Appointment The Vatican finances were on the verge of bankruptcy prior to being bolstered by $92.1 million (750 million
lire cash and another 1 billion lire in Italian government bonds) which the Vatican received as a consequence of the
Lateran treaties in 1929, as compensation for the occupation and annexation of the Papal States by the Italian Government in 1861 and 1870. In 1929,
Pope Pius XI, a family friend, appointed Nogara director of the
Special Administration of the Holy See, charged with the financial dealings of the Vatican. In theory, the director of the Special Administration reported to a three cardinal committee—which included
Eugenio Pacelli (who became the next pope) and
Pietro Gasparri; in practice, Nogara reported directly to the Pope, meeting with him more frequently than any official in the Curia, with the exception of the
Cardinal Secretary of State. The Special Administration was independent of the other two Vatican financial offices, although Nogara may have exercised considerable influence over the other branches of Vatican finances as well. Nogara's promotion was just one of many where Pius XI favoured other natives of Lombardy with promotions within the Roman Curia.
Under Pius XI Nogara's tenure at the Special Administration came on the heels of the
Wall Street crash of 1929, and its many after-effects in Europe.
Grolux, the holding company for the profits of the Special Administration between 1932 and 1935, was housed in
Luxembourg due to its dearth of public disclosure laws. Nogara was a controversial figure with the
Roman Curia because many of his investments were perceived to violate the church's doctrines. For example, Nogara purchased a controlling share in
Istituto Farmacologico Serono di Roma, Italy's largest manufacturer of
birth control products. Nogara also invested in Italy's munitions plants and other war industries, including direct loans to
Mussolini's government prior to his
invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Pius XII managed Nogara directly, with no intermediaries, and no notes were taken during their conferences (nor do any documents relating to Nogara exist in the
ADSS). The immediate concern for Nogara upon the outbreak of World War II was that the Vatican assets in the various Allied and Axis countries not be seized or frozen. Nogara's "cloaked real estate companies" continued to operate throughout Europe, in Allied and Axis controlled territory, for the entire war. Although Germany otherwise had a policy of blocking funds that might reach Allied countries, the Vatican—which had, and used, an account at the
Reichsbank—was excluded and enjoyed relative freedom. It was through Profima, and other similarly organized holding companies, that the Vatican was able to purchase blacklisted companies, such as
Banco Sudameris (blacklisted by both the US and Great Britain for its financing of the Axis war effort). Although
Harold Tittmann, the American envoy, bypassed Nogara and warned the Cardinal Secretary of State against the purchase of Sudameris, once the Vatican went ahead with the purchase in 1941 it "left no stone unturned" in its quest to get the company removed from the Allied blacklists, petitioning nearly every relevant government in the world. According to Phayer, the confrontation over the delisting of Sudameris "boiled down to two views of fascism. For the Vatican, which had done business with the fascists during the prewar days, Sudameris was "business as usual". Even at the time the purchase was controversial because only two months earlier the insurer had made clear its fascist sympathies by firing all of its Jewish employees. According to Phayer, both Nogara and Pius XII were well aware that their covert purchase of Fondiara amounted to a "betrayal of trust" of their agreements with the Allied powers. According to Phayer, "like water finding a downhill path, Vatican money found its way to the grisly side of the Holocaust". Another firm that Nogara invested the Vatican heavily in,
Assicurazioni Generali, was the prime beneficiary of the fact that "fascist countries were about to remake the European insurance industry" at the expense of the European Jewry. According to Phayer, "the conclusion is unavoidable:
Nogara indirectly trafficked in the arms race and did so knowing that any resulting profit would be derived from stolen property". As the US would have blocked the transaction had they known it was for tungsten mining, the Vatican labelled the funds as earmarked for "food exports". Thus no evidence whatsoever exists to support Phayer's speculation. Based on a reference to one "Noraga", an Abwehr agent, in the interrogation report of Abwehr recruiter Karl Wilhelm Reme,
Gerald Posner argues that this could only be Bernardino Nogara who would thereby be able "to sabotage the Allied war effort and at the same time find ways to help finance the Axis powers". However, John Pollard, reviewing Posner's book in
The Tablet, points out that the interrogation report of this selfsame Nogara is found in The National Archives, London, where he is identified as Bruno Nogara, a Venice school teacher and Blackshirt fanatic who was arrested by the Allies in April 1945. Faced with this evidence, Posner has amended his recently published paperback version of
God’s Bankers and now says, on page 137, that there were in fact two
Abwehr agents named Nogara: Bruno Nogara, whose Interrogation Report is found in The National Archives, London, and Branch Nogara, listed in Appendix C of the Interrogation Report of Reinhard Reme,
Abwehr II Recruiter, found in the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. His argument is that the former, Bruno Nogara, is listed as a member of
Abwehr Unit 257 under
Reichsstatthalter Hubert Pfannenstiel, while the latter, Branch Nogara, is listed under
Abwehr Unit 254 commanded by
Reichsstatthalter Ernst Schmidt-Burck – thus, two different
Abwehr Units under two different commanders and therefore two different Nogaras. “The Tablet”, however, reports that the very source cited by Posner clearly identifies "Branch Nogara", not as a person, but as the small town of
Nogara located just north of the river PO where
Abwehr Unit 254 maintained its supply depot. According to
The Tablet, there is no second Nogara, only Bruno Nogara, an
Abwehr agent, and the small Italian town of Nogara which Posner claims refers to Bernardino Nogara, the Vatican's Financial Director, when actually it refers a town of the same name. According to Pollard, it became public in Nogara's obituary in 1958 that in WWII, Nogara was the Vatican's representative in Rome's underground resistance movement, the Committee of National Liberation. Nogara's grandson, Ambassador Osio, in his interviews with Pollard, said that Nogara did not invest in German securities, or in tungsten, and that he disliked the Nazis. In 1954, Nogara was succeeded as director of the Special Administration of the Holy See by
Henri de Maillardoz, a director of
Credit Suisse. ==Diary==