Throughout Operation Gladio, the CIA relied heavily on the Vatican. According to “The Declassified History of American Intelligence Operations in Europe,” the CIA used sources in the Vatican to gather information not only about Italy, but about countries behind the Iron Curtain as well, such as Poland or Ukraine. Under James Jesus Angleton, the CIA created a “Vatican desk,” which reviewed reports sent to the Holy See from papal diplomats behind the Iron Curtain. Cardinal Domenico Tardini, one of the top aides to Pope Pius XXII and the head of the Foreign Section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State was “one of the CIA’s top sources.”

In “Operation Gladio,” Paul L. Williams also details the extent to which the CIA funneled money through the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), also known as the Vatican Bank. The Vatican Bank keeps no records or paper trail of any kind. And as a result, “millions can be deposited into the IOR on a continuous basis and channeled into numbered Swiss bank accounts without the possibility of detection,” which is exactly what the CIA did. The Truman Administration funneled over $350 million into the Vatican Bank, and in 1948, the CIA “dumped $65 million of its black money into the Vatican Bank.”

It’s impossible to know exactly how much money the CIA channeled through the Vatican Bank, but the Christian Democratic Party alone received “more than $20 million in annual aid from the CIA.”

https://www.grunge.com/717106/operation-gladio-the-cias-secret-army-in-europe/