God's Bankers

A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

Gerald Posner

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781416576594
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439109861
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Banks & Banking

A deeply reported, New York Times bestselling exposé of the money and the clerics-turned-financiers at the heart of the Vatican—the world’s biggest, most powerful religious institution—from an acclaimed journalist with “exhaustive research techniques” (The New York Times).

From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, God’s Bankers traces the political intrigue of the Catholic Church in “a meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican’s legendary, enabling secrecy” (Kirkus Reviews). Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine financial entanglements across the world. Told through 200 years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the Popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in one of the world’s most influential organizations.

God’s Bankers has it all: a revelatory and astounding saga marked by poisoned business titans, murdered prosecutors, and mysterious deaths written off as suicides; a carnival of characters from Popes and cardinals, financiers and mobsters, kings and prime ministers; and a set of moral and political circumstances that clarify not only the church’s aims and ambitions, but reflect the larger tensions of more recent history. And Posner even looks to the future to surmise if Pope Francis can succeed where all his predecessors failed: to overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s Machiavellian inner court and to rein in the excesses of its seemingly uncontrollable financial quagmire. “As exciting as a mystery thriller” (Providence Journal), this book reveals with extraordinary precision how the Vatican has evolved from a foundation of faith to a corporation of extreme wealth and power.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Preface
• 1. Murder in London
• 2. The Last Pope King
• 3. Enter the Black Nobles
• 4. “Merely a Palace, Not a State”
• 5. An Unholy Alliance
• 6. “The Pope Banker”
• 7. Prelude to War
• 8. A Policy of Silence
• 9. The Blacklist
• 10. Blood Money
• 11. A Nazi Spy in the Vatican?
• 12. The Ratline
• 13. “He’s No Pope”
• 14. The Men of Confidence
• 15. “You Can’t Run the Church on Hail Marys”
• 16. Operation Fraulein
• 17. ‘Il Crack Sindona’
• 18. The Battle of Two Scorpions
• 19. “A Psychopathic Paranoid”
• 20. The Year of Three Popes
• 21. The Backdoor Deal
• 22. “The Vatican Has Abandoned Me”
• 23. “You Have to Kill the Pope”
• 24. “Tell Your Father to Be Quiet”
• 25. “Protect the Source”
• 26. “A Heck of a Lot of Money”
• 27. “I’ve Been Poisoned”
• 28. White Finance
• 29. Suitcases of Cash
• 30. Burying the Trail on Nazi Gold
• 31. “A Criminal Underground in the Priesthood”
• 32. “His Inbox Was a Disaster”
• 33. The Kingmaker Becomes King
• 34. “As Flat as Stale Beer”
• 35. Chasing the White List
• 36. The World Has Changed
• 37. The Powerbroker
• 38. The Butler
• 39. A Vote of No Confidence
• 40. “A Time Bomb”
• 41. The Swiss James Bond
• 42. “The People’s Pope”
• 43. “Back from the Dead”
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About Gerald Posner
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index
• Illustration Credits
• Copyright