PAGE 14 — The Georgia Bulletin, July 23, 1987
Italian Court Invalidates Warrants For Three Vatican Bankers
BY JOHN THAVIS
ROME (NC) — The highest Italian court has invalidated
arrest warrants issued last February for U.S. Archbishop
Paul Marcinkus and two other officials of the Vatican bank
in connection with a 1982 banking scandal, the Italian news
agency ANSA reported.
The ruling July 17 by the Court of Cassation, Italy’s
equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court, specified that its
decision was definitive, with no chance for further appeal.
It overturned a ruling by a lower appeals court and ap
parently ended the possibility that criminal charges would
be brought against the three Vatican bank officials.
“I’m happy, and I still have faith in justice,” Archbishop
Marcinkus told National Catholic News Service from the
Vatican. He refused to discuss the behavior of Italian
magistrates in the case, saying, “There's no use getting in
to polemics at the moment.”
The archbishop said he would have to wait for official
notification of the court’s decision to determine whether all
the legal issues were closed and whether he could leave the
Vatican without fear of arrest in Italy.
Asked if he might then take a vacation, he said: “I take
my vacation whenever it comes. But I usually stay around
here, anyway.”
The reasons for the court’s decision were not immediate
ly made public.
Investigating magistrates had issued the warrants after
a five-year probe into the $1.2 billion collapse of Banco Am-
brosiano in 1982. The warrants alleged that the Vatican
bank, known formally as the Institute for Religious Works,
knew or should have known that it was a party to fraudulent
deals that caused the Banco Ambrosiano debts.
Named in the warrants were Archbishop Marcinkus,
Vatican bank president, and two bank administrators,
Pellegrino de Strobel and Luigi Mennini.
The Vatican has always maintained that the Institute for
Religious Works was an unwitting victim of a hidden finan
cial scheme hatched by then-Banco Ambrosiano President
Roberto Calvi. Calvi died in mysterious circumstances *
shortly before his bank’s collapse.
A Vatican tribunal earlier this month rejected a request
by Italian authorities to extradite the bank officials. They •v
have been living in Vatican City, a separate state within
Italy.
The tribunal said that because a treaty between the Holy
See and Italy rules out “interference” by Italy in central
church agencies, extradition of the three was impossible. It
also called the charges in the warrants "conjectural."
Pope Reported Planning 1988 Visit To Southern Africa
HARARE, Zimbabwe (NC) — Pope John Paul II is to
visit several countries in southern Africa in September
1988, but South Africa is not included because of the
political situation and black displeasure over the pope's
meeting with President Pieter W. Botha in 1984, according
to reports.
The agenda includes Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland,
Mozambique and Zimbabwe, all of which border, or are
surrounded by, South Africa.
Pope John Paul was invited to the region by the Inter-
Regional Meeting of the Bishops in Southern Africa, a
southern African bishops’ conference official said. The
organization has its headquarters in Harare.
At the Vatican, a papal spokesman said trip an
nouncements, by Vatican policy, come first from bishops in
the countries to be visited.
South Africa is off the list because the region’s bishops
decided “the time is not opportune,” Bishop Wilfred Napier
of Kokstad, South Africa, the bishops’ conference chair
man, said July 13.
Bishop Napier was quoted by United Press International
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as saying the meeting with Botha and his wife, Elize, at the
Vatican contributed to the decision against inviting the pon
tiff to the white minority-ruled nation.
“There was a lot of anger about that visit,” he said, ac
cording to the news report, which was confirmed by a con
ference official. "Black South Africans still ask why the
pope agreed to meet Botha, and their feelings played a role
in deciding the visit would not be opportune.”
The Vatican said the pope's meetings with political
leaders of all persuasions allows the Holy See to make its
viewpoint known on issues.
Two South African newspapers editorialized that the pope
should visit their country.
The Johannesburg Star said the pope's refusal to visit
was a mistake.
Bishop Napier also said that 80 percent of South Africa's
more than two million Catholics are black and are "suffer
ing terrible repression at the hands of the security forces
who would be asked to guard the pope.”
“We felt that would be incongruous and unacceptable in
the present situation in South Africa,” he said.
On June 11, 1984, Pope John Paul met with President
Botha in a controversial audience.
Moments after that meeting, the Vatican issued a
criticism of apartheid, as South Africa's system of racial
discrimination is called.
“Such policies have been judged contrary to the Christian
principle of equal dignity of all men," the statement said.
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“He should be offering black citizens a message of hope,
feeding them spiritual strength,” the Star said.
“In effect. South African Catholics — 80 percent of whom
are black — are being rejected because of the sins of
others,” the Star said.
The Sowetan. South Africa's largest-circulation black
newspaper, said Pope John Paul should change his mind
and visit South Africa to - concentrate the world's focus on
our problems. ”
“If the pope were to come here, on a pilgrimage to show
the Vatican's abhorrence to oppression of the poor, the peo
ple would be prepared to form a human phalanx to protect
him," the Sowetan said.
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