Free Republic

MAJOR EXPOSÉ: Rooms broken into, dossiers stolen, death threats, armed guards, assassinations... Fr. Charles Murr on Vatican intrigues surrounding Cardinals Baggio, Benelli, Villot, and Gagnon Rorate readers will be aware of the groundbreaking interview Kevin J. Symonds conducted with Fr. Murr for the October 2020 issue of Inside the Vatican, which was also published at Rorate on October 10. Interested readers may want to read that interview first in order to gain more understanding of context for the present one, again for Inside the Vatican. In the previous interview, Fr. Murr told us about his friendship with Mother Pascalina...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is testing an advanced centrifuge at its Natanz nuclear complex, diplomats said on Wednesday, a move that could lead to Tehran enriching uranium much faster and gaining the means to build atom bombs. Iran says it wants nuclear energy only for electricity so it can export more oil. But it is under sanctions for hiding the program until 2003, preventing U.N. inspectors since then from verifying it is wholly peaceful and refusing to suspend it. Tehran's quest to produce usable amounts of nuclear fuel has been hampered by problems getting a 1970s vintage of centrifuge, the...

PARIS (Reuters) - Iran has built at least 15 advanced P-2 centrifuges, which could dramatically speed up its production of nuclear fuel, and will have hundreds more ready next year, an exiled opposition group said on Thursday. Iran faces possible sanctions over its refusal to stop enriching uranium by an Aug. 31 U.N. Security Council deadline set because of suspicions Tehran's professed civilian nuclear energy project is a front for making atom bombs. The France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has reported accurately on hidden Iranian nuclear activity in the past, said Tehran was making P-2 centrifuges at...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it would freeze ties with the U.N. nuclear watchdog and speed up its atomic program if it were hit by international sanctions. "If you impose sanctions, Iran will suspend its relations with the (IAEA) agency," chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told a conference on nuclear issues in Tehran. "Suspension means we will accelerate our activities." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who like other Western leaders accuses Iran of having a secret program to build nuclear weapons, said in Greece: "I suppose the Iranians can threaten, but they are deepening their own isolation."...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will not abandon its work on uranium enrichment, which the United Nations has demanded be halted, even if faced with threats, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday. "Iran's uranium enrichment and nuclear research and development activities are irreversible," Hamid Reza Asefi said. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to submit a report by an April 28 deadline on whether Iran is complying with a U.N. demand that it halt enrichment, which Western nations say is being used to develop nuclear atomic weapons. Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president has thrown a new wrinkle into the nuclear debate by claiming his country is testing a centrifuge that could be used to more speedily create fuel for power plants or atomic weapons. But some analysts familiar with the country's technology said Monday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be deliberately exaggerating Iran's capabilities, either to boost his own political support or to persuade the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to back off.

Gelli probed in Calvi murder Ex-head of shady lodge thought to have ordered Mafia hit (ANSA) - Rome, July 19 - Former right-wing subversive Licio Gelli is under investigation in the murder of 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi . Gelli, 86, is suspected of commissioning the murder . Also joining four suspects facing trial is former smuggler Silvano Vittor, police said on Tuesday . Gelli's lawyer said his client was "amazed" at press leaks of a questioning session earlier this month . The lawyer denied Gelli's alleged statement that police should "look to Poland" for those who ordered the banker's murder...

ROME (AP) - Italian authorities indicted four people Monday in the killing of Italian financier Roberto Calvi, a banker with close ties to the Vatican who was found hanging under a bridge in London in 1982, reports said. Businessman Flavio Carboni, his ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig and two men with alleged ties to the Mafia, Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi, will stand trial in October for Calvi's killing, the Italian news agencies ANSA and Apcom said. Calvi was dubbed "God's banker" because of his ties with the Vatican's bank and its former top official, the American Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus. He...

'God's banker' case re-opened Italian prosecutors have concluded the Mafia murdered the Italian banker, Roberto Calvi, who was found dead more than 20 years ago. Prosecutors have named four people suspected of carrying out the killing, and they have been given 20 days to reply to the accusations or face formal charges. The original coroner's report said that Calvi, who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London, had committed suicide. He was known as "God's banker", because of his close links with the Vatican. Those now facing a murder charge are Pippo Calo, a Mafia gangster already serving...

Twenty-two years after the body of God's Banker, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged under London's Blackfriars Bridge, his death remains a compelling mystery. But with four people facing a murder trial in Italy, his son is hoping for an answer at last. The death of your father is always going to be traumatic. But for Carlo Calvi the tragedy has been made worse by political intrigue, shady business practices and tales of mafia connections. An original inquest into the death of Roberto Calvi, who was found on the morning of 18 June 1982, returned a verdict of suicide. But his...

<p>United Nations inspectors have found sophisticated uranium-enrichment machinery at an air force base outside Iran's capital, Tehran, U.S. and foreign sources with knowledge of the discovery say.</p> <p>The find at Doshen-Tappen air base appears to undermine Iran's claim it is not pursuing a nuclear bomb. The discovery may strengthen calls for action by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.</p>

Leslie H. Gelb..developing

Italian investigators have discovered a safety deposit box belonging to Roberto Calvi some 20 years after "God's banker" was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in London. The safety deposit box, held at a Milan branch of the Banco Ambrosiano of which Calvi was chairman, reportedly contained a builder's brick, newspaper articles dating from the summer of 1981 and documents which police hope will help them to solve the puzzle of the banker's death. One mystery they will seek to clarify is how the bank safe remained unnoticed for all these years. It was registered in the names of...

New look at 'God's banker' case 02.10.2002 LONDON - Italian magistrates are to reopen a murder investigation into the death of Roberto Calvi, the banker at the heart of a scandal involving the Vatican, freemasonry and the Mafia, who was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in June 1982. The Calvi case was one of the great criminal mysteries of modern times. In the 20 years since his death, it has never been established whether he was murdered or committed suicide after his Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in a US$1.2 billion bankruptcy. The new investigation is the result of...