Twenty years ago this month, news outlets both secular and religious reported on the death of an 84-year-old once-prominent bank director. Like a financial executive or two before him, he had retired to Sun City, Ariz., in a home bordering a golf course. But there was more to the story: Paul Marcinkus was an archbishop and had once been head of the Vatican Bank. And, in his informal secondary role as the pope’s bodyguard in the 1970s and 80s, he had earned an impressive nickname: 

“The Pope’s Gorilla.”

Born in Cicero, Ill., in 1922 to Lithuanian immigrants, Paul Marcinkus would also one day be called the second-most powerful man at the Vatican after the pope. As a young man, he attended the now-closed Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago and then St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, better known as Mundelein, and was ordained for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1947. After several years as a parish priest, he was sent to the Gregorian University in Rome to study canon law; during his time there, he became friends with Cardinal Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI.

Completing his canon law degree in 1953, Marcinkus then undertook a training program for prospective diplomats and was assigned to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, serving in Bolivia and Canada for five years. In 1959, he was moved to the Vatican Secretariat of State in Rome. He served as an occasional translator for Pope John XXIII and then for Pope Paul VI after the latter’s election in 1963 (he was fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish and Lithuanian). He eventually became the “advance man” for overseas papal trips. The pope made him a bishop in 1969.

Bishop Marcinkus, who had played rugby in his youth and stood 6’4, also became an unofficial bodyguard for Pope Paul VI. In 1970 in Manila, a Bolivian man dressed as a priest attacked the pope with a knife; what happened next is a matter of some dispute (Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos claimed he saved the pope’s life with a karate chop), but most sources credited Bishop Marcinkus’s quick action and considerable physical strength in disabling the would-be assassin, and the pope gifted him a special engraved chalice in thanks. His actions that day and his imposing figure earned him the Italian nickname “Il Gorilla.” 

Though Bishop Marcinkus had no prior experience in banking, Paul VI appointed him secretary of the Vatican Bank (officially the “Institute for Religious Works”) in 1968 and its president in 1971. He would stay in the role for 18 colorful and controversial years. In 1979, the New York Times described him as “an ecclesiastical maverick, unceremonious to the point of bluntness, one of the few priests in Rome who played golf.” One news story after his death suggested he chainsmoked cigarettes and smoked a pipe at the same time. 

The Canadian diplomatic correspondent Barrie Dunsmore once wrote that by the mid-1970s, “after the pope, Marcinkus was arguably the most powerful man in the Vatican.”

His tenure was marked by several banking scandals, including one in the 1970s involving a Sicilian-born banker who had advised the Vatican on its investments, Michele Sindona. Sindona was also heavily involved in money laundering of heroin profits from the Italian and American underworlds. When Sindona’s own investment portfolio collapsed under accusations of malfeasance, the Vatican Bank reportedly lost $80 million. 

When Pope John Paul I died in 1978 only 33 days after his election, rumors swirled that the Vatican Bank’s murky business practices (including allegations of money laundering for the mafia) had something to do with it; the British journalist David A. Yallop later claimed that Archbishop Marcinkus was part of a cabal that sought to kill the pope to prevent any investigation of Vatican finances. In 1979, the lawyer overseeing the liquidation of the assets of Sindona’s banks, Giorgio Ambrosoli, was murdered—a crime for which Sindona was convicted years later in an Italian court. Four days after his conviction, Sindona died in jail of cyanide poisoning.

In a 1989 book review in America of John Cornwell’s A Thief in the Night (in which Cornwell argued that Archbishop Marcinkus likely had nothing to do with the pope’s death), the Rev. George G. Higgins noted that the archbishop had finally had a chance to tell his side of the story. “The Archbishop’s many friends, on reading A Thief in the Night, will be pleased, but not surprised to learn that he was refreshingly frank and down-to-earth in his many taped conversations with Cornwell,” Father Higgins wrote, “and that he comes through loud and clear as truly is own man—a Mensch in the best sense of the word.” 

In 1981, Pope John Paul II made him an archbishop. Within a year, however, the Vatican Bank was ensnared in another financial scandal when the Banco Ambrosiano (in which the Vatican Bank was a major investor) collapsed. More than a billion dollars went unaccounted for, and the Vatican Bank later had to pay more than $200 million to Ambrosiano shareholders. Roberto Calvi, the chairman of the bank and a friend of Archbishop Marcinkus, was found dead, hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge, in 1982. 

Though the archbishop was never charged with a crime in relation to the banking scandal, the entire affair was a constant in European headlines. Movie buffs may recognize the tale even today, as the plot of “Godfather III” conflates many of the details to suggest that an Archbishop Gilday (the head of the Vatican Bank and a chainsmoking Vatican powerbroker, clearly based on Archbishop Marcinkus) had murdered the pope to cover up financial crimes in an alliance with mafiosis opposed to Michael Corleone.

Several years after Calvi’s death, Italian authorities tried to arrest Archbishop Marcinkus for a variety of financial crimes (including arms smuggling!), but as a Vatican diplomat, he technically had immunity from prosecution. In 1987, he sued NAL Penguin to stop publication of a novel that portrayed him as ordering the assassination of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1984 to protect Pope John Paul II. 

When asked years later why he was embroiled in so many controversies during his tenure, Archbishop Marcinkus reportedly told critics that “You can’t run the church on Hail Marys.”

After stepping down from his Vatican Bank position in 1989, Archbishop Marcinkus briefly served as the governor of Vatican City before retiring and moving back to Chicago. He eventually landed in Sun City in Arizona, where he served at St. Clement Church. At his death in 2006, he left behind $400,000, much of which went to the Archdiocese of Chicago. 

A curious historical note about the New York Times obituary for “The Pope’s Gorilla” in 2006: Right below his obit was that of actor Richard Bright, who had also died the week before and who was famous for playing Al Neri in “The Godfather” movies. Guess who Al Neri assassinates in the closing minutes of “The Godfather III”? Yep: the sinister Vatican Bank powerbroker, Archbishop Gilday. 

Even obituary writers are allowed to have a little fun.

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Our poetry selection for this week is “Profane,” by Dan O’Brien. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.