The Great City Devastate - "The Traveling Merchants . . . Become Rich"

 "Between 1929 and the outbreak of World War II,  [Bernadino] Nogara [the Vatican financial administrator] assigned the Vatical capital  and Vatican agents  to work in  diversified  areas of Italy's economy-particularly in electric power, telephone communications, credit, and banking, small railroads, and the production of agricultural implements, cement, and artificial textile fibers.  Many of these ventures paid off.

"Nogara gobbled up a number of companies including La Societa Italiana delia Viscosa La Supertessile, La Societa Meridonale Industre Tessili, and La Cisaraion.  Fusing these into one company, which he named CISA-Viscosa  and placed under the command of Baron Francesco Maria Oddasso, one of the most highly trusted Vatican laymen, Nogara then maneuvered  the absorption of the new company by Italy's largest textile manufacturer, SNIA-Viscosa. Eventually the Vatican  interest in SNIA-Viscosa grew larger and larger, and in time the Vatican  took control -as witness the fact that Baron ODdasso subsequently became vice president.

"Thus did Nogara penetrated the textile industry. He penetrated other industries in other ways, for Nogara had many tricks up his sleeve. This selfish man . . . probably did more to infuse life into the Italian economy than did any other single businessman in Italy's history . . . Benito Mussolini had never quite been able to achieve the empire of which he dreamed, but he enabled the Vatican and Bernadino Nogara to create a dominion of another kind." -The Vatican Empire, by Nino Lo Bello, pages 71-3.  

This is just one example of the close cooperation between the merchants of the earth and Babylon the Great.  No wonder  these merchants will mourn when their business partner is no more!

Next time: Mourning and Rejoicing at Babylon's End

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