9:01PM GMT 19 Mar 2012
The bank – formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion or IOR – has suffered the ignominy of having one of its accounts closed by JP Morgan after stone-walling requests for information.
The sanction came less than two weeks after the US State Department listed the Vatican as being potentially vulnerable to money laundering.
A Milan affiliate of JP Morgan said it will shut the account by the end of the month after revealing Vatican bankers had been "unable to respond" to requests for details about payments into the account.
A spokesman for JP Morgan in Milan declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.
The Milan branch had been seeking information since 2010, when the Vatican bank was accused by authorities in Rome of contravening money-laundering regulations.
In an unusual move, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi president of the Vatican bank, was placed under investigation and a judge in Rome ordered a freeze on €23m (£19.5m) held in one of the bank's accounts.
The scandal prompted the Vatican bank to initiate anti-money-laundering legislation, which is currently being debated by the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.
The Vatican has a chequered history on financial transparency and propriety. Its financial past has included, most notoriously, its involvement in the bankruptcy of Italy's largest private bank, the Banco Ambrosiano, in 1982. Its president, Roberto Calvi, nicknamed "God's Banker", was found hanged beneath London's Blackfriars Bridge, with investigators unable to rule whether he had committed suicide or was murdered.
The Vatican bank was unavailable for comment.
In God's Name has been at the top of the bestseller lists all over the world. It contains some of the most explosive and dramatic revelations ever published about the internal affairs of the Vatican.
During the late evening of September 28th or the early morning of September 29th, 1978, Pope John Paul 1, Albino Luciani, known as the smiling Pope, died only thirty-three days after his election.
David Yallop began his investigations into his death at the request of certain individuals resident in Vatican City who were disturbed by a cover-up of the true circumstances surrounding the discovery of the Pope's body. It is his conviction that murder was the fate of Albino Luciani and he presents this evidence in this enthralling book.
Over three years continual and exhaustive research, David Yallop uncovered a chain of corruption that linked leading figures in financial, political, criminal and clerical circles around the world in a conspiracy of awesome proportions. To this day the central questions raised in In God's Name remain unanswered. A new updated edition containing additional evidence is now available.
First published: 1984 ISBN: 978-1-84529-496-0
Over 6,000,000 copies sold worldwide.
U.K. Publishers Constable & Robinson.
U.S. Publishers Carroll & Graf.
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