- The Vatican Smuggled Nazis to Safety
Many high-ranked Nazi officials and war criminals managed to escape across the Atlantic to a number of South American countries as Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Most of these escapees managed to realize their plan using routes through either Spain or Italy known as “ratlines.” Here, according to historians, Nazi fugitives were assisted by Red Cross and the Vatican. The Vatican Refugee Commission knowingly provided Nazi fugitives with false identities. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment on these events and the majority of documents from that period of time is still in the Secret Archives. However, Pope Francis promised to open these documents to qualified researchers in 2020. Who knows what we will recognize soon?
- Making Money Off the Holocaust
Nowadays there is little doubt whether the Vatican also used its privileged sovereignty to help smuggle Nazi-looted gold, art, and other property belonging to Jewish families and other victims of the Holocaust. It is said that the Vatican’s financial advisor Bernardino Nogara, the founder of the Vatican Bank, is said to have possibly been one of the Third Reich’s spies within the Vatican, and–though the devastation of war-time records makes the complete scope of his plan unclear–he and the Nazis are charged to have instituted a scheme wherein the Vatican contributed in Italian insurance companies which kept all the assets from life insurance plans of killed European Jews. Since the Vatican was just an investor and not the direct insurer, they didn’t need to pay back any of the money they made in this conspire.
- Secret Court for Extremely Bad Sins
Particular crimes in the Catholic justice system are considered heinous. In Vatican City, bishops of the extralegal tribunal who work with these sins are members of an elite membership known as the Apostolic Penitentiary.
As The Telegraph explains, the Apostolic Penitentiary or the “tribunal of conscience” was founded by Pope Alexander III in 1179 and remained in secret until 2009. The feature of the system is that only the pope can grant absolution for the sins. Examples of crimes include attempting to murder the pope, a priest having sex with someone, spitting out a Communion wafer.
The pope, acting through this tribunal and its head, known as the Major Penitentiary, at that point either gifts absolution to the individual looking for mercy or lets the automatic banning that comes with such horrifying sins stand. Such cases are held secretly and pseudonymously, as they are considered to be a matter of conscience and not an open concern, which sure is a conclusion one could reach.
- Where Thieves Go To Prey
With 1.5 crimes per citizen, Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world. It's not that the cardinals are donning masks and repeatedly robbing the bank, it's just that the massive crowds of tourists make Vatican City a pickpocket's paradise. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Vatican has no working prison and only one judge. So most criminals are simply marched across the border into Italy, as part of a pact between the two countries. (The Vatican's legal code is based on Italy's, with some modifications regarding abortion and divorce.) Crimes that the Vatican sees fit to try itself — mainly shoplifting in its duty-free stores — are usually punished by temporarily revoking the troublemaker's access to those areas. But not every crime involves theft. In 2007, the Vatican issued its first drug conviction after an employee was found with a few ounces of cocaine in his desk.
- You Can Read The Pope's Mail
The Vatican's secret archives haven't been truly secret since Pope Leo XIII first allowed scholars to visit in 1881. Today, it's even more accessible. Outsiders are free to examine the correspondences of every pope for the past 1,000 years, although there is one catch: Guests have to know exactly what they're looking for. With 52 miles of shelves in the archives, the librarians prohibit browsing. The most famous existing letter is probably Henry VIII's request that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon be annulled, which Pope Clement VII denied. Henry divorced Catherine anyway and married Anne Boleyn (and four other women), leading to Rome's break with the Church of England. The archives also contain an abundance of red ribbons, which were used to bind 85 petitions from English clergymen and aristocrats.
0 Comments