# Vatican Bank The Institute for the Works of Religion (*Istituto per le Opere di Religione*, IOR), commonly called the Vatican Bank, is the financial institution founded by Pope Pius XII in 1942 inside [[Vatican]] City to manage assets for religious and charitable purposes. As [[Banco Ambrosiano]]'s main shareholder it was central to the 1982 collapse, making it the concrete example behind [[The Octopus]] claim that the Church's non-retail business includes banking. ## The Ambrosiano scandal The IOR's president, American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, was a friend of [[Roberto Calvi]] and had been a director of Ambrosiano's Nassau arm. In 1981 the IOR issued "letters of patronage" stating it controlled, directly or indirectly, several Panamanian shell companies -- documents that helped sustain Calvi's debts. After the collapse, the Vatican paid creditors roughly $224-244 million in 1984 as a goodwill gesture without admitting legal liability. In 1987 an Italian court issued arrest warrants for Marcinkus and two other IOR officials; he avoided arrest behind Vatican sovereign immunity under the Lateran Treaty, left the IOR around 1989-90, and died in 2006 without ever being tried. ## Reform The scandal prompted decades of episodic reform: anti-money-laundering legislation, a Financial Intelligence Authority created under Benedict XVI, external evaluation (Moneyval), and, under Pope Francis, the closure of thousands of dormant or suspicious accounts and submission to external audit. ## Epistemic status The IOR's shareholding, the letters of patronage, the goodwill payment, and the Marcinkus warrants are documented. Whether the IOR knowingly participated in fraud or money laundering versus acted as a passive guarantor was never adjudicated; the Vatican never accepted legal liability. Allegations that it laundered Mafia money are asserted in secondary literature but were never established against the institution in court. ## See also - [[The Octopus]] - [[Banco Ambrosiano]] - [[Roberto Calvi]] - [[Vatican]] - [[Propaganda Due]]