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THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
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28. Moneybag Theology
OPUS DEI IS A POOR FAMILY WITH MANY CHILDREN. FOR ANYONE WHO has relations with the Prelature, this theme is repeated with the regularity of monks reciting a mantra. Opus Dei has no money. It refuses to publish a balance sheet, even though one is prepared every three months by the Consulta Tecnica for the prelate bishop and his inner council. In 1992, Opus Dei was so deprived of cash that it requested members invited to attend Escriva de Balaguer's beatification gala for a contribution, in addition to travel costs, of $3,000 each to cover expenses. One Opus Dei priest in Argentina who received an invitation wished to attend the ceremony so badly that he asked his family in Venezuela to advance the money for him. They sent a cheque to an auxiliary society, as instructed. Overjoyed, the priest planned his travel so that he could stop over in Caracas on his return to see his parents. But the priest's superior said no, that would not be appropriate, and the invitation was withdrawn. Needless to say, the auxiliary society never returned the money, and the family, realizing it would be a hassle to get it back, never bothered to ask. Even if one took the lower estimate of pilgrims who attended the beatification proceedings, a quick calculation at $3,000 a head supposes that Opus Dei took in a minimum of $450 million on the extravaganza, audience with the Pope included. This was a shining example of Opus Dei's special combination of Capitalist ethos and traditional religion, which it successfully deployed to counter Liberation Theology. The combination might be called Moneybags Theology. It offered strong affirmation that Opus Dei was not exclusively concerned with the salvation of souls but also with big-numbers finance. Opus Dei is a reflection of its modus operandi, which provides the Prelature with the necessary resources to sustain its expansion. But above all Opus Dei's success was made possible by its unique juridical status. In spite of recent revisions, the Vatican's Codex Iuris remains based on the Gregorian canons of the thirteenth century, when commerce and banking were not highly developed, Johann Gutenberg had not yet invented movable type, and Machiavelli was still two hundred years away from publishing his handbook on human deceit as an instrument of government and diplomacy. Opus Dei operates in an almost medieval vacuum. Because of the insufficiency of its institutions the Vatican is not equipped to regulate a worldwide conglomerate. Canon law was never designed to govern an organization whose roster of activities is unknown even to a majority of its members. The Vatican's lack of oversight gives Opus Dei unrestrained freedom; its incorporation as an enterprise of pontifical right provides it with the necessary standing to function in other jurisdictions without submitting the sum, or even certain of its parts, to the laws and regulations of those jurisdictions. This renders Opus Dei as dangerous as it is unique. It is dangerous because it operates as if its members believe God is the chairman of the board, giving it the divine right to insert itself between the laws of nations and the canons of the Church. Rather than a floating diocese, Opus Dei functions like a compact, tenacious mercantile state, with its own councils, foreign policy, finance ministry and state religion, even its own territories -- the dioceses entrusted to its care. All this might seem somewhat quixotic if not for the fact that Opus Dei members have been accused of fraud, designing sophisticated weapons systems, being involved in coups d'etat, consorting with crooks and collaborating with military anti-insurgency operations. Opus Dei is dangerous because it makes no disclosure, because it is confrontational and because it is an association that includes a high percentage of zealots. Opus Dei's inscribed numeraries, the inner circle, believe they are morally right, doctrinally unassailable and the guardians of the Christian conscience. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer promised Opus Dei members salvation if they followed his norms and customs. Cronica, the internal publication whose access is forbidden to mere supernumeraries, quotes from Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha 44:20-21), applying to the Blessed Josemarfa this passage: 'When tested he was found loyal. For this reason, God promised him with an oath that in his descendants the nation would be blessed ...' The reference is, of course, to Abraham, but Cronica is not ashamed to interpret Biblical passages as prophecies of Opus Dei's own destiny. Novices are taught that Opus Dei is God's perfect instrument, sinless and incapable of error, and that they have been called to execute God's Plan and protect the Church. At the evening reflection in Opus Dei residences the Father's words take precedence. They are more often quoted than the Gospel, which they interpret freely in any event. Thus, on one occasion the Father told his children, 'It is understandable that the Apostle should write: "all things are yours, you are Christ's and Christ is God's" (1 Corinthians 3:22-23). We have here an ascending movement which the Holy Spirit, infused in our hearts, wants to call forth from this world, upwards from the earth to the glory of the Lord.' [1] Opus Dei is an 'ascending movement'; its members are Christ's soldiers, and everything they do is for the Father's glory. And so for the Father everything is permitted. John Roche stated that when he was at the University of Navarra in 1972, Opus Dei numeraries were still talking about the Matesa scandal, in which $180 million apparently volatilized without trace into the international monetary system, a masterpiece of financial dissimulation. Said Roche, 'Members could see nothing wrong in the misappropriation of this money. They thought it was clever. Opus Dei has very little social or business morality.' Opus Dei is not above kidnapping members (Raimundo Panikkar), sequestrating them (Marfa del Carmen Tapia, Gregorio Ortega Prado), threatening priests it suspects of activities more political than pastoral (Giuliano Ferrari), bullying members who get out of line or inciting them to lie (Jose Maria Ruiz-Mateos) and misinforming parents of young recruits about the true intentions of the Work (Elizabeth Demichel). Why, therefore, should it be above using other forms of pilleria? A Catholic International Press Agency editor said he had been informed on 'high authority' -- i.e., Bishop Pierre Mamie -- that when Opus Dei priests went knocking on episcopal doors to ask for letters in favour of Escriva de Balaguer's beatification they made it clear that a positive response would engender Opus Dei's support - in the form of a cheque -- for a worthy diocesan project of the local bishop's choice. Fully one-third of the world episcopacy had no hesitation in providing such a letter. Opus Dei is a poor family with many children. And yet Opus Dei invested $300,000 to cover the costs of the beatification proceedings, which the postulator general allowed was a bargain. Did this include, one wonders, the contributions to the favourite charities of those bishops who supported the cause of raising Escriva de Balaguer to the altars? Did it also include the costs of the medical assessment that confirmed the miraculous cure of Sister Concepcion Boullon Rubio? Among the non-paying pilgrims in St Peter's Square for Escriva de Balaguer's beatification were Monsignor Wolfgang Haas, the newly appointed Bishop of Coire, Switzerland's largest diocese, Monsignor Kurt Krenn, whom John Paul II had named Bishop of Sankt Piilten, not far from Vienna, and Monsignor Klaus Kung, Bishop of Feldkirch, also in Austria. Kung is an Opus Dei prelate; Haas and Krenn are so much in favour of the Prelature that they are thought to be associate numeraries. In each case their episcopal appointment provoked a rebellion among parishioners. When in December 1986 John Paul II first named Klaus Kung, Opus Dei's then regional vicar for Austria, to head the see of Feldkirch, the public outcry was so fierce that the Vatican was forced to suspend the appointment. The Pope waited another two years, hoping that the storm had blown over, before reconfirming Kung's elevation. But when his consecration was held, 5,000 parishioners marched in silence through the streets of Vorarlberg. Nationwide protests occurred in 1991 when Kung's friend and associate Kurt Krenn, who claims he stands 'solidly behind Opus Dei', was named auxiliary bishop of Vienna. Krenn immediately appointed Opus Dei's new regional vicar, Monsignor Ernst Burkhardt, as his chaplain of students. Krenn was accused of refusing dialogue, of overspending on personal comforts and of maligning opponents. When asked on national television why he didn't resign, he replied: 'If I did, then God Himself would have to resign, as I only represent the truth that God gives us.' Fifteen thousand demonstrators for Krenn's removal gathered in Sankt Polten, carrying banners that said, 'Resign, so God can stay', and 'We want a shepherd, not a dictator'. According to an opinion poll by the weekly News, an estimated 66 per cent of Austrian Catholics believed Krenn should go, and 82 per cent thought his arrogance damaged the Church's standing. [2] Among New World dioceses none preoccupied john Paul II more than San Salvador. It was here that in 1975 an attempt was made to poison the Liberal Swiss priest Giuliano Ferrari. Five years later -- on 24 March 1980 -- Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by the death squads of Colonel D'Abuisson. Then in December 1981, the parishioners of El Mozote were massacred. In 1989, six Jesuit priests at San Salvador's Catholic University were killed, and in June 1993 the Vicar of the Salvadoran armed forces, Bishop Joaquin Ramos Umana, was shot in the head. The man picked to succeed Oscar Romero was Arturo Rivera Damas, a Salesian who served as apostolic administrator after Romero's death. In spite of opposition from the Conservatives, who felt he was too left-wing, Rivera Damas was elevated to archbishop in 1983. He was soon characterized by Conservatives as 'a troublesome bishop' because he spoke out for the Church against the abuses of the military. In November 1994, Rivera Damas was called to Rome as john Paul II was about to create thirty new cardinals. Some expected he would be among them. As it turned out, he was not: he suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. In his last interview the day before, the 'troublesome bishop' let it be known that he had received death threats some months before and that they emanated from 'those groups known as the dinosaurs because they do not accept the peace agreement with the leftist guerrillas'. When asked by his interviewer if Liberation Theology was dead, Rivera Damas replied, 'The salvation brought by Our Lord includes the concept of liberation from all oppression. This fundamental vision of salvation must always be kept in mind. That is why I believe that this form of theology is not "Over but still has a lot to say.' [3] Ignoring diocesan wishes that Rivera Damas be replaced by his auxiliary, five months later John Paul II named Opus Dei's Fernando Saenz Lacalle, El Salvador's interim military Ordinary, as the new Archbishop of San Salvador. Underworld dons and certain prelates within the Church, though guided by different theologies, frequently intermingled in a twilight zone where Christian morals and the ethics of power become blurred. We have already seen the case of Archbishop Cheli, co-president of the papal household's council of advisers, whose assistant at the UN was involved in the Pizza Connection affair and who laundered money on the side, while Cheli himself associated with secret service officials. In fact the Calvi case in its ensemble was a good example of this intermingling of power, priests and organized crime. High officials inside the Vatican, it is now known, were informed of the conspiracy against Calvi and still continued to deal with the likes of Flavio Carboni. The Theology of Organized Crime was all that Francesco Marino Mannoia had ever been taught. The Sacraments of the Black Hand he knew well. He also knew some chemistry, for he was very good at distilling opium base into heroin. He was one of the persons arrested in the first Pizza Connection case in New York in 1985. The Pizza Connection was a Mafia ring that sold Sicilian heroin through pizza shops in the US. Rather than spend the rest of his life in prison, Mannoia turned state's evidence. In July 1991, five Italian magistrates flew to New York to hear what he had to say. According to Mannoia, the Mafia's 'finance minister' Pippo Calo was told that Calvi had become 'unreliable'. Calo handled liaison between the Mafia and the Camorra, and he was well acquainted with Carboni and Gelli. From that moment the conspiracy coalesced around three men. Gelli was the brains; Carboni the co-ordinator; and Calo provided the brawn. For strategic reasons, Calo felt that London would be safer than Italy for what they had in mind. He ordered Francesco Di Carlo to carry out the task. To his neighbours in Woking, Surrey, Frank Di Carlo seemed a mild-mannered businessman who commuted daily into London where he ran a small hotel, travel agency and money changing operation near King's Cross. In Sicily, however, he was known as the 'Butcher of Altofonte'. And to Her Majesty's Customs inspectors he represented the biggest prize of 'Operation Devotion', which in May 1985 netted 60 kilograms of pure heroin on the Southampton Docks. In March 1987, Di Carlo was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Seated in the public gallery during the proceedings was Pippo Bellinghieri, one of Di Carlo's runners and a suspect in the unsolved Sergio Vaccari murder. After Mannoia's disclosures, Detective Superintendent White of the City of London Police went to see Di Carlo in prison. Di Carlo said he had an iron-clad alibi for the night of Calvi's murder but that he would tell everything he knew about the banker's death if transferred to an Italian prison. A request was made through proper channels. The Italian prison authorities, however, were not interested. As a result of Mannoia's story Carlo Calvi and his mother decided to hire an international firm of private detectives to investigate further. In New York, Carlo was introduced to Steven Rucker, a senior managing director of Kroll Associates Incorporated, which describes itself as 'a corporate investigation and consulting firm with over 200 employees and nine offices at worldwide locations'. Kroll requested a $1 million deposit. He told Calvi, 'We have a small army of informers walking the streets of London who could be working for you.' Calvi blinked, and reached for his cheque book. Kroll assigned the investigations to Jeffrey M. Katz, a former US Air Force intelligence sergeant. Katz assigned a team of researchers to the project and, ten years after the crime, discovered that evidence in the hands of the police appeared to have been disposed of or mislaid. Katz assumed that the weak link in the Calvi case was Silvano Vittor. Kroll's informers reported that Vittor was engaged in smuggling arms into Croatia, a country at the edge of the Spiritual Curtain and one of the newest centres of Opus Dei activity. Katz also discovered in the files of Calvi's solicitors a copy of a Swiss hotel registration slip supposedly filled out by Hans Albert Kunz when he checked into the Holiday Inn at Zurich airport to meet with Carboni on 20 June 1982, two days after the Calvi murder. Hans Albert Kunz had never been extensively interviewed by the police. He knew Ernesto Diotallevi of the Banda della Magliana was believed to do business with arms traffickers in association with Licio Gelli, and to be a consultant to Carboni's company, Sofint, in Rome. His wife had given Anna Calvi, when waiting in Zurich for her father, £14,500 so that she could fly to Washington on the morning that Calvi was found dead. Although the registration slip was in his name, it obviously had been filled out by someone else. Kunz was born on 14 February 1923. The slip showed a date of birth of 10 December 1923. The signature was not Kunz's. And it gave a London address when Kunz lived on the outskirts of Geneva. The address was 80 Grove Park Road, London SE 9. When Katz checked it out, the family who lived at that address had never heard of a Hans Albert Kunz. Katz discovered another Grove Park Road at Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick. The house numbers, however, ended at 78. Where 80 should have been was a slipway to the Thames. Strand-on-the-Green was a twenty-minute drive from the Chelsea Cloisters. Katz took a boat from Chiswick downriver under tidal conditions similar to the night of 17 June 1982. Fighting the tide, it took two hours. Calvi was seen leaving the Chelsea Cloisters at about 10 p.m. Allowing an hour for the drive to Chiswick and his transfer to a boat, this would have put him on the scaffolding at Blackfriars within the time frame suggested by the coroner for his death. Kroll Associates hired Dr Angela Gallop, a former head of the Home Office's Forensic Science Laboratory, to conduct a forensic review of the existing evidence. She was assisted by her associate, Dr Clive Candy, who for many years had been the head scientist at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory. They concluded: 'The proposition that Roberto Calvi was murdered seems inescapable.' A scientific examination of Calvi's clothing and shoes showed that he could not have walked on the scaffolding, as surmised by the police. This implied that he had been brought there in a boat and, already dead, strung up on the scaffolding. The staining on the back of his clothing suggested he had been laid out on a damp surface before being hung from the scaffolding. Dr Gallop also pointed out that the pathologist who performed the first autopsy had 'failed to notice the scratches on Calvi's cheeks'. When these were examined at a second autopsy in Milan, Professor Fornari said they had been made before death, perhaps by the fingernails of the person who slipped the noose rapidly over Calvi's head. Crucial police evidence was unavailable -- the microscopic samples of green paint scraped from the soles of Calvi's shoes. The only paint trace that remained on the shoes those ten years later was not of the same colour as the narrow green band on some of the scaffold poles. In any event, these poles were mostly painted orange and were rusty, which showed no traces on his shoes. From where, then, had the green paint come? The answer will never be known as the remaining traces are too small to be adequately analysed. The Forensic Access Scientific Investigation into the Death of Roberto Calvi cost the Calvis more than £150,000. It told them that the City of London police had conducted "no proper scientific examination" at the death scene itself. But more to the point, it diplomatically ridiculed the police theory that Calvi, a 62-year-old physically unfit banker taking medication for vertigo had on a suicidal urge discarded his belt and necktie -- never found -- thrown away the key to his hotel room, shaved off his moustache in the middle of the night, filled his pockets with 5.4 kilograms of rocks and stuffed a building brick in the crotch of his pants which supposedly he had picked up on a nearby building site, walked more than 100 metres along Paul's Walk, climbed over a high parapet, descended some three metres on a metal ladder towards a dark and swirling river, jumped a metre-wide gap onto an unstable scaffolding, shimmied along it to the far end, took out three metres of marine rope which he happened to have in his pocket, tied a noose around his neck, slipped the other end of the rope through an eyelet in one of the pole fasteners, then launched himself into the river to die in a most demeaning manner. To insist that Roberto Calvi had not been murdered defied logic. It also demonstrated a lack of familiarity with the sign language of the Mafia and Italian Freemasonry. Stones in a dead man's pockets is a warning to others that stolen money produces a barren return. A brick in the crotch is the reward for unfaithfulness. The Rome magistrates had tried to locate the sultry Neyde Toscano, a forty-one- year-old Brazilian who was said to have been Calvi's Rome mistress. She was known to have had ties with the Banda della Magliana and the Camorra, having been the former mistress of a Neapolitan underworld boss, Nunzio Guida. But Roberto Calvi was not known as a man who threw money away on entertaining courtesans in Rome's nightclubs. It was possible that the beautiful Miss Toscano had been placed in his arms, or even his bed, with the intention of later blackmailing him, but the police never were able to question her. She disappeared and has never been found. Carlo and his mother sent a copy of the Forensic Access report to the British home secretary, then Kenneth Clarke. In their covering letter they noted that recent revelations affecting the case indicated a renewed police effort might achieve an important breakthrough. 'We believe that if further official inquiries are now made ... it will be possible to gather enough admissible evidence, even after ten years, to bring the killers to justice.' Three weeks later the home secretary replied by letter that he had 'no authority to intervene in these matters'. Carlo could not believe Kenneth Clarke's response. If the home secretary had no authority to intervene in police matters, then who did? [4] Opus Dei has 80,000 members in the world. According to Professor Sainz Moreno, when operating its strategy of discretion in the secular world, it relies upon 'men of trust'. That was the praxis of its Moneybags Theology. In Italy, Opus Dei's 'men of trust' were said to include Giuliano Andreotti, Flaminio Piccoli and Silvio Berlusconi. Cavaliere Berlusconi's publishing house Mondadori -- Italy's largest -- put out a big print-run edition of The Way, his television networks gave prime-time transmission to Opus Dei documentaries and Berlusconi himself was warmly solicited for funds, among them a £20,000 contribution in 1994 for an Opus Dei theological institute for women. Before Berlusconi became prime minister, Giulio Andreotti had been the Work's strongest political supporter. He prided himself on being the first person to petition Paul VI to have Escriva de Balaguer raised to sainthood. That was in 1975, the year of the Founder's death. Andreotti has said that in his political career spanning four decades he never betrayed his Christian principles. He kept a copy of The Way on his bedside table and he attended Opus Dei's main retreat centre in Italy. He has been friends with three Popes -- Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II -- all of whom helped promote his career. He was a minister in thirty Italian governments and seven times prime minister. Andreotti's influence was well known. The Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi, his arch-opponent in the Chamber of Deputies, dubbed Andreotti the Beelzebub of Italian politics. Andreotti was certainly Beelzebub as far as Clara Calvi was concerned. The years of stress unbroken, she had developed Parkinson's Disease and was almost unable to walk. Her hands contorted by the effects of the illness, she spent much of each day seated on one of the two giant sofas in her living room, reading the Italian press and digesting every piece of material that in any way related to her husband's death. She had surrounded herself with mementoes of happier times: photos of her and Roberto, and the children, on holidays by the sea, at dinner parties in Milan, Christmas at Drezzo. Her mind never seemed to rest. The manipulation of political power in Italy through graft and corruption, necessitating a parallel economy dominated by intrigue and double bookkeeping, left the door open for organized criminals to become the partners of politicians in the administrative machinery of the State. For Carlo Calvi, Banco Ambrosiano's demise and his father's death was the first institutionalized manifestation of this trend. If his father had been able to defy the 'occult forces' rather than being consumed by them, Carlo wondered whether the 'Clean Hands' investigations that swept Italy in the early 1990s might not have been brought on ten years earlier. Certainly it appeared that Andreotti was well acquainted with Italy's bustarella (bribes) syndrome. The 'Clean Hands' investigations uncovered allegations that he had received $1 million to engineer a cover-up of a major loan scam involving Italy's savings loan federation. Two things happened. Mino Pecorelli, publisher of the Rome' scandal sheet OP, informed Andreotti he had proof that the payment was laundered through Carboni's Sofint company and he intended to disclose it in OP's next issue. He never got the chance. On the evening of 20 March 1979 he was found behind the wheel of his car, shot four times in the head. In 1994 Andreotti's friend and former foreign trade minister, Claudio Vitalone, brother of the lawyer Wilfredo with whom Carboni had been in almost hourly phone contact while shadowing Calvi's flight to London, was charged with ordering Pecorelli's slaying. Accused with him were Mafia bosses Gaetano Badalamenti and Pippo Calo. Andreotti, friend of three popes who claimed never in his long career of public service to have forsaken his Catholic principles, joined them at trial, accused of issuing the contract against Pecorelli. Magistrates in Palermo had already stunned the world by accusing 'Uncle Giulio' of 'protecting, assisting and consorting with the Cosa Nostra' in return for electioneering support that helped maintain the Christian Democrat Party and Andreotti at the apex of Italian political life for more than three decades. 'This is really a blasphemy that has to be erased,' Andreotti told reporters. Other blasphemies requiring attention included those made by Swiss banker Jurg Heer. He had been credit manager at Rothschild Bank in Zurich, responsible for managing the Bellatrix account until fired by his superiors. Put out by his rough handling, Heer lifted the lid on Pandora's box. He claimed that in 1982 he had received a phone call from Licio Gelli requesting him to fill a suitcase with $5 million in bank notes and hand it over to two men who arrived at the bank in an armour-plated Mercedes. Heer said he later asked for an explanation. 'The money was for the killers of Calvi,' he was told. Rothschild Bank, it should be remembered, was where $150 million transferred from Banco Ambrosiano's offshore network to Bellatrix, a member of the United Trading family, became side-tracked. Less than 20 per cent of that money was recovered by the Ambrosiano liquidators. Heer's revelation raised an interesting question: were Calvi's killers paid with monies belonging to United Trading? Heer was questioned by an examining magistrate in Zurich and then disappeared. He was last seen in Madrid around Christmas 1992. He purchased an air ticket for Thailand, where charges against his credit card ended a few months later. Heer's disclosure raised considerable interest among investigators working on the Calvi case. They would like to interview the banker. But there is real concern that he may no longer be alive. As Ruiz-Mateos had said in London more than ten years before, this was only the beginning of a very long film. The conviction against Carboni, Lena and Hnilica in the Calvi briefcase trial was overturned because of 'faulty legal procedure'. By then Lena, like Toscano and Heer, had gone missing and also was feared dead. Almerighi had been hoping to use all three of them as material witnesses in the newly reopened Calvi murder enquiry. Almerighi notified Gelli, Carboni, Pippo Calo and Frank Di Carlo that they were official suspects, but he was totally dumbfounded when informed that Di Carlo's transfer to an Italian penitentiary was refused by the Italian Prisons Authority for 'not serving the cause of justice'. 'There are still people in this country who do not want the killers of Roberto Calvi brought to justice,' Almerighi commented. [5] But it was Pazienza who pointed out one of the strangest anomalies. He maintained that in 1982, when the Bank of Italy commissioners moved in, Banco Ambrosiano was not bankrupt. 'Banco Ambrosiano may have had liquidity problems, but there was no "black hole". That was bullshit! When placed in liquidation Ambrosiano was still a viable bank. How could a bank that supposedly was bankrupt show a profit one year later of $300 million?' he asked. Gelli, meanwhile, had given himself up to the Swiss authorities on condition that he be extradited forthwith to Italy, where more than five years later all judgements against him remained under appeal. His return to Italy and Andreotti's eclipse marked the passing of an era. The generation of Cold Warriors to which they belonged had become obsolete and was no longer needed. The Occident was facing a new constellation of forces that required new minds and different faces. As the end of the second millennium approached the words of Andre Malraux seemed more prescient than ever: 'The twenty-first century will be a century of religion or it will be not at all.' _______________ Notes: 1. Homily given by Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer on the campus of the University of Navarra, 8 October 1967. 2. 'Church Liberals Protest', Associated Press, 22 June 1993. 3. Andrea Tornielli, 'A Troublesome Bishop', 30 Giorni, No. 1, 1995. 4. After more than ten years battling to uncover the truth, the Calvi family was finally forced to give up for lack of money. Their last setback came when Kroll Associates, claiming its investigators were on the edge of an important breakthrough, stopped work on the case for nonpayment of $3,119,972.52 in back fees and expenses. A year later Kroll sued the Calvis in New York for breach of contract. Kroll requested the court hearings be held in camera due to the 'highly sensitive' nature of the investigations, alleging that Carlo Calvi's disclosures to the author had endangered the life of a confidential source -- identified in the proceedings as 'Mr. X, a UK citizen'. Kroll further asked that the Calvis be enjoined from discussing the investigation or litigation with 'any journalists or other persons associated with the print, television, film, radio or broadcast media, without Kroll's prior consent'. The judge accepted both motions. The judge was not informed, however, that 'Mr. X' had at all times spoken freely with the author and had even asked that his photograph, which he thoughtfully supplied, appear in the book. In August 1995, the prestigious New York law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, representing the Calvi family, asked to withdraw from the proceedings. This was granted. The Calvis were requested to appoint new lawyers to represent them. When they failed to respond, Kroll Associates asked for a default judgement in the amount of $3.8 million. This was accorded in May 1996. When contacted immediately afterwards, Cadwalader's Grant B. Hering refused to discuss why he and the firm had withdrawn, citing client-attorney confidentiality. 5. Within weeks of Romano Prodi's election as Italy's new centre-left premier, the Italian Prisons Authority reversed itself. In June 1996 Francesco Di Carlo was extradited to Italy and began co-operating with the Rome magistrates.
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