It’s not surprising that the Vatican shows up in the Epstein files since Epstein kept tabs on every powerful entity on the planet. But one email claims Epstein actually lived in the Vatican with Pope John Paul II at some point.
An email from Brandon Thompson, who appeared to be a contractor working on refinishing and lime-washing columns in one of Epstein’s homes, outlined the intricacies of the project to Richard Kahn at HBRK Associates, Epstein’s accountant.
“He wants me to finish each column different, as when he was living with Pope John Paul the Second in Vatican, he looked at variety of different columns captured in wars,” wrote Thompson. “He told me that every Pope demanded to have a column from every concurred [SIC] country, so there is a collection of different columns in Vatican.”
Of course there is no proof that Epstein lived with the Pope, although he and Ghislaine Maxwell visited with him in 2003 during a public audience. Just how intimate Epstein was with the Vatican is unknown, but in 2011 he claimed to have nearly possessed the Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest and most important Church relics containing a majority of the Greek Old Testament and the majority of the New Testament. The Codex was famously seized by Napoleon in 1799 as a war trophy but was returned to the Vatican Library in 1815.
In an email to Boris Nikolic, who was a science advisor to the Bill Gates Foundation at the time and a close Epstein confidante, Epstein wrote, “I forgot to mention to Bill, that one of the first almost interactions with him was when I was the underbidder for the codex…The auctioneers told me that i shold drop out because if i owned them, no one would ever see them and they really should be in semi public hands.. I later had to settle for a present from the vatican of a special edition.”
One of the most revealing emails about Epstein’s alleged ties to the Vatican is a 2013 correspondence with Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, former Harvard President and former chief economist at the World Bank. Epstein writes, “The most important change in the Vatican may not be Pope Benedict XVI sudden retirement but the change in leadership at ‘the Institute for Works of Religion,’ the Vatican’s bank. Because of the Vatican’s status as a sovereign country, it is exempt from transparency rules of not only Italy— but of the European Union. This status allows its elite clients to evade any scrutiny in their money transfers.”
“Last May,” continued Epstein. “Vatican Bank President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was fired after Italian authorities opened an investigation into a far flung bribery scheme in which he was allegedly involved. Then 47 dossiers, including compromising about “internal enemies” of his in the Vatican were found in a search of his home. They had instructions how they were used in case something happened to him. Tcdeschi’s intercepted calls futhcr revealed that his concern was that he would be assassinated because he knoew the Vatican’s secrets. By late 2012, he was cooperating with the ongoing Italian investigation, It was at this point that the all-powerful College of Cardinals, in one of the last acts in the Benedict papacy, appointed German lawyer Ernst von Freyberg as President of the bank. The came the extraordinary resignation of Pope Benedict.”
Freyberg had a short tenure as Vatican Bank president. He was named in June 2012 as an interim leader, then appointed president in February of 2013. Von Freyberg quickly began to open up the bank and adopted a zero-tolerance approach to suspicious activities, advocating transparency. He was dismissed in July along with the Vatican Bank’s entire senior management team as part of extensive reforms to the Catholic Church’s central government.
Jean-Baptiste Douville de Franssu has been chairman of Vatican Bank’s advisory board since July of 2014.
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Bookmark earned and folder updated to track this site separately, and a look at explorefreshthinking confirmed the folder upgrade was the right call, organising my reading list so that good sites do not get lost in a sea of casual bookmarks is something I do more carefully now and this site warranted its own spot.
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This one is staying open in a tab for the rest of the day so I can come back and re read certain parts, and a look at cobqix suggests I will be doing the same with a few more pages here too, this is going to be a deep dive over the coming hours.
Bookmark earned and shared the link with one specific person who would care, and a look at vinylvessel got the same targeted share, sharing carefully rather than broadcasting is a discipline I try to maintain and this site is generating shares from me at a sustainable rate rather than the spam rate of viral content.
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A piece that did exactly what it promised in the headline without overshooting or underdelivering, and a look at oldenneon continued that calibration, alignment between promise and delivery is a basic editorial virtue that many sites fail at and this site has clearly mastered the matching of expectation and substance throughout pieces.
A small thing but the line spacing and font choices made reading this physically pleasant, and a look at flonox maintained the same careful design, technical choices about typography are part of what makes online reading actually comfortable and this site has clearly invested in the design layer alongside the content layer carefully.
Genuinely good work, the kind that holds up over multiple readings without losing its appeal, and a stop at learnandoptimize kept that going, definitely a site I will be returning to and probably mentioning to others who work in or care about this particular area of interest today and in coming weeks.
Bookmark added with a small mental note that this is a site to keep, and a look at discoverpowerfulideas reinforced the keep status, the verb keep rather than visit captures something about how I think about this kind of site and it is a higher tier of relationship than I have with most places online today.
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Refreshing tone compared to the dry corporate posts on similar topics, and a stop at tallyvertex carried that personality through nicely, you can tell when a real person is behind the writing versus a content team chasing metrics and this site definitely falls into the former category clearly across what I have seen.
Reading this prompted a small redirection in something I was working on, and a stop at unionstaff extended that redirecting influence, content that affects my actual work rather than just my thinking has the highest practical impact and this site is providing that level of influence for me at a sustainable rate apparently.
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Worth marking the moment when reading this clicked into something useful for my own work, and a look at grobuff extended that practical click, content that connects to my actual life rather than just being interesting is content with the highest kind of value and this site is generating that connection at a high rate.
Reading this on a difficult day was a small bright spot, and a stop at vergetrophy extended that brightness, content that improves a hard day is content that has earned a particular kind of place in my reading habits and this site is occupying that uplifting role for me today which I appreciate clearly.
Well done, the kind of post that makes you slow down and actually read instead of skimming for keywords, and a look at grebeflame kept me reading carefully too, that is a sign of writing that has been crafted rather than churned out for an algorithm to see today and tomorrow.
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Yesterday I was complaining about the state of online writing and today this site has temporarily fixed that complaint, and a look at isebulb extended that mood reversal, the short term mood improvement that comes from finding good content is real and this site has produced that improvement for me at a useful moment.
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Decided I would read the archives over the weekend, and a stop at learncontinuously confirmed that the archives would be worth the time, very few sites have archives I would actively read through but this one has earned that level of interest based on the consistent quality across what I have sampled so far.
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Decent post that improved my afternoon a small amount, and a look at thatchteapot added a bit more to that, sometimes the small wins online add up over time and a useful site like this one is the kind of place that contributes consistently to those small wins for me lately across many different topics I follow.
Just wanted to say this was useful and leave a small note of thanks, and a quick visit to corlex earned a similar nod from me, the small acknowledgements add up over time and represent the real economy of trust that good content runs on across the open and increasingly fragmented modern internet.
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Generally I find the content on similar topics frustrating in specific ways and this post avoided all of them, and a look at discovernewpossibilities continued that frustration free experience, content that sidesteps the standard failure modes of its genre is content with editorial awareness and this site has clearly studied what fails elsewhere consistently.
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A piece that took its time without dragging, and a look at scopeviceroy kept the same patient pace, the difference between unhurried and slow is a fine editorial distinction and this site has clearly found the unhurried side without slipping into the slow side which would have lost me as a reader quickly otherwise.
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