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lands that were seized by the national government in 1870 and
agreed to establish diplomatic relations with the Italian government.
    The final section of the agreement-called "the Financial Convention"-provided a payment of $90 million in cash and government bonds and an undisclosed sum for the pope's "privy purse" as
restitution for the former papal principalities.43 The Italian government also agreed to pay the salaries of all parish priests in the country.
    With one stroke of the pen, the Vatican went from rags to riches
and gained a privileged position at the tables of international money
markets where the future direction of the twentieth century would be
charted. Ten years later, in 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, the
Roman Catholic Church would become, once again, the richest and,
in many ways, the most powerful institution on earth.

     

    Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes
what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to
others as you would have them do to you. If you love
those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even
"sinners" love those who love them. And if you dogood
to those who aregood to you, what credit is that to you?
Even "sinners" do that. And if you lend to those from
whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to
you? Even "sinners" lend to "sinners," expecting to be
repaid in full.
    Luke 6:30-34

    n the day of the ratification of the Lateran Treaty, Pius XI
made two moves that would alter forever the future of
Roman Catholicism. First, he created a new financial agency called
the Special Administration of the Holy See. The sole function of this agency was to safeguard the "donation of Mussolini" so that the
Church's newly found wealth would not be channeled into the
pockets of friends and associates of Vatican officials or dissipated on
social causes, such as feeding the starving masses or providing shelter
for the dispossessed.

    Second, the pope appointed Bernardino Nogara, the financial
wizard who reorganized the Reichsbank, as the manager and director
of the new agency with complete control over investments. At
Nogara's insistence, no clerics were assigned to the agency for fear
that parochial interest might interfere with financial gain. The sole
purpose of the Special Administration of the Holy See was to generate income and to restore the Church to a position of wealth and
power.1
    For his personal assistants, Nogara chose the Marquis Enrico de
Maillardoz and four accountants from leading Italian financial companies. In accordance with Vatican protocol, the pope appointed an
ad hoc committee of three cardinals-Pietro Gasparri, Donato Sharrette, and Rafael Merry del Val-to supervise the proceedings of the
agency. But the committee served as ecclesiastical window dressing
with no authority to override the decisions of Nogara.
    Few individuals were more influential in the history of the Roman
Catholic Church than Nogara. He was uniquely fitted for the
moment, no less than Augustine, Leo I, Francis of Assisi, Thomas
Aquinas, and John Cardinal Newman. At the time of his death in
1959, Cardinal Spellman said: "Next to Jesus Christ, the greatest
thing that happened to the Church was Bernardino Nogara."2
    But less is known about the Vatican's financial wizard than several obscure medieval saints. He was born and raised in Bellano, several miles from Lake Como. Little is known of his parents save for the
fact that they appear to have been extremely devoted to the Church.
Three of his brothers became priests, and a fourth served as a curator
of the Vatican Museum. Throughout his life, Bernardino attended
daily mass and weekly devotions, such as the stations of the cross. At
noon he paused from his work to recite the Angelus (the angel
Gabriel's announcement to the Blessed Virgin Mary), and before
retiring at night, he managed to recite all three mysteries of the rosary: the fifty Hail Marys that comprised the Joyful Mysteries, the