The Holy See denies having any formal secret service, and yet it appears to be an open secret that, despite no official espionage agency, the Vatican actively gathers intelligence through formal diplomacy – the receiving foreign ambassadors and heads of states and dispatching legates and nuncios on special missions. It also conducts covert operations to influence events and safeguard its interests. Vatican Spies is a timely analysis of this diplomacy and espionage, and the Church’s startling machinations under popes from Benedict XVI to the late Pope Francis.
The Pope– whilst recognised as the worldwide leader of the Catholic Church – also heads one of the world’s most successful political organizations with power and a global reach comparable to a nation or army. “A great power can send 10,20 or even 50 spies into a given country, whereas the Church has hundreds of priests, in even the smallest of states,” says a former American Intelligence operative.
French historian and intelligence specialist Yvonnick Denoël has pulled back the rich red velvet curtain on all this drama inside the Holy Seen in intriguing, entertaining and comprehensive tome. The stage is packed with people, places and papal manoeuvres: Rome has been awash with undercover agents over the past century. With an engagingly descriptive approach, Denoël tells of how monsignors and priests hunted for Vatican ‘moles’, led clandestine missions, and investigated assassinations of priests and other scandals involving the Church.
The history of security in the Catholic Church goes back at least to the 16th century ; and forty Popes through the ages have faced challenges from liberalism and socialism, democracy and republicanism, from modernism, science, the sexual revolution and the battle for gender equality. Vatican Spies, however, begins with with death of Pope Pius XI in 1939 -“The old mule is dead at last” says Mussolini – and the appointment of Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII whose papacy (1939-1958) was marked by the Second World War and the Holocaust to Pope Francis. As he faced the Nazi march across Europe, Denoël looks at the double play and false pretences that were rife during in the early 1940s and whilst under German Occupation: what did Pius XII he really know, think and do?
Then there’s the march of Opus Dei with its emphasis on internal spiritual practices and reputation for secrecy, and the stand offs between Opus Dei and the Jesuits in South America and further afield, before Denoël’s focus turns to the decades of the Cold War.
In 1963, on the death of Pope John XXIII, “the future relations between the Vatican and the Eastern bloc depended on the choice of his successor,” explains Denoël. The CIA sent its observations from Italy to President John Kennedy: they hoped to see the champion of anti-communism, Siri from Genoa, appointed and wanted to know the outcome of the conclave before media announcements. Denoël speculates that the CIA either had an informer amongst the cardinals or had strategically-placed microphones in the heart of the Vatican.
An astonishing history of the priests and missionaries whose ‘special ops’ serve the Holy See and 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide.
In the following pages, Denoël lays out tales of Russian-speaking priests who conducted high-risk activities behind the Iron Curtain and negotiated with Krushchev on behalf of Pope John XXIII. Meanwhile, Eastern Bloc intelligence agents were infiltrating the Vatican itself. There’s also a consideration of the Palestinian question and the chasm between the Vatican and the State of Israel in the early years of the latter’s establishment; the Vatican’s role in international financing and the secret funds channelled around the world. There is NATO, a ‘Polish Crusade’, the Vatican’s relationships with Cuba and China, and Pope Francis’ efforts to reform the Curia, the central administrative apparatus of the Holy See and the Catholic Church. And then there are hooded men adding blood to a goblet, guns and murders in the Vatican.
Whilst a rigorous chronological documentary and not a spy novel, Vatican Spies is a riveting read of secrecy and subterfuge with real-life detail and evocative and colourful descriptions. At the end you’ll be agog waiting for the next chapter of history to unroll.
It’s the perfect read as the next Papal Conclave convenes.
