Mark Matheny
July 17, 2014
Here is an article I came across from 2013. It reports a startling fact - The head of a major ship building firm that built warships for the NAZI regime during WWII was chosen by the Vatican to run the Vatican Bank.
This from the Telegraph:
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| Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, left, said Mr von Freyburg was a committed Roman Catholic Photo: AP |
Filling the vacant post was one of the last major acts of Benedict XVI's papacy but there was dismay when it was revealed to be Ernst von Freyberg, the chairman of a Hamburg shipyard that makes frigates and destroyers.Worse from a public relations perspective, his company, Blohm+Voss Group, was a major producer of battleships and U-boats for Hitler's regime.On the eve of the Second World War the firm produced the Bismarck, the battleship that sank HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, but which was eventually sunk by the British fleet in May 1941.The shipyard also built a state yacht for Hitler and aircraft for the Luftwaffe.During the First World War the company produced the Scharnhorst, an armoured cruiser that took on a Royal Navy squadron at the Battle of Coronel and was then hunted down by British battlecruisers at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914.
Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Mr von Freyburg was a committed Roman Catholic, a member of the Knights of St John of Malta chivalric order that was founded during the Crusades, and had been chosen from among 40 candidates.He initially claimed that Blohm+Voss was involved only in civil engineering projects, but later released a statement acknowledging that the company made warships, and was currently building four frigates for the German navy.The Vatican bank – formerly known as the Institute for Religious Works – has been leaderless since its former head, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was unceremoniously sacked last May, for reasons which are still murky.
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