Bernardino Nogara
According to historian John F. Pollard, Nogara laid "the foundations" for "one of the biggest pillars for the Vatican's post-Second World War financial strength.
[3] Though a Catholic with several close relatives in the Holy Orders,[4] Nogara insisted that his investments remain unrestricted by religious or doctrinal considerations.
[13] In 1929, Pope Pius XI, a family friend, appointed Nogara director of the Special Administration of the Holy See, charged with the financial dealings of the Vatican.
[2] At the time, one of his brothers, Bartolomeo, was the superintendent of the Vatican museums, two were archbishops, one was the rector of an Apulian seminary, and his sister was a mother superior.
[3] Grolux, the holding company for the profits of the Special Administration between 1932 and 1935, was housed in Luxembourg due to its dearth of public disclosure laws.
[3] With this inside information, Nogara knew exactly which industries and firms would benefit from the bailout and purchased large positions in these companies.
[3] Nogara, through shrewd investing in stocks, gold, and futures markets, vastly increased the Roman Catholic Church's financial holdings.
[12] By 1935, Nogara had vastly expanded the Vatican treasury in a sum estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars (the Holy See kept the exact amount confidential).
[6] Nogara also invested in Italy's munitions plants and other war industries, including direct loans to Mussolini's government prior to his invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
[16] The immediate concern for Nogara upon the outbreak of World War II was that the Vatican assets in the various Allied and Axis countries not be seized or frozen.
[17] Nogara's "cloaked real estate companies" continued to operate throughout Europe, in Allied and Axis controlled territory, for the entire war.
[22] Even at the time the purchase was controversial because only two months earlier the insurer had made clear its fascist sympathies by firing all of its Jewish employees.
[22] While the Allies would not have required the Vatican to sell its assets in Fondiaria if they had been acquired before the war, had they learned of this mid-war transaction, they would have blocked all the banking accounts of the Holy See in New York as well as its business interests in the United States and Great Britain.
[23] According to Phayer, both Nogara and Pius XII were well aware that their covert purchase of Fondiara amounted to a "betrayal of trust" of their agreements with the Allied powers.
[25] According to Phayer, "the conclusion is unavoidable: Nogara indirectly trafficked in the arms race and did so knowing that any resulting profit would be derived from stolen property".
