Their Will Be Done, Or Christo Fascism Sweeps North America

Since World War II, the CIA has:
subsidized a Catholic lay organization that served as the 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;
passed money to a large number of priests and bishops -- some of whom became witting agents in CIA covert operations;
employed undercover operatives to lobby members of the Curia (the Vatican government) and spy on liberal churchmen on the pope's staff who challenged the political assumptions of the United States;
prepared intelligence briefings that accurately pre-dicted the rise of liberation theology; and
collaborated with right-wing Catholic groups to coun-ter the actions of progressive clerics in Latin America.
It was in this last regard that the CIA supported factions within the Catholic church that were instrumental in pro-moting and electing the (then) current pope, John Paul II, whose Polish nationalism and anti-Communist credentials, they thought, would make him a perfect vehicle for U.S. foreign policy. John Paul's recent trip to Nicaragua could not have been matched by any American's for the contri-bution it made to President Reagan's Central American initiative. And hopes are high in Washington, D.C., that the pope's forth-coming trip to Poland, where 90 percent of the people are Catholic, will respark the anti-Soviet upris-ing so vital to Reagan's plans for Eastern Europe.


Dark Knight of the Soul

Every year in late June a bizarre ritual takes place in Rome. Men and women fly in from all over the world to participate in a cere-mony that has been performed for centuries. Next year, the assembled might find CIA director William Casey in their midst. And Casey could well be accompanied by former Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
If they make the journey, Casey and Haig will join a gathering of the world's Catholic elite on St. John's Day. Dressed in scarlet uniforms and black capes, brandishing swords and waving flags emblazoned with the eight-pointed Maltese cross, these Catholic brothers and sisters will, in an atmosphere of pomp and circumstance befitting a coronation, swear allegiance to the defense of the Holy Mother Church.
Casey and Haig are both members of the Knights of Malta, a legendary Vatican order dating back to the Crusades, when the "warrior monks" served as the mili-tary arm of the Catholic church. The knights, in their latter-day incarnation as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), are a historical anomaly. Although the order has no land mass other than a small headquarters in Rome, this unique papal entity holds the status of nation-state. It mints coins, prints stamps, has its own constitution and issues license plates and passports to an accredited diplomatic corps. The grand master of the order, Fra Angelo de Moj ana di Cologna, holds a rank in the church equal to a cardinal and is recognized as a sovereign chief of state by 41 nations with which the SMOM exchanges ambassadors.

(Star of Malta is in the background, it is interesting to see how often the star and the cross appear on American military garb)
But the real power of the order lies with the lay members, who are active on five continents. Nobility forms the backbone of the SMOM; more than 40 percent of its 10,000 constituents are related to Europe's oldest and most powerful Catholic families. Wealth is a de facto prerequisite for a knightly candidate, and each must pass through a rigorous screening. Protestants, Jews, Muslims and divorced or separated Catholics are ineligible.
"The eight-pointed white cross stands out everywhere as a symbol of charity toward mankind and as a comfort and consolation to the sick and the poor," says Cyril Tou-manoff, official historian of the SMOM. In recent years its members have carried on the Hospitaler tradition of the original knights by supporting international health care and relief efforts. They proudly offer aid to the needy regardless of race, creed or religious affiliation.
But the needy aided by certain SMOM members in the late '40s were some of the 50,000 Nazi war criminals who, with the assistance of the International Red Cross, were furnished fake Vatican passports and, in some cases, clerical robes, and were smuggled on Bishop Alois Hudal's "underground railroad" to South America. Among those was Klaus Barbie, the "butcher of Lyons...

...
In 1948, the SMOM gave one of its highest awards of honor, the Gran Croci al Merito con Placca, to General Reinhard Gehlen, Adolf Hitler's chief anti-Soviet spy. (Only three other people received this award.) Gehlen, who was not a Catholic, was touted as a formidable ally in the holy crusade against godless Marxism. After the war he and his well-developed spy apparatus—staffed largely by ex-Nazis—joined the fledgling CIA. Eventually, hundreds more Nazis ended up on the U.S. government's payroll. Among them was Klaus Barbie.
"The CIA very early on made a decision that Nazis were more valuable as allies and agents than as war criminals," > says Victor Marchetti, an ex-CIA officer who was raised a Catholic. Marchetti is disturbed by the role of the CIA and his church in perpetuating the Nazi outrage.

"It gets a little crazy," he said, "when you let one thing [anticommunism] take over to the extent that you forgive everything else."