Godfather III - The Relationships

Godfather III - the Relationships Between Organized Crime & Catholicism

The Godfather Part III is a film about all the things that the two previous Godfather movies have been about: organized crime, political corruption, physical intimidation and violence, shootings and bloody death scenes, Italian mob culture, power, greed, arrogance, and yes, millions of dollars obtained illegally.

But in addition to those unseemly elements, the Godfather Part III is also about godfather Michael Corleone attempting but failing to go into legitimate businesses, about Corleone feeling guilt over a number of evil things he has done, about Corelone asking for forgiveness. Godfather III is also about major corruption within the Roman Catholic Church and about the shady dealings the Roman Catholic Church enters into with a known mob boss.

The fact that the Church would sweep its reputation as a powerful worldwide religion, its pious values and its lofty religious purposes under the rug to accept money from a notorious mob boss is at the heart of this movie. It is not so much that Corelone needed to appear that he had changed his style and become legitimate, and it is not so much that he needed to re-create himself in the eyes of a skeptical press and public - though he did need those things, and he did seek legitimacy - but it's about religion as a front for power and greed.

In the opening scene of this film, Corleone is seen near the alter of a Roman Catholic Church (hereafter in the paper referred to as the "Church") being invested with a high honor in the church, the Order of Saint Sabastian (which is technically called the St. Sylvester Order, but the film changed the title of the award to avoid legal conflict with the church).

The archbishop is singing in Latin and Corleone is standing in front of the archbishop. Before Corleone actually receives the medal from the priest, the scene switches to a view of a boat on the water with two men, and the camera pans over to a window house near the water where Corleone is apparently watching the happenings in the boat. A shot rings out, and now there is only one man in the boat.

The audience that hasn't seen the previous Godfather films later learns that this was the killing (ordered by Michael Corleone) of Corleone's own brother. What an irony, a man about to receive the Order of Saint Sabastian from an archbishop during a solemn ceremony; and this same man has killed and ordered the killing of others, has participated in multi-million dollar graft and fraud schemes, and is considered the top crime boss in America.

The archbishop says, "Do you Michael promise to be faithful to the noble purposes of this order, to have a special care for the needy and those who are ill?" Michael nods his head in agreement, and again, Francis Ford Coppola has directed a highly ironic and fascinating clash of images and values. The church bestowing this great honor on a mob boss - viewers immediately suspect there must be something untoward going on between the Church and the Corleone family.

Indeed there is something untoward going on: the film takes viewers to the reception that was held after the ceremony for Corleone, and the press has some skeptical questions for Corleone's PR man, as to how a notorious gangster like Corleone could so suddenly become a good guy and above board.

Corleone's PR man replies belligerently, defiantly to the reporter, reminding the press that the Pope himself authorized the awarding of honor upon Corleone, and adds, "Do you think you know better than the Pope?"

And when Corleone's daughter announces (at the reception) a $100 million donation to the Church and its work in Sicily, money that came from the Vito Corleone Foundation - and of course, money that originally was accrued through illicit Mafia activities - it appears very obvious that Corleone "bought" the honor from the Church to shore up his sleazy Mafia image.

This is a good place in the paper to examine the Church and scandals, in particular the scandals that the director, Coppola, and the author of the original book the Godfather, Mario Puzo, utilized as grist for their plot in the Godfather III. It is no secret that many books are written as fiction, but in fact are the result of actual activities and events in the real world.

This movie by Francis Ford Coppola brings real-life events involving the Church into a fictional setting, but an examination of the movie and real events indicates that either Coppola and Puzo needed a story line - and sizzling sidebar stories - or they perhaps had a point to drive home about the corruption that not only pushes organized crime forward, but that drives the Church as well.

Roger Ebert (Chicago Suntimes, 1990) writes that Coppola and Puzo were "inspired by headlines" about the scandals surrounding the Church in the 1980s: "the untimely suddenness of John Paul I's death, the scandals at the Vatican Bank," and about "the body of a Vatican banker found hanging from a London bridge."

Did these some of these movie-depicted events really happen? How did the Pope really die? There are some answers available from reference sources located for this paper.

The man seen hanging from a London bridge towards the end of the film represents a real-life event that happened on June 18, 1982. The body found dangling from an orange rope was that of Roberto Calvini, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano in Milan, Italy.

According to an article in American Atheist magazine (Goeringer, 2005), Calvi had "mysteriously vanished from Rome" on the 11th of June 1982. His bank had collapsed and those documents upon investigation, the article continues, reveal that Calvi had participated in activities involving organized crime, politics, drug dealers, and the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the official bank for the Vatican.

High officials within the Vatican and its bank had collaborated in building a network of offshore dummy corporations," Goeringer writes; those dummy corporations were propped up by the "Ambosirano Group's line of credit, into which hundreds of millions of dollars disappeared." There are reports, Goeringer continues, that Vatican's participation in this scandal exceeded $1.25 billion dollars.

Who killed Roberto Calvi? Initially, the ruling was suicide, but his family has long stated that he did not kill himself, and investigators have long since been going on a murder theory.

Meanwhile, on April 18, 2005, the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC, 2005) reported that four people have been charged with the 1982 murder of Calvi, was is "known as God's banker because of his close ties to the Vatican." The case had remained unsolved for all these years, until the suspects - Flavio Carboni, his "ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig," Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi, the last two "said to have Mafia ties.

Sources close to the prosecutors who are preparing the case told the BBC that "Calvi was killed to prevent him from revealing explosive secrets about Italy's political and religious establishment." When Calvi's body was found, he had bricks in his pockets and $15,000; he had been convicted of corrupt behavior in Italy, and had come to Britain after making bail in Italy.

Another suspicious event that happened in the film, and played out in real life to a degree, was the death of Pope John Paul I. According to the book, in God's Name (Yallop, David), the Pope did not take an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, he was murdered.

Yallop reportedly received a number of "leaks" from high sources within the Vatican, and the reason he gives in the book for the Pope's murder is, according to a review of his book in www.puritans.net, the Pope's "resolve to excommunicate 100 top-ranking Vatican officials who were Freemasons." At the time of the Pope's death (he was only Pope for 33 days), "canon law still forbade membership in the Freemasons (even though Pope Pius XII was himself a Freemason), and in fact, "several of these Freemasons were co-conspirators in the Vatican Bank scandal, in which $2.4 billion U.S. dollars were embezzled from the bank," the reviewer of the Yallop book continues.

The book contains a photo of the Pope taken reportedly three hours before his death, speaking "jovially" with a Cardinal, not looking like a man about to succumb. The official Vatican reason given for his death was a "possible myocardial infarction," according to press accounts of the Vatican announcement of Pope John Paul I's death. "Possible" myocardial infarction? And why, interestingly, was there no autopsy? These are all issues and questions that obviously played into Coppola's hands as he set out to produce the third in the Godfather trilogy.

The Pope was about to investigate the banking scandal, when he died on September 29, 1978. He was found by Sister Vincenza, at about 4:45 A.M., and according to Yallop's book. She was allegedly "forced to keep silent by the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Villot, who imposed a vow of silence upon her to cover up the whole affair," the reviewer continued.

In Yallop's book he writes that Cardinal Villot confirmed the Holy Father's death at 5:00 A.M. The Pope's slippers, glasses, and will disappeared, and "none of these items has ever been seen again," Yallop writes. There was speculation that if there had been vomit on the slippers - which there might have been, if indeed the Pope had been poisoned - it would give a conspirator a reason to remove the slippers permanently.

Cardinal Villot apparently phoned the embalmers around the time of death, and sent a Vatican car to fetch the embalmers. The car was also reported to have arrived at about 5:00 A.M., which would have been rather remarkable since the Pope's death was announced at that time. The reviewer of Yallop's book - a book which sold 5 million copies - writes that "It was not until 6:00 A.M. that Dr. Buzzonati (not Professor Fontana, the head of Vatican medical service) arrived and confirmed the death, without drawing up a death certificate. Dr. Buzzonati attributed the death to acute myocardial infarction (heart attack)."

And so, the time line continues to be suspicious, as Yallop has put together a scenario that by 6:30 A.M., Cardinal Villot "began to inform the cardinals, an hour and a half after the embalmers had arrived!" So it appears the bringing in the embalmers was a higher priority for Cardinal Villot than informing the other cardinals, and oddly, it was reported that "during the embalming it was insisted that no blood was to be drained from the body, and neither were any of the organs to be removed." very tiny amount of blood would of course "have been more than sufficient for a forensic scientist to establish the presence of any poisonous substances."

What was the Vatican's reason for the Pope's death? Cardinal Villot was quoted by the French magazine, Ouest-France, as saying, "What occurred was a tragic accident. The Pope had unwittingly taken an overdose of his medicine. If an autopsy was performed it would obviously show this fatal overdose," Villot explained. And since no one "would believe that his Holiness had taken it accidentally," it was agreed "there would be no autopsy." Some would argue that it was suicide, and others would say it was murder, Villot asserted.

The Pope's medicine was for low blood pressure (Effortil); the alibi by Villot "intentionally left room for speculation of suicide," to take attention away from the real cause of the Pope's death, "poisoning by Cardinal Villot himself," the article reviewing Yallop's book states. The Pope's niece, quoted in the San Juan Star on October 3, 1978, said: "In my family almost no one believes it was a heart attack that killed my uncle. He never had heart trouble or any illness of that kind."

And so, what did Coppola and Puzo think of the suggestions that the Pope was murdered, rather than died of a heart attack? The Godfather III depicts the Church as such a corrupt institution, and so willing to give in to Corleone's power and money, that it certainly came as no surprise that the Pope so suddenly died in the storyline.

With the background of all these questions flying around the death of the Pope, in the real world, and the bank scandal involving the Vatican bank and Vatican money very real and very much in the headlines of newspapers, it gave Coppola license to fictionalize a terrific series of conspiracy theories involving the Mafia and the Church, both very hot-button institutions that as a combo, was sure to draw people to the film all those years after Godfather II had come and gone.

Viewers know that Corleone himself didn't fully trust the Church to distribute the first hundred million dollars to the poor and needy in Sicily. After the archbishop thanked Corleone for the hundred million ("Michael, you're done a wonderful think for the people of Sicily"), Corleone said, "Let's just hope the money gets to the people who need it."