CIA doesn't go to church to pray
FOR centuries the Vatican has been a prime target of foreign spies. Ecclesiastical, political and economic information are reported every day by thousands of priests, bishops and papal nuncios from every corner of the globe to the Office of the Papal Secretariat. Probably world’s greatest repositories of raw intelligence, it is a spy’s gold mine.
General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, American master spy during World War II, forged an alliance with Father Felix Morlion, founder of Pro Deo, a Catholic intelligence network, which was moved from Lisbon to the New York and financed by the USA to help the Allies win the war.
After the war, the CIA created a special unit just to tap the rich Vatican source of information and monitor developments within the Holy See.
The CIA’s interest in the Catholic Church is not limited to intelligence gathering. The Vatican, with its immense wealth and political influence, has in recent years become a key force in global politics, particularly with Catholicism playing a pivotal role in Poland, Latin America and the Philippines. Unknown to most of us, the Vatican though outwardly apolitical, not only has a foreign office and a diplomatic corps, it also has a foreign policy.
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With Polish Communists embracing Catholicism, and Latin American and Filipino Catholics embracing communism, the CIA took a great interest in bringing its influence to bear on Vatican policy.
Since World War II, the CIA has:
• Penetrated the American section of Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), wealthiest and most powerful of Vatican orders. Members included CIA director William Casey, CIA director John McCone, ex State Secretary Alexander Haig, Lee Iacocca of Chrysler, Spyros Skouras the shipping magnate, Baron Hilton of the hotel chain, ex Treasury Secretary William Simon. Through this organization the CIA recruited ex Nazis like General Reinhard Gehlen and Klaus Barbie to serve the CIA.
• Passed money to a large number of priests and bishops, some of whom became CIA agents. One is Jesuit Father Roger Vekemans who was given $10 million, funneled through CIA and USAID, to facilitate the election of Eduardo Frei. Frei was a fascist Falangist reworked by the Jesuits as a progressive to defeat Salvador Allende in Chile in 1964. In the Philippines, Jesuit Father Dennis Lynch received $500,000 to finance Ateneo’s Institute of Philippine Culture.
• Collaborated with right-wing groups to harass outspoken prelates and political reformers and support vigilante death squads, as documented by Penny Lernoux in her book Cry of the People. The CIA also trained and financed police agencies responsible for the torture and murder of bishops, priests and nuns.
In 1975, the Bolivian Interior Ministry -- in collaboration with the CIA -- drew up a master plan dubbed the “Banzer Plan” -- after Hugo Banzer, Bolivia’s right-wing dictator whose security adviser was Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie.
The plan -- adopted by ten Latin American governments and our own Marcos martial law government -- involved “compiling dossiers on church activists; censoring and shutting down progressive Catholic media outlets; planting Communist literature on church premises; arresting or expelling foreign priests and nuns; funding groups engaged in covert operations, from bombing churches to overthrowing governments.”
The success of the Banzer Plan was vividly demonstrated in San Salvador in the later 70s when an anonymous group distributed a leaflet that read: “Be a Patriot! Kill a Priest!” A series of clerical assassinations followed, culminating in the murder of the progressive and popular Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
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It is not surprising that here in the Philippines, the Bishop-Businessman’s Conference (BBC) should be led by four ex-ConCom Commissioners who promoted provisions on American Bases, American investments, and IMF colonial economic policy in our constitution, with rightist views on vigilante death squads, liberation theology, Basic Christian Communities, and American imperialism.
It is not surprising that the Ateneo Social Weather Station of Jesuit Father Joaquin Bernas is helping form public opinion in favor of American Bases. And the CRC of the Opus Dei and Bernie Villegas is doing the same to prepare the public for a CIA-sponsored military junta government.
It is not surprising that priests and nuns are being accused of being communist fronts and dupes, arrested, deported and murdered -- including Bishop Fortich of Bacolod, champion of the poor and downtrodden, who probably will never survive to die of old age.
December 15, 1988