the late President, would be a good start. See TheArticle 06/01/2025 |
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