In the latest Vatican-inspired film Conclave, Thomas Cardinal Lawrence (actor Ralph Fiennes) pronounces that “there is one sin which I have come to fear above all others; certainty. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith.”
And no need for spies. While some may doubt the faith of many at the Vatican, there is no uncertainty about the proliferation of spies and spying there.
In the introduction, author Yvonnick Denoël recalls how shortly after the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978 an electronic sweep of core Vatican offices uncovered 11 microphones. They originated with both Soviet and American agencies.
This remarkable interest in the world’s smallest state by superpowers of the time is attributed by Denoël to its “running one of the world’s largest religious communities, numbering some 1.3 billion faithful” where twice a year every priest reports on his parish to the local bishop and which detail then finds its way to the Vatican.
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He quotes “an American intelligence operative” who, speaking “in admiration” said that “a great power can send 10, 20 or even 50 spies into a given country, whereas the church has hundreds of priests, at least, in the smallest states”.
It is also the case, he said, that every papal nuncio to the 183 countries (as of 2018) where the Vatican has diplomatic representation, would have “access to privileged intelligence sources, which would make quite a few intelligence agencies green with envy”.
The book investigates espionage at the Vatican during seven papacies, beginning with Pius XII (Pope from 1939), through John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, to Pope Francis.
The idea of “an omnipresent, if not all-powerful, [Vatican] intelligence service was the most popular belief of the 20th century, shared as much by Hitler as by Mussolini, Stalin and Roosevelt and, more recently, Reagan and Andropov”, Denoël writes. “The heads of these states all devoted considerable means to spying on the microscopic Vatican.”
As for the church itself, it meant, particularly in its struggle against communism – before, during and after the cold war – that it “had to collaborate with organisations and people that had very little to do with Catholic values”. This involved dealing “with common law criminal affairs, political assassinations, matters of corruption”.
Details of all this skulduggery is the meat and veg of Vatican Spies. Corruption at the Vatican Bank (its Institute of the Works of Religion), with its Mafia involvement and links to the 1982 finding of financier Roberto Calvi’s remains hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London, is traced right up to the clean-up of that Bank organised by Pope Francis.
Politically, the consistent thread in the Vatican’s own espionage activities over those years has been its acute anxiety about atheistic communism and the threat it represented to the church’s very existence. It led, particularly during the papacy of John Paul II, to its working closely with American agencies, many led by devout Catholics, in bringing down the Soviet empire. This was done mainly through support for and fomented activity in Poland centred on the Solidarity trade union movement and, more locally, ongoing attempts to frustrate progress by Italy’s Communist Party.
It was during the tricky papacy of Pius XII, who walked a slim tightrope between the Nazi threat on one hand and increasing support for the Communist Party in Italy on the other, that this co-operation with the Americans began, particularly when Rome was occupied by the Nazis. Such threats were seen by the church as a real and present danger, as well as to the very existence of the Vatican itself.
Vatican Spies has it all; murder, blackmail, betrayal, deceit, treachery, with even priests inside the Vatican acting as double agents – through blackmail because of some sexual misdemeanour or personal greed.
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There is so much noir here it would have provided John le Carré with rich material for a lengthy second career, had he lived. And the book could have done with writing of Le Carré's standard. Its narrative is frequently clogged by too much information and comparatively minor characters who appear out of nowhere without explanation or context and disappear as quickly. That said, the version read by this reviewer was an uncorrected proof.
Yet, even those drawbacks cannot take from what is a compelling, even compulsive read. This book is, quite literally, unputdownable.
Denoël says: “The Vatican is a formidable machine for creating fantasies, even for the powerful of the world.” So true, as Conclave now proves, as did Dan Browne’s The Da Vinci Code and his other novels. It will continue to be so.
But Vatican Spies does not deal in fantasies. It is thoroughly researched and illustrates vividly that in the murky world of espionage, truth is so much more remarkable than any fantasies of the spy thriller genre.
