Friends, family say farewell to Archbishop Marcinkus at funeral Mass

Published: 2006-03-03

CHICAGO (CNS) -- Friends and family members bade farewell to Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus, once one of the most powerful Americans in the Vatican, at a funeral Mass March 2 at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. They remembered the Cicero native and former Chicago archdiocesan priest for his kindness as a pastor rather than for the questions surrounding an Italian banking scandal during the archbishop's years as head of the Vatican bank. Archbishop Marcinkus, 84, died Feb. 20 at his home in Sun City, Ariz., where he retired in 1990. He had worked for the Vatican for 38 years, including 18 as president of the Vatican bank, from 1971 to 1989. During that time, the bank was involved -- unwittingly, he and the Vatican always maintained -- in the 1982 fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank. While the Vatican and Archbishop Marcinkus always maintained they had done nothing wrong, the Vatican bank made what it called a $240 million "goodwill payment" to Banco Ambrosiano's former creditors in 1984.

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