Editing Gerald Posner (section)

=== ''God's Bankers'' ===
''God's Bankers'' is a 2015 book based on a 200-year history of Vatican finances and the [[Vatican Bank]].<ref>{{cite book|url=http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gods-Bankers/Gerald-Posner/9781416576570 |title=God's Bankers at Simon & Schuster|date=September 15, 2015|isbn=9781416576594|last1=Posner|first1=Gerald|publisher=Simon and Schuster }}</ref> It became Posner's third ''New York Times'' bestseller (after ''Case Closed'' and ''Why America Slept'') on February 22, 2015.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2015-02-22/hardcover-nonfiction/list.html/ |title=New York Times Bestseller Nonfiction Hardcover List for February 22, 2015|newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref>

In the ''New York Times'', Damon Linker said that "''God's Bankers'' provides an exhaustive history of financial machinations at the center of the church in Rome, from the final decades of the 19th century down to Pope Francis' sincere but as yet inconclusive efforts to reform the church's labyrinthine bureaucracy.&nbsp;... From there Posner weaves an extraordinarily intricate tale of intrigue, corruption and organized criminality.&nbsp;... The cumulative effect of Posner's detective work is an acute sensation of disgust—along with a mix of admiration for and skepticism about Pope Francis' efforts to reform the Vatican Bank and its curial enablers."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/books/review/gods-bankers-by-gerald-posner.html/ |title="God's Bankers" by Gerald Posner|newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 20, 2015|last1=Linker|first1=Damon}}</ref>   Trine Tsouderos wrote in the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'': "Wall-Street-lawyer-turned-author Gerald Posner lays it all out in his deeply researched, passionately argued book, ''God's Bankers''."<ref name="https"/> According to ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'', "Posner uses his superlative investigative skills to craft a fascinating and comprehensive look at the dark side of the Catholic Church&nbsp;... Accessible and well written, Posner's is the definitive history of the topic to date."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4165-7657-0 |title=Publishers Weekly Review of God's Bankers|date=February 3, 2015}}</ref> ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' said: "A dogged reporter exhaustively pursues the nefarious enrichment of the Vatican, from the [[Borgias]] to [[Pope Francis]]&nbsp;... A meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican's legendary, enabling secrecy."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gerald-posner/gods-bankers/ |title=Kirkus Review of God's Bankers}}</ref>

''[[Booklist]]'' said that "A decade of exhaustive research into the deep and mysterious history of the Vatican's finances is a monumental task, but controversial author Posner proves more than up to this daunting challenge.&nbsp;... It's a fast-paced read that brings history alive on every page.  The book will captivate those who prefer their historical nonfiction spiked with real-life tales of murder, power, and intrigue."<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.booklistonline.com/ProductInfo.aspx?pid=7195433 |title=Booklist Review of God's Bankers}}</ref>

Some reviewers have noted that ''God's Bankers'' contains inaccuracies, the most serious of which is Posner's allegation in Chapter 11 that [[Bernardino Nogara]], the wartime director of the Vatican's ''Amministrazione Speciale per la Santa Sede'', was a Nazi intelligence agent. This allegation is based on his finding of a man named Nogara named in the interrogation report of ''[[Abwehr]]'' recruiter Reinhard Reme, which he suggests could only be [[Bernardino Nogara]], who was therefore working for the Nazis throughout World War II. Dr. Marilyn Mallory, a scholar familiar with the pontificates of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, rebutted Posner in a 2015 article in ''Inside the Vatican'', asserting that the interrogation report, found in the [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|National Archives]] in London, identifies the man as Bruno Nogara, a Venice school teacher who was arrested by the Allies in April 1945.<ref>{{cite news |last=Mallory |first=Dr. Marilyn |date=March 1, 2015 |title=A Superficial and Biased Book on the Vatican Bank |url=https://insidethevatican.com/magazine/culture/a-superficial-and-biased-book-on-the-vatican-bank/}}</ref> Faced with this evidence, Posner amended the paperback version of ''God's Bankers'', now stating on page 137 that there were in fact two ''Abwehr'' agents named Nogara: Bruno Nogara and Branch Nogara, listed in Appendix C of Reme's interrogation report. Posner argues that it is Bruno Nogara, who is listed as a member of ''Abwehr'' Unit 257 under ''Reichsstatthalter'' Hubert Pfannenstiel, while Branch Nogara is listed under ''Abwehr'' Unit 254, commanded by ''Reichsstatthalter'' Ernst Schmidt-Burck. Thus, there were two different ''Abwehr'' units under two different commanders, and therefore two different Nogaras.

But ''[[The Tablet]]'', a London-based Catholic journal, points out that the source cited by Posner, a copy of which can be read online,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://images.nationalarchives.gov.uk/assetbank-nationalarchives/action/viewAsset?id=60214&index=1&total=2&view=viewSearchItem%20The%20National%20Archives|title=Image details – Interrogation report of Abwehr recruiter Reinhard Reme – The National Archives Image library|access-date=January 1, 2017|archive-date=January 1, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170101091338/https://images.nationalarchives.gov.uk/assetbank-nationalarchives/action/viewAsset?id=60214&index=1&total=2&view=viewSearchItem%20The%20National%20Archives|url-status=dead}}</ref> clearly identifies Branch Nogara not as a person, but as the small town of [[Nogara]] located just north of the [[River Po]], where ''Abwehr'' Unit 254 maintained its supply depot. According to ''The Tablet'', there is no second person named Nogara.<ref>Patricia M McGoldrick, (October 10, 2015), ''The Tablet'', London, 10 October 2015, p. 20</ref>

Citing disclosures in ''God's Bankers'', Posner wrote an opinion editorial in the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' on February 13, 2015 calling on Pope Francis "to approve the release of the Vatican's Holocaust-era files in its secret archives. They probably contain not only answers to how early the Vatican knew about the Nazis' mass murder of innocents, but also crucially important documents from the Vatican Bank, founded in June 1942."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-posner-vatican-bank-20150215-story.html |title=It's high time for Pope Francis to open the Vatican Bank's files|website=[[Los Angeles Times]]|date=February 14, 2015}}</ref> Subsequently, Posner started collecting online signatures in petitions to Pope Francis to release the Vatican Bank's World War II archives and the Vatican's Holocaust documents. Posner said that his goal was to get more than 1,000 signatures to present to Pope Francis when the Pope visited the U.S. in September 2015.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rationaldoubt/2015/03/1899/ |title=God's Bankers – Interview with Author Gerald Posner, Part One|date=March 25, 2015}}</ref>