A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE OF INFORMATION ABOUT BANKING AND FINANCE

 Banking and Insurance

Italy’s three leading banks have close ties with the Vatican. These are Banca Commerciale Italiana, Credito Italiano and the Banco di Roma. A fourth bank, Banco di Santo Spirito, is entirely owned by the Vatican. These four banks “hold more than 20 percent of all bank deposits in Italy,” Mr. Lo Bello claims.

But these are not the only banks that are tied to the Vatican. In northern Italy the Vatican owns seven large banks. Then there are thirteen other banks in which it has heavy investments. In sixty-two further banks it has minimal interest. Besides these banks there are, according to Mr. Lo Bello, “thousands and thousands of small rural banks spread all over Italy” that “are owned 100 percent either by the Vatican or by the local parish church. . . . Many of these small banks are located in the south and on Italy’s two major Mediterranean islands, Sicily and Sardinia.”

In 1967 a financial institution, owned by a cement company in which the Vatican has controlling interest, bought eight banks and merged them into a new company, Istituto Bancario Italiano. With further mergers that are planned this company will become one of the largest banking institutions in Europe.

As might be expected, the insurance field has not been neglected by the Vatican. It owns two prominent insurance companies, Assicurazioni Generali di Trieste e Venezia and the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurtà. In addition to these two there are at least nine other insurance companies connected with the Vatican.

Still other companies that are either owned, controlled or influenced by the Vatican are involved in textiles, ammunition, dynamite, mining, pharmaceuticals, furs, sugar, paper products, publishing, shipping, automobiles, telephone communications, bathroom fixtures, plumbing supplies, paints, plastics, chemicals, spaghetti, buttons, cellulose, cotton, wool, ready-to-wear clothing, tourism, department stores, hotels, and so forth. There seems to be hardly a segment in the business world in which the Vatican has not invested its money.

Lateran Treaty

According to Lo Bello, a Vatican-owned munitions plant “supplied arms for the Italian army” when it invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Just a few years before this, in 1929, the Vatican signed a concordat with the then ruler of Italy, Fascist dictator Mussolini. This concordat is known in history as the Lateran Treaty.

Among other things, this treaty granted payments to the Vatican for the papal states that the kingdom of Italy took over in the nineteenth century. The territory consisted of about 16,000 square miles within the borders of Italy. In compensation Mussolini gave the Vatican $90 million dollars. He also agreed to pay the salaries of the parish priests throughout Italy. To this day the Italian government, Lo Bello reports, is paying the salaries of more than 30,000 priests despite the fact that the Vatican could well afford to pay those salaries itself.

The concordat also granted the Vatican exemption from taxes, and Mussolini extended it to the income of the Vatican’s business corporations. Some effort has been made in recent years by the Italian government to tax the dividends the Vatican receives from its huge investments. But those efforts were not very successful until 1968, when it was reported that the Vatican bowed to the demands of the Italian government that it pay taxes on stock dividends.

After listing some of the many companies in which the Vatican has substantial interest Mr. Lo Bello observes: “The foregoing details provide an uncomfortably sharp realization that the Vatican and its men have indeed carved a niche for their firm in the world of big business.”

The vast business holdings of the Vatican and of other religious organizations bind them inseparably with the business world. How unlike the true Christians concerning whom Jesus Christ said: “They are no part of the world”!​—John 17:16.

The religious organization that truly is serving God, in harmony with the example set by Jesus Christ, concentrates on preaching and teaching the liberating truths of his Word and does not become involved in commercial businesses. Following the Bible’s instructions, it does not involve itself in “the commercial businesses of life.”​—2 Tim. 2:4.