BOOK REVIEW : Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

by Paul L. Williams

This book, available at amazon.com, is a helpful resource for understanding the Vatican during the last century. It documents how corruption has continued there even into modern times.

The following represents an excerpt from Publishers Weekly’s review of the book:

“… this is a short history of the politics and finances of the Vatican during the last hundred years…His main argument is that the current financial strength of the Roman Catholic Church as well as many of its problems began in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty, in which a financially besieged Pope Pius XI exchanged recognition and support of Mussolini's Fascist government for more than $90 million and the establishment of the Vatican as a sovereign state. Williams traces how the Vatican's new emphasis on financial stability led it into other morally questionable financial arrangements with Adolf Hitler, the fascist state of Croatia and reputed Sicilian Mafia financier Michele Sindona. He examines carefully the establishment and workings of the Instituto per le Opere di Religione, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, "an entity unto itself without corporate or ecclesiastical ties to any other agency within the Holy See." While parts of the book overlap with other recent works on the Vatican and the popes…this is a surprisingly solid short look at the dubious financial dealings of the Vatican from the 1920s to the present…”