Catholic World News Service

Daily News Briefs

AUGUST 04, 1997

* MORE US DOCUMENTS ACCUSE VATICAN OF WORLD WAR II NAZI TIES

* BAVARIAN COURT RULES THAT CROSSES STAY IN CLASSROOMS

* AMERICAN LAWYER GROUP TO WRESTLE WITH ASSISTED SUICIDE

* ACLU TO SUE OHIO OVER MOTTO INVOKING GOD

* POPE INVITES YOUNG MISSIONARIES TO PAVE WAY FOR 2000

* NUMBERS DOWN AT ANNUAL IRISH PILGRIMAGE

MORE US DOCUMENTS ACCUSE VATICAN OF WORLD WAR II NAZI TIES

LOS ANGELES (CWN)- US intelligence documents allege secret transactions between the Vatican's financial institutions and Nazi Germany, according to a report by Reuters news agency on Sunday.

The documents in the National Archives reportedly charge that the Institute for Religious Works used Swiss banks to arrange illegal transfers with banks in Germany and other Axis countries. One confidential document, dated January 27 1945, lists a November 12 1944 transaction in which the Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, sent the following message to the Vatican bank: We credit you 6,407.50 francs on order of the Reichsbank Berlin. The Reichsbank was Nazi Germany's central bank.

A second document labeled Secret Intelligence Material Confidential, said that in April 1945, the Vatican Bank instructed the Union Bank of Switzerland to pay 100,000 Swiss francs and asked the Swiss central bank to pay 200,000 francs to the Bank Swiss Italienne of Lugano, which the Allies had placed on its blacklist in June 1940. A third document, also in 1945, said the Vatican bank asked a Portuguese bank to forward 2,500 large dollar notes in a sealed packet to the Vatican through the medium of the papal nuncio in Lisbon.

The release of the documents follows a report last month that claimed the Vatican transferred $130 million for Croatian fascists at the end of the war. The Vatican has flatly denied all the reports and government sources assert that the allegations are old news resurfacing as part of witch hunt against the Swiss banks.

[other news items deleted for brevity ... JP]

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