The Venice Luciani discovered was one of monuments and churches, testament to its past glories, but where the 107 parishes held primarily empty churches. Yallop tells us: “Venice is a city that has sold its soul to tourism.”

On the day following his arrival, Luciani was at work with his new secretary, Msgr.Mario Senigaglia, at his side. The usual welcoming tributes for a new patriarch: cocktail parties, various soirees, and receptions had been cancelled. Instead, Luciani had chosen to visit a local seminary, the woman’s prison of Giudecca and the men’s prison of Santa Maria Maggiori, and then celebrated Mass in the church of San Simone. The Gospel message of Christ could be easily read in the new patriarch’s service to the least of his flock, whom he looked upon as the most precious of all.

Usually, the patriarch of Venice had his own boat, but, since Luciani had arrived with empty pockets, he could not afford a boat, so he and Mario used the water taxis. When an emergency arrived, they called on the fire department, the carabinieri, or the finance police for a loan of a boat. Eventually, the three organizations worked out a schedule that would meet the needs of their modern St. Francis.

When a national gasoline shortage arose, Luciani took to a bicycle for visiting on the mainland, which disturbed the sensibilities of Venetian high society, who didn’t understand Luciani’s view that the real treasures of Venice are the poor, the weak, who should not be helped by occasional charity, but in such a way that they can really benefit for the long term.

When Luciani learned that one of his priests, who owned an apartment building, had increased the rent, which was impossible for an unemployed teacher to pay, Luciani begged the priest not to evict the family, which was met with the shrug of the shoulders. Luciani immediately wrote out a check enabling the family to remain there until they found a permanent residence. Today, a photocopy of the check has been framed and hangs on the teacher’s living room wall.

One day, the secretary inadvertently interrupted Luciani’s visit when he was emptying out his pockets on a sick priest’s bed. When Mario objected, Luciani said, “But that’s all I had on me.”

The secretary explained that the Curia had a special fund to take care of needy charities, but second-hand charity had never been the patriarch’s way. Soon, his office was crowded with the poor, for he had passed the word: “The door of the patriarch is always open. Ask Don Mario, and whatever I can do for you, I will always do it.”

So, they came: ex-prisoners, alcoholics, poor people, abandoned people, tramps, and women who could no longer work as prostitutes. Yallop wrote: “One of these people still wears the pajamas Luciani gave him and writes ‘thank you’ notes to a man no longer here to read them.”

In 1971, Pope Paul VI nominated Luciani to attend the World Synod of Bishops. Items on the agenda were priestly ministry and justice in the world. One of Luciani’s suggestions was:

I suggest, as an example of concrete help to the poor countries, the more fortunate churches should tax themselves and pay one percent of their income to the Vatican aid organizations. This one percent should be called the “brothers’ share” and should not be given as charity, but as something that is owed, to compensate for the injustice being committed by our consumer world against the developing world, and to make up in some way for social sin, of which we should all be aware.

Luciani also found among his priests ignorance regarding the mentally handicapped. When he went to give First Communion to a large group of such people at St. Pius X Church in Marghera, he had to cope with a delegation of protesting priests, who argued that he should not do such a thing. “These creatures do not understand. “ He instructed the group that he was personally ordering them to attend the First Communion.

After the Mass, he picked up a young girl suffering from spina bifida. Everyone was silent.

Do you know whom you have received today? he asked the girl.

Yes. Jesus.

And are you pleased?

Very.

Luciani turned slowly and looked at the group of protesting priests.

You see, they are better than we adults.

We have already seen in a previous article how Bishop Marcinkus, President of the Vatican Bank, had sold the Banca Cattolica del Veneto Bank, on which the priests, who owned shares in the bank, had depended for small loans to cover their projects to the poor. The recipient was Roberto Calvi of Banco Ambrosiano, Milan.

In speaking with the undersecretary of state, Msgr. Giovanni Benelli, Luciani said:

I have not , of course, seen any documentary evidence. I have, responded Benelli. Calvi in now the major shareholder in the Banca Cattolica del Veneto. Marcinkus sold him thirty-seven percent on March thirty.

Benelli told Luciani that Calvi had paid approximately $45 million to Marcinkus, and that the scheme had been hatched jointly by Calvi, Michele Sindona, and Marcinkus. Marcinkus had assisted Calvi in hiding the nature of this from the eyes of Italy officials by putting the Vatican Bank facilities at the disposal of Calvi and Sindona.

What does all this mean? Luciani asked.Tax evasion, illegal movement of shares. I also believe that Marcinkus sold the shares in your Venice bank at a deliberately low price and Calvi paid the balance via a separate thirty-one billion lire deal on another bank.        (Benelli)

Luciani became angry:

What has all this to do with the Church of the poor? In the name of God...

Benelli held up his hand to silence him.

No, Albino, in the name of profit.

Does the Holy Father know these things?

Benelli nodded.

So?

So you must remember who put Paul Marcinkus in charge of our bank.

The Holy Father.

Precisely. And I must confess I fully approved. I’ve had cause to regret that many times.

Then, what are we to do? What am I to tell my priests and bishops?

You must tell them to be patient. To wait. Eventually, Marcinkus will overreach himself. His Achilles’ heel is his greed for papal praise.

But what does he want with all the money?

He wants to make more money.

For what purpose?

To make more money.

Luciani returned to tell his fellow bishops in Venice what had happened. To register their disapproval, everyone withdrew his funds from the Banca Cattolica. For the patriarch of Venice to transfer the official diocesan accounts to the small Bankco San Marco was a serious decision. Luciani told a colleague: “Calvi’s money is tainted. The man is tainted. After what I have learned of Roberto Calvi I would not leave the accounts in his bank if the loans they granted to the diocese were totally free of interest.

Six months later, during March of 1973, the pope made Albino Luciani a cardinal.

In the following May, Benelli again paid Luciani a visit, and had an extraordinary story to tell, concerning the American Mafia, nearly $1 billion worth of counterfeit securities and Bishop Paul Marcinkus.

It was on April 25, 1973, that Benelli had received in his office at the Secretariat of State in Vatican City, William Lynch, chief of the organized crime and racketeering section of the U.S.Department of Justice, and William Aronwals, assistant chief of the strike force in the Southern District of New York. Two members of the FBI had accompanied them.

David Yallop wrote: “Monsignors Edward Martinez, Carl Rauber, and Justin Rigali listened while William Lynch told of a police investigation that had begun in the world of the New York Mafia and had led inexorably to the Vatican. He told the priests that a package of $14.5 million of American counterfeit bonds had been carefully and painstakingly created by a network of members of the Mafia in the United States. The package had been delivered to Rome in July 1971, and there was substantial evidence to establish that the ultimate destination of those bonds was the Vatican Bank.”

Lynch said that there was evidence that someone with financial authority within the Vatican had ordered the fake bonds, and that the $14.5 million was merely a down payment, and the counterfeit bonds ordered were in fact worth a total of $950 million. The financial authority within the bank was Bishop Paul Marcinkus.

Mario Foligni, with an honorary doctorate in theology, had already been arrested. He had opened the Vatican doors to an Austrian, Leopold Ledl, who put the Vatican deal together – the purchase of $950 million of counterfeit bonds with a purchase price of $635 million. A “commission” of $150 million would be paid by the gang to the Vatican, leaving the Mafia with $485 million and the Vatican with bonds that had a face value of nearly $1 billion.

Foligni had told the American investigators that Marcinkus had requested that a trial deposit of $1.5 million of the bonds be made at Handelsbank in Zurich to make sure that the bonds would pass as genuine. He nominated Vatican cleric Monsignor Mario Fornasari as the beneficiary of the account he opened.

A second trial deposit of $2.5 million of the bonds had been made at the Banco di Roma in September 1971, which passed scrutiny. However, both banks had sent samples to New York for physical examination. The Bankers Association in New York discovered that the bonds were false, which resulted in the visit of American attorneys and men from the FBI in the Vatican offices.

Mario Foligni accused Bishop Marcinkus during the investigation, along with Sindona, of planning to buy Bastogi, a giant Italian company with wide interests, including property, mining, and chemicals, with fake bonds, and that the bishop had established several secret numbered bank accounts in the Bahamas for his personal use, which Marcinkus denied. Benelli immediately set in motion measures to severely restrict Marcinkus’ financial power within the Vatican.

William Aronwald told Yallop: “At the end of the investigation the case against Marcinkus had to be filed for lack of evidence that might have convinced the jury.”

Eventually, Marcinkus came to the United States, and to my knowledge, is living in Cicero, Ilinois. If he is engaged in his favorite sport of golf, there are no reports of his scores, fellow players, or photographs. While he may have had a colorful past, he appears to possess no present, and no doubt that is the way God’s banker likes it.

Michael Walsh, in his book, Opus Dei, wrote that:

The Vatican, meanwhile, though it has refused to accept responsibility for what Italians graphically call the ‘crack’ Ambrosiano, has made some reparations of $250 million, less discount for paying all at once, was made over to the Ambrosiano creditors in May 1985. How the Vatican, poverty-stricken as it came to be, could find such a sum has not been explained.

Was it Opus Dei that bailed out the Vatican Bank? That theory has never been either entirely discounted nor affirmed.

Back home in Venice, Albino Luciani continued his way of simplicity. Since cardinal robes cost more than he felt willing to pay, he continued to ask the nuns, who took care of his things to mend those left by his predecessor, Cardinal Urbani, which he seldom wore, unless protocol demanded it, preferring his simple priest’s cassock.

He went beyond a personal following of poverty and encouraged his priests to sell their gold, necklaces, and precious objects. The proceeds were to go to the Don Orione center for handicapped people. He said he intended to sell the bejeweled cross and gold chain that had belonged to Pius XII and that Pope John had given to Luciani when he had made him a bishop, saying:

It is very little in terms of the money it will produce, but it is perhaps something if it helps people to understand that the true treasures of the Church are, as Saint Lorenzo said, the poor, the weak who must be helped not with occasional charity but in such a way that they can be raised a little at a time to that standard of life and that level of culture to which they have a right.

On Sunday, August 6, 1978, Pope Paul VI died at 9:40 P.M. The throne of Peter was empty. A patriarch who loved the poor in Venice would be asked to embrace the poor of the entire world, to shepherd every nation, to soothe every restless heart with Christ’s wisdom and mercy. Albino Luciani was ready for his mission; was the mission ready for Albino Luciani?

(To be concluded)

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