(Joseph P. Farrell) If you've been following the Vatican and related affairs (pun intended) over the past few decades, you'll know that the Vatican Bank (officially: The Institute for Religious Works) lies at the heart of much of it, though just exactly how no one really knows. Its beginnings are murky as well. In the early 1920s, Benito Mussolini's government recognized the Vatican as a sovereign state, and paid it some 90,000,000 gold lira in recompense for the 19th century loss of the papal states during the unification of Italy under the House of Savoy/Kingdom of Sardinia. That money, according to some, was parlayed by the Vatican through shrewd investments in Italian chemical industries and other combines into a vast fortune. If one is to believe the plotline of the late Fr. Malachi Martin's novel, Vatican, a "bargain" was struck between the Vatican and the "high masonic powers" of Europe to allow it entre into the game of international finance. In return for this "Bargain," someone – Martin never really clarifies – was given the right to exercise a secret "veto" during papal conclaves should a candidate secure election that the "powers that were" found unacceptable. For a period, some have argued that the Habsburg "Emperors Apostolical" of Austria exercised this power.
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