Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

CHAPTER 7

From Russia with Malice

A Vatican biography of Pope John Paul II noted he was born in the Polish town of Wadowice on May 18, 1920, the youngest of three children born to Karol Wojtya and Emilia Kaczorowska. He was baptized on June 20, 1920, in the parish church, “made his First Holy Communion at age 9, and was confirmed at 18. Upon graduation from Marcin Wadowita High School in Wadowice, he enrolled in Krakow’s Jagiellonian University in 1938 and in a school for drama.”

“The Nazi occupation forced closure of the university in 1939, and he had to work in a quarry (1940-44) and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany… Aware of his call to the priesthood, he began courses in the clandestine seminary of Krakow, run by Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, archbishop of Krakow. At the same time, Karol Wojtya was one of the pioneers of the clandestine ‘Rhapsodic Theater.’”

“After the Second World War, he continued his studies in the major seminary of Krakow, once it had re-opened, and in the faculty of theology of the Jagiellonian University. He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Sapieha in Krakow on November 1, 1946. Shortly afterward, Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome where he worked under the guidance of a French Dominican. He finished his doctorate in theology in 1948 with a thesis on the subject of faith in the works of St. John of the Cross (‘Doctrina de fide apud Sanctum Ioannem a Cruce’). At that time, during his vacations, he exercised his pastoral ministry among the Polish immigrants of France, Belgium and Holland…

“In 1948 he returned to Poland and was vicar of various parishes in Krakow as well as chaplain to university students until 1951, when he took up again his studies in philosophy and theology. In 1953 he defended a thesis on ‘evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler’ at Lublin Catholic University. Later he became professor of moral theology and social ethics in the major seminary of Krakow and in the Faculty of Theology of Lublin.

“On July 4, 1958, he was appointed titular bishop of Ombi and auxiliary of Krakow by Pope Pius XII, and was consecrated September 28, 1958, in Wawel Cathedral, Krakow. On January 13, 1964, he was appointed archbishop of Krakow by Pope Paul VI, who made him a cardinal June 26, 1967” with the title of S. Cesareo in Palatio of the order of deacons, later elevated to the order of priests.

“Besides taking part in Vatican Council II [1962-65] where he made an important contribution to drafting the Constitution Gaudium et spes, Cardinal Wojtyła participated in all the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops.” The Cardinals elected him Pope at the Conclave of October 16, 1978, and he took the name of John Paul II. On October 22, he solemnly inaugurated his Petrine ministry as the 263rd pope. “At the age of 58, he was the youngest pope of the twentieth century” and the first non-Italian pope since the fifteenth century. He brought to the Vatican a burning opposition to Communism and a fervor to liberate Poland.

“As John Paul II set foot on his native soil, at the Okecie military airport, he fell on his knees and kissed the ground. He was greeted by the hated Polish head of state, Henryk Jablonski, and the Polish Primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. The Pope was driven into Warsaw in an open-top car, he was welcomed by two-million people cheering ‘Long live our Pope.’ He was greeted by a further 250,000 people as he entered Victory Square for an open-air Mass. Many wept as he walked up to the altar and stood with open arms before a 30 ft cross draped in red.”

In an exchange of speeches with Jablonski, the Polish Communist’s knees were shaking. John Paul II said his visit was dictated by strictly religious motives, but he stressed that he hoped that his visit would help the “internal unity of my fellow countrymen and also a further favorable development of relations between the state and the church in my beloved motherland.”

He told the throng, and a world watching via television, “I have kissed the ground of Poland on which I grew up, the land from which, through the inscrutable design of providence, God called me to the chair of Peter in Rome, the land from which I am coming today as a pilgrim.”

Watching the spectacle on television in Moscow, grim-faced officials of the Soviet Union ’s espionage service, the KGB, heard the Pope say, “It is not possible to understand the history of the Polish nation without Christ.”

The men in KGB headquarters recognized a threat.

It materialized in August 1980 when Polish workers demonstrated defiance of the Communist authorities by going on strike at the Lenin shipyard in the port city of Gdansk. “Festooned with flowers, white and red Polish flags and portraits of Pope John Paul II,” said one international press account, “the plant’s iron gates came to symbolize that heady mixture of hope, faith and patriotism that sustained the workers through their vigil.”

“In September 1981,” the leader of the shipbuilders’ strike, Lech Walesa, “was elected Chairman of the First National Solidarity Congress in Gdansk. As the world watched and wondered if Soviet tanks would put an end to it all, Walesa and his fellow strikers stood their ground. Like soldiers before battle, they confessed to priests and received Communion in the open shipyard. To reduce the risk of violence, Walesa called for a ban on alcohol and insisted on strict discipline…

“The government team finally gave in on almost all of the workers’ demands. In addition to the right to strike and form unions, the Warsaw regime…reduced state censorship and access to broadcasting networks for the unions and the Church. At a nationally televised ceremony, where strikers and government representatives stood side by side and sang the Polish national anthem, Walesa signed what became known as the Gdansk agreement with a giant souvenir pen bearing the likeness of John Paul II.”

In January 1981, the KGB noted Walesa being received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican. Falling to his knees, “Walesa kissed the papal ring and then briefly resisted the Pope’s efforts to pull him to his feet. The union leader then had a rare private meeting with the Pope, which lasted for half an hour.” When they emerged, the Pope said, “‘I wish to assure you that during your difficulties I have been with you in a special way, above all through prayer.’ He declared that the right to form free associations was ‘one of the fundamental human rights.’”

In Poland, “as workers rushed to join up at hastily improvised union locals across the country, Walesa and the other ex-strike leaders quickly found themselves at the head of a labor federation that soon grew to 10 million members-fully a quarter of the Polish population…Walesa insisted that Solidarity should be a simple labor movement, not a political opposition. On the day he arrived at a Gdansk apartment building to open Solidarity’s first makeshift headquarters, a wooden crucifix under his arm and a bouquet of flowers in his hand, he told a group of reporters, ‘I am not interested in politics, I am a union man. My job now is to organize the union.’”…The KGB men who knew about revolutions thought otherwise.

“The country was soon swept by a spate of wildcat strikes over local issues. In some cases the Solidarity chapters were taking on the Communist Party bureaucracy by demanding the ouster of corrupt local officials or the conversion of party buildings to public hospitals… As rank-and-file militants threatened to spin out of Walesa’s control, [he pleaded,] ‘We must concentrate on basic issues. There’s a fire in the country.’

“All the while, the Kremlin watched with rising anxiety. Solidarity’s existence was incompatible with the Communist Party’s monopoly of power… Even more important, the drive for democracy within the Polishparty challenged the Leninist doctrine of centralized party discipline. Poland ’s festering economic crisis also put a strain on the entire Soviet bloc… The ‘Polish disease,’ [as the men in the Kremlin called it,] might infect other…countries…[and threaten] the future of the Soviet empire.”

In a report on John Paul II’s visit to New York in 1979, Time magazine noted, “The Pontiff is emerging as the kind of incandescent leader that the world so hungers for-one who can make people feel that they have been lifted above the drabness of their own lives and show them that they are capable of better emotions, and better deeds, than they may have thought.”

The physically vigorous pontiff was “a man for all seasons, all situations, all faiths, a beguilingly modest superstar of the church. The professional philosopher read [to] the diplomats of the United Nations a closely reasoned intellectual sermon on the importance of human rights and freedom-and offered in contrast the ghastly memory of Auschwitz in his homeland.” The “athlete-outdoorsman” maintained a schedule “that would have stunned many a man of far fewer years than his 59, and he seemed impervious to the driving rains that fell on his motorcades in Boston and Manhattan.” The man who had been an actor before entering the priesthood “displayed a sure command of smile, gesture and wink, and capitalized on a thick Polish accent to draw a laughing cheer by voicing admiration for Manhattan’s ‘sky-scroppers.’…

“The humanitarian pastor delighted in the happiness of his flock, said the Time article, and he became one with them. Children were his special favorites, and he swept them up lightly in his brawny arms. When a young monsignor from Harlem bent to kiss his ring, John Paul lifted him to his feet and kissed him on both cheeks.”

Said Billy Graham, “He’s the most respected religious leader in the world today.” President Carter welcomed John Paul II at a Saturday afternoon ceremony on the White House lawn with “God blessed America by sending you to us.”

To cold-eyed men in KGB offices in Moscow, John Paul II was not a godsend who resided in a palace with walls, corridors and rooms ornately decorated with the masterpieces of the world’s greatest artists, but a troublemaker holding an office in a Vatican that had strong, but secret, ties to the American intelligence services. The KGB men took notice that when Ronald Reagan took office as president, he chose as head of the CIA a Roman Catholic and member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM).

Founded in A.D. 1080 as Crusaders, the Knights of Malta “historically had been the military arm of the Vatican and was regarded as a separate state with full powers of statehood, including issuing its own diplomatic passports.” It was said that in more recent decades SMOM acted as a funding conduit, a money laundry for the CIA, and the Vatican ’s intelligence agency. “ Malta knighthoods were awarded to many leading individuals who were part of the military and intelligence community.”

President Reagan’s choice as CIA Director was William Casey. Other Knights of Malta in the Reagan administration were former NATO general and later secretary of state Alexander Haig and presidential advisor General Vernon Walters, a former deputy director of the CIA under George H. W. Bush, and later a roving ambassador.

The relationship between the U.S. intelligence community, the Vatican, and the SMOM began when the legendary head of the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor of the CIA) was knighted by Pope Pius XII. William “Wild” Bill Donovan was made a Knight along with his wartime compatriot and later CIA Chief of Counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton. “Donovan was ushered into an ornate chamber in Vatican City for an audience with Pope Pius XII” and decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Sylvester. The oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods, this rarely bestowed “award was given to men who ‘by feat of arms or writings or outstanding deeds have spread the Faith and have safeguarded and championed the Church.’”

Donovan was deemed worthy because of services he rendered to the Catholic hierarchy in World War II. “In 1941, the year before OSS was officially constituted, Donovan forged an alliance with Father Felix Morlion, the founder of a European Catholic intelligence service known as Pro Deo. When the Germans overran Western Europe, Donovan helped Morlion move his base of operations from Lisbon to New York. From then on, Pro Deo was financed by Donovan, who believed that it would result in insights into the secret affairs of the Vatican ” and provide a window into the activities of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. “When the Allies liberated Rome in 1944, Morlion reestablished a spy network in the Vatican.”

“For centuries, the Vatican was a prime target of foreign espionage. One of the world’s greatest repositories of raw intelligence, it was a spy’s gold mine. Ecclesiastical, political and economic information filtered in from thousands of priests, bishops and the papal nuncios of the Office of the Papal Secretariat. So rich was this source of intelligence that after the war, the CIA created a special unit in its counterintelligence section to tap it and monitor developments within the Vatican…

“Since World War II, the CIA was reported to have subsidized a Catholic lay organization that served as a political slugging arm of the pope and the Vatican throughout the Cold War; penetrated the American section of one of the wealthiest and most powerful Vatican orders (Knights of Malta); and passed money to a large number of priests and bishops-some of whom became witting [an agent who knows he reports to an agency of the U.S. government] agents in CIA covert operations. They employed undercover operatives to lobby members of the Curia and spy on liberal churchmen on the pope’s staff who challenged the political assumptions of the United States; and prepared intelligence briefings that accurately predicted the rise of liberation theology.” The CIA also collaborated with Catholic groups to counter actions of leftist clerics in Latin America.

“In February 1981, just over a year following his triumphal visit to the United States, Pope John Paul II planned to refuel for three hours in Anchorage, Alaska, en route home following a major pastoral trip to the Philippines, Japan, and Guam. When the White House learned of this plan, National Security Council staffers recommended that Reagan ‘establish an early, personal relationship with the Pope while welcoming him back to North American soil.’ On February 5, NSC staffer James M. Rentschler proposed that a ‘Nanook-of-the-North mission’ be mounted during the pope’s Alaskan layover.

“Accordingly, when John Paul landed in Anchorage on February 25, the envoy-designate to the Vatican, William Wilson, handed him a letter from Reagan, stating: ‘…I hope you will not hesitate to use [Wilson] as the channel for sensitive matters you or your associates may wish to communicate to me.’”

Three moths later, John Paul II was being driven slowly around St. Peter’s Square in his open jeep to greet thousands of people who crowded into Vatican City to see him and receive his blessing. On May 13, 1981, dressed in a papal-white cassock, he was shaking hands and lifting small children into his arms. As he reached a point just outside the Vatican ’s bronze gate, there was a burst of gunfire.

“One hand rising to his face and blood staining his garments,” reported the New York Times, “the Pope faltered and fell into the arms of his Polish secretary, the Rev. Stanislaw Dziwisz, and his personal servant, Angelo Gugel, who were in the vehicle with him…

Rushed by an ambulance to Gemelli Hospital, two miles north of the Vatican, for surgery,…John Paul was conscious as he was taken to the operating room…

“The gunman had fired four times in the attack. Two tourists, an American and a Jamaican, were wounded by two of the bullets. The gunman, armed with a nine-millimeter Browning automatic, was set upon by bystanders, who knocked the pistol out of his hand. He was arrested, taken away by police car, and later identified as twenty-three-year-old Mehmet Ali Agca. Police quoted him as having told them, ‘My life is not important.’

“He was said to have arrived in Italy the previous Saturday at the Milan airport and arrived in Rome on Monday. The police said that he had in his pocket several notes in handwritten Turkish, one of them saying, ‘I am killing the Pope as a protest against the imperialism of the Soviet Union and the United States and against the genocide that is being carried out in El Salvador and Afghanistan.’

“The Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that Agca had been convicted of murdering Abdi Ipekci, the editor of the Turkish newspaper Milliyet, in February 1979, but had escaped from prison later that year. Anatolia said he wrote a letter to the newspaper on Nov. 26, 1979, saying that he had fled from prison with the intention of killing the Pope, who was due to visit Ankara and Istanbul…

“The Vatican announced that the Pope…had suffered multiple lesions of the abdomen and a massive hemorrhage and had been given a transfusion of about six pints of blood. The Vatican also said that he had been wounded in the right forearm and the second finger of his left hand.”

Some news media quickly assumed the plot was the work of Turkish terrorists known as the Gray Wolves, a neo-Nazi group of both former military and Islamist extremists. This theory surfaced within hours of the arrest of Agca. Later, authorities investigating the attack declared it had been directed by the Bulgarian secret service, “acting on orders from the Soviet Union. This accusation depended on the secret confession of [Agca]…As he was taken from a Rome police station, Agca surprised waiting reporters by publicly implicating the Soviets in the conspiracy. He said, ‘The KGB organized everything.’

“In a chaotic encounter outside the police station, the slim, unshaven Turk, speaking in broken English and flawed Italian, claimed that he was trained as a terrorist ‘in Bulgaria and in Syria.’ Italian officials believed that he was aided in the assassination attempt by three Bulgarians: two former employees at [Bulgaria ’s] Rome embassy and Sergei Ivanov Antonov, onetime Rome manager of the Bulgarian airline. ‘Was Antonov involved?’ newsmen asked, as Agca climbed into a police van. ‘I knew Sergei,’ Agca replied. ‘He was my accomplice.’

‘And the KGB?’ ‘Yes, the KGB.’”

In 2008, “Claire Sterling, a prize-winning journalist and author, had just published The Terror Network when Ali Agca tried to kill the pope… Miss Sterling had quickly seen the Bulgarian connection when it became known that Agca had made several trips to Sofia, Bulgaria, and stayed in a hotel favored by the Bulgarian KGB. In Rome he had also had contacts with a Bulgarian agent whose cover was the Bulgarian national airline office.

“The Time of the Assassin, published in 1983, was Miss Sterling’s in-depth look at the plot to kill Pope John Paul II and the subsequent investigation. She had no doubt the plot originated at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, KGB headquarters in Moscow. The KGB assigned this super-wet operation to the Bulgarians… The Bulgarians then looked for cover and deniability among a Turkish extremist group involved with the KGB in lucrative drug smuggling routes through Bulgaria to Western Europe.”

President Reagan and CIA Director William Casey decided to play down the Soviet link. Reagan had survived an assassination attempt on March 30, 1981, as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel. He and Casey feared any administration hint of Soviet involvement in the plot to kill the pope might upset U.S.-Soviet relations, and conspiracy theorists would quickly conclude the KGB had also targeted Reagan.

Shortly after John Paul was released from the hospital, he visited Agca in prison. Sentenced to serve nineteen years, Agca was released early and sent back to Turkey to stand trial on an earlier unrelated charge. The pontiff later told old friends on two occasions that he was also satisfied the hand behind the plot was in Moscow.

During his trial, “Ali Agca feigned madness by declaring he had acted on God’s instructions. He later claimed to be the new messiah and to have conspired with Vatican prelates who recognized him as deity. Italian psychiatrists concluded he had been instructed to play the fool as a way of hiding Bulgaria ’s- Moscow ’s-tracks.

The Italian examining-magistrate in charge of the investigation, Ferdinando Imposimato, told Italian radio, ‘I believe Agca said many true things, but then he tried to torpedo the trial after being threatened inside prison by a Bulgarian agent who got inside to make sure he would retract his allegations.’”

Later, “Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most influential daily newspaper, disclosed new documents found in the files of former East German intelligence services which confirmed the 1981 assassination plot was ordered by the Soviet KGB and then assigned to the Bulgarian satellite service. Metodi Andreev, a former official in charge of the Bulgarian KGB’s files [reportedly] said he had seen correspondence between Stasi, the East German service, and the Bulgarian agents. These included an order from the KGB to pull out all the stops to bury Bulgaria ’s connection to the plot.” Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger. On the Pope’s sixty-first birthday (May 22, 1981), Reagan sent Congressman Peter Rodino to Rome with a personal letter for John Paul, who was still hospitalized after the attempt on his life. Having also been shot in the chest in an assassination attempt on March 30, Reagan wrote, “The qualities you exemplify remain a precious asset as we confront the growing dangers of the moment.”

“On December 12-13, 1981, the Communist government of Poland arrested thousands of Solidarity activists. Over the next weeks the White House and the Vatican consulted closely on the events in Poland by telephone, cable, and through diplomatic representatives…

“The United States will not let the Soviet Union dictate Poland ’s future with impunity,” Reagan wrote the Pope on December 29, 1981. “I am announcing today additional American measures aimed at raising the cost to the Russians of their continued violence against Poland.”

“A week later,” Ambassador Wilson was handed a letter from John Paul II to Reagan “pledging support for the U.S. sanctions. Though John Paul worried about the impact of sanctions on the Polish people, he said that he would stand with Reagan, even if he could not say so publicly.”

A cable to Haig said, “The Vatican recognizes that the U.S. is a great power with global responsibilities. The United States must operate on the political plane and the Holy See does not comment on the political positions taken by governments. It is for each government to decide its political policies. The Holy See for its part operates on the moral plane, [but] both the Holy See and the United States have the same objective: the restoration of liberty to Poland.”

On June 7, 1982, President Reagan arrived at the Vatican to meet with John Paul. Reporter and author Carl Bernstein wrote, “It was the first time the two had met, and they talked for fifty minutes. In the same wing of the papal apartments, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini met with Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Judge William Clark, Reagan’s National Security Adviser.”

In that meeting in the Pope’s private library, Reagan and John Paul II agreed to undertake a secret campaign for the dissolution of the Communist empire.

Said Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Adviser, “This was one of the great secret alliances of all time.”

According to aides who shared their leaders’ view of the world, Bernstein noted, Reagan and John Paul II “refused to accept a fundamental political fact of their lifetimes-the division of Europe as mandated at the Yalta [a conference in 1945] and the Communist dominance of Eastern Europe. A free Poland…would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet empire.” If Poland became democratic, other East European states would follow. This secret Vatican meeting cemented the foundation for an outright war with Soviet Communism, with the USA and the Holy See as allies.

On January 10, 1984, the Reagan administration established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican, ending more than a century of official separation, but often secret contacts, between the White House and Vatican.

History has recorded that the friendship between the Pope and the president that Richard Allen called “one of the great secret alliances of all time,” sealed with a handshake in the Vatican, resulted in the liberation of Poland, the fall of the Iron Curtain, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the demise of Communism in Europe, and the end of the Cold War.