Edoardo Prettner Cippico

Edoardo Prettner Cippico (10 October 1905 –7 April 1983 ) was an Italian Catholic priest and official in the Vatican Secret Archive who was imprisoned in 1948 on charges of financial crimes, and later revealed to have spied for the Soviet Union. His choice of career was motivated by material gain rather than a priestly vocation. His father's brother was a sen ator and a friend of the bishops of Trento and of Trieste, who secured his place at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1937 he was made a supernumerary Papal Chamberlain. Later, he was archivist in the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches and, from 1940, the Secretariat of State, whereupon he was made a Prelate of Honour of His Holiness, Cippico and lawyer Antonio Milo di Villagrazia helped Pascalina Lehnert to prepare a 1943 contingency plan to spirit Pope Pius XII to Francoist Spain in the event that the German invasion of Italy threatened the Vatican City. In 1944, Cippico frustrated Edvard Kocbek's mission to secure an audience with the pope on behalf of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia. Cippico responded to later accusations of having spied for the Soviets not with denial but with reference to his wartime co-operation with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. and he stowed valuables for Jews fearing their confiscation. Cippico had an affluent lifestyle, liked the company of women, and by 1947 owned a large apartment and three cars.

1948 scandal

According to Sergio Amidei, Cippico secretly funded Paulo William Tamburella's production of the 1946 film Shoeshine; he also planned a biopic of Francis of Assisi. In August 1947 an industrialist complained to the pope about the high interest charged on a loan from the Administration of the Property of the Holy See (ABSS). On 28 January 1948, Giulio Guidetti resigned as secretary of the ABSS due to a similar fraud linked by some media to Cippico's; he died soon after. Rightwingers responded by treating Cippico as a bad apple, accusing him of spying for communist Yugoslavia, and reviving allegations that Communists had stolen Mussolini's cache of gold (the ) after his death in 1945. By the time of the April election it was clear that "the wilder [conspiracy] theories were unfounded" Primo Mazzolari's diary, published in 2016, gives a dispassionate contemporary account of the case.

On 7 March, Cippico was charged with fraud and forgery amounting to about 1 billion lira (US$1.7 million). He was arrested on 9 March 1948 in the Parioli house of a former Fascist general, and remanded in Regina Coeli prison until March 1950. Finally tried in November 1952, he was found guilty on 11 counts in December and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 liras. He was acquitted on 4 counts, including the jewellery theft, He claimed to have been an unknowing go-between in the IOR transactions and that he had left the Tower of the Winds to celebrate his mother's name day.

Later life After the Cassation decision, Cippico petitioned the pope to have his laicization reversed. In 1959, Pope John XXIII granted the request and restored Cippico as monsignor, A La Stampa article listed his various rumoured crimes, and his own response. In his 1962 book , Cippico supported what became the Second Vatican Council reforms and rapprochement with Warsaw Pact countries. Around 1965 he was rumoured to have co-written works under a pen name. He had an unpublicised leadership role in the Catholic Centre for Public Relations set up in 1964 by Alain Peyrefitte and the U.S. bishops' conference.

From the 1970s Cippico had a relationship with Gertrude "Traudl" Lechner (née Parth), a divorced former prostitute from Laas, South Tyrol whose official role was as his housekeeper. Cippico died at his home near Porta Angelica in Rome, of complications from diabetes.