A Vow of Silence
Did gold stolen by Croatian fascists reach the Vatican?
Another Croatian priest living at San Girolamo was also active in smuggling war criminals, documents show. A recently declassified memo, believed to have been written in 1946 by an agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)--the precursor of the CIA--reports that a priest called Father Golik was supplying false passports and money to members of the Ustasha. Golik, the memo says, was alleged to be "chief sponsor of all Croats resident in Rome, with special attention to the needs of former Ustasha members." The memo reports allegations that the Ustashas "are given a monthly allowance of 6,000 lire per person [the equivalent of $2,700 today], in addition to the privilege of cheap meals at the San Girolamo mess."
Croatian Catholic officials were funneling money to war criminals even after they escaped to Argentina, documents show. According to cable intercepts cited in a 1947 U.S. diplomatic report, Pavelic escaped in November 1947 to Buenos Aires, where he was said to have been met by a retinue of Catholic priests. Newly declassified documents also show that Bishop Rozman was funneling money to South America from a Swiss bank account set up "to aid refugees of the Catholic religion." U.S. military attache Davis Harrington reported on March 9, 1948, that Rozman "is going to Bern to take care of these finances. The money is in a Swiss bank, and he plans to have most of it sent through to Italy and from there sent to the Ustashas in Argentina."
Further clues about the path of Ustasha gold are provided by Croatian National Bank records uncovered last fall by an American historian of Croatian descent. According to Jere Jareb, author of Gold and Money of the Independent State of Croatia Moved Abroad, the documents show that 288 kilograms of gold was removed from the Croatian National Bank and the state treasury on May 7, 1945--the day that Germany capitulated. By Draganovic's own testimony, part of that treasure landed in his hands. The "Golden Priest," as Draganovic was known, acknowledged to the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission that he doled the money out to Ustasha soldiers and Croatian civilian refugees. (Though called to testify, Draganovic was never charged. He later returned to Yugoslavia and died there in 1983.)
When in Rome. But does any of the evidence implicate the Vatican itself? The strongest indication so far is a memo that first prompted the State Department's interest. The memo, dated Oct. 21, 1946, was discovered last summer in the declassified files of the U.S. Treasury Department. Written by OSS agent Emerson Bigelow, it reports that money sent by Ustasha from Croatia to Rome after the war had been partly intercepted by the British, but that 200 million Swiss francs--the equivalent of $170 million today--were being held in the Vatican for safekeeping. According to "rumor," the memo says, the money was being used to finance Croatian war criminals in exile.
When the Bigelow memo was released last year, the Vatican swiftly dismissed it, insisting that the charges could not be true. But some researchers who have studied World War II intelligence matters note that other archival documents counter the notion that a Vatican-Ustasha link is implausible on its face. One is a British diplomatic memo from Oct. 17, 1947, cited in the 1991 book Unholy Trinity by journalist Mark Aarons and former Justice Department Nazi-hunter John Loftus. According to the memo, a San Giralomo priest named Father Mandic was a "liaison to the Vatican" who was involved in converting Ustasha gold, jewelry, and foreign exchange into Italian lire.
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