Did the Vatican Launder Money With the Mafia?

Anyone even half conscious and in touch with reality ought to recognize the sad truth that the Vatican and the Catholic Church hierarchy engaged in a global criminal conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse of children and minors and to protect the predators in the ranks of the clergy who raped and molested their under age victims.  But it seems the same circles of falsely pious conspirators - or at least those at the Vatican itself - may have also participated in money laundering schemes with the Mafia.  Am I at all surprised?  Not in the least.  The Church hierarchy consistently views itself as above the laws - both civil and criminal laws.  Here are highlights (sorry for the length of the quotes) from Spiegel Online:

The Vatican scandal over shady bank accounts and millions in suspect transfers began shortly before sunrise on June 5 on Via Giuseppe Verdi, a picturesque street in the old part of Piacenza, a town in northeastern Italy. An elderly gentleman in a tailor-made suit had just left his house with a leather briefcase dangling from his right hand. He was on his way to his car.

It was to be an important day for Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had recently been fired as the head of the Vatican bank -- even if it turned out differently than he'd expected. Tedeschi was planning to go to the Vatican on that morning, but he never got there. 

Instead, Gotti Tedeschi found four men waiting for him in the street -- not a hit squad as he feared at first, but investigators with the Carabinieri, Italy's national military police force.   .   .   .    For several hours, they searched through his sparsely furnished, cloister-like home office. At the same time, other officers were searching through Gotti Tedeschi's office in Milan. Among the objects they confiscated were two computers, two cabinets' full of binders, a planner and his briefcase.

The investigators were pleased  .   .   .   .   they stumbled upon something else in there search which proved to be spectacular.  The documents confiscated from Gotti Tadeschi, a former confidant of the pope,    .   .   .   .   includes references to anonymous numbered accounts and questionable transactions as well as written and electronic communications reportedly showing how Church banking officials circumvented European regulations aimed at combating money-laundering.

Gotti Tedeschi upset powerful forces within the Roman Curia, the Vatican's administrative and judicial apparatus. Several high-ranking officials within the Curia viewed the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as something akin to a trust company for clandestine monetary transactions that is not only used by the Church, but allegedly also by the mafia as well as corrupt politicians and companies. In one of the seized Gotti Tedeschi memos, he wrote: "I've seen things in the Vatican that scare me."

The next act in the drama is set for Wednesday. Money-laundering experts from the Council of Europe will present a preliminary report on the Vatican in Strasbourg. It currently looks as though they will indicate serious misgivings about whether the IOR has taking sufficient precautions against money-laundering.

The Vatican leadership is alarmed. Archbishops and cardinals are far from thrilled that Italian officials are now rummaging around in their secret affairs. Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi has openly threatened Italy's law-enforcement apparatus and urged it to kindly respect "the sovereign rights of the Holy See." 

For more than 40 years, the IOR, founded in 1942, has been regularly embroiled in scandals, including bribery money for political parties, mafia money-laundering and, repeatedly, anonymous accounts.   Many who have become ensnarled in illegal business dealings with the Vatican bank have been forced to pay with their lives, while others have spent years behind bars. Despite all of its sacred and solemn promises, the Vatican has succeeded in keeping the pope's bank a haven for money-launderers.

The direct beneficiary [of IOR] is the pope and his Church; 2010 earnings from the bank were €55 million. Such revenues help make up for a decline in donations from members of his global congregation.

Whereas Benedict XVI and his predecessors have preached humility and ethical financial dealings from the window overlooking St. Peter's Square, his confidants working directly beneath the papal windows have continued to pursue shady financial transactions.

Such things could include a complex system of ghost accounts and shell companies like the bank had when Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus was its head in the 1980s. At the time, the bank did business involving foreign currency and weapons with the Milanese banker Robert Calvi and the mafia financier Michele Sidona -- and helped launder illegal proceeds the mafia earned from drug-trafficking as well as bribes paid to Christian-conservative Italian politicians.

In the end, Calvi was found dangling beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge and his private secretary fell to her death from the window of his Banco Ambrosiano. Four years later, in 1986, Sidona would die in prison after drinking a morning espresso laced with cyanide. 

The article continues with more details.  All of the details again raise this question: how does anyone with moral decency remain a Roman Catholic?  The criminality - - and moral bankruptcy - of the Church leadership is simply mind numbing.