Thus Licio Gelli flattered the pope: “Mattresses for an audience” – Corriere.it

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Spring mattresses for the Vatican: for the Papa, then John 23, for cardinals, monsignors, religious institutes. A real mattress diplomacy conceived by an interested benefactor and in a cumbersome perspective: Licio Gelli.

Just him, the future head of the swampy Masonic lodge Propaganda 2 at the end of the fifties of the last century he was director of the Permaflex of Pistoia, with Propaganda Office in Bologna, it says on the letterhead. He sought and obtained entrances in the Sacred Palaces, special audiences by the pontiff for the owner of the factory and Madam, using the products of the industry as gifts.

Who knows what he would think Francesco of this exchange of gifts: mattresses in exchange for hearings. Those were other times, it may be said, even if the financial events of the last decades and even the last few months refer to a system of favors and a human fauna that gravitates around the Vatican which is not exactly edifying. Otherwise, the letter sent to all employees by Pope Francis on April 29, in which prohibits receiving gifts exceeding 40 euros. A hard, very hard measure, taken to eradicate corruption; yet welcomed with the curial skepticism of those who tend to interpret it as a symbolic gesture, which will break into practices and mentalities that are hard to die.

Against this background, the two letters from Gelli filtered through the papal drawers, in which in the distant 1959 the Freemason offered a peaceful sleep to the Vatican hierarchies to be received, are bizarre, almost comic, and at the same time embarrassing documents.

Meanwhile, for the material and ordinary object chosen to arrive at John XXIII. And then why they give an idea of ​​how the most controversial characters tend to be accredited; and how their network manages to extend, without there being a structure capable of controlling and filtering the heterogeneous humanity that knocks on those doors: unless someone was aware of Gelli’s personality and had given the clearance to his maneuvers .

Gelli’s first letter to the Vatican

A first letter, dated March 25, 1959, addressed to Comm. Giovanni Giovannini-Citt of the Vatican. With mellifluous words, apologizing for having had to give up the pleasure of offering you my respects, Gelli renews a request for a special audience for the owner of the Permaflex Society and Madam, with deep prayer that he wishes to interpose your high offices for the acceptance.

After this orgy of capital letters, the proposal: It would be a real pleasure for me to offer HE Mons. Mario Nasalli Rocca di Cornegliano one of our Permaflex spring mattresses, for his use, by your means. In this regard, please tell me the measurements of the bed base of SE. Nasalli Rocca was the Master of Chambers, in fact the ceremonial of John XXIII.

La lettera al cerimoniere di Giovanni XXIII

And a week later the future head of P2 addresses the monsignor, future cardinal, directly with another letter, on permaflex headed paper. From this second letter it is clear that the Holy Father has already done the honor of accepting the homage of one of our famous “Permaflex” spring mattresses…. But the owner of this company, Comm. Giovanni Pofferi, insists on a special audience in the company of his wife, which he has evidently not yet obtained.

And then Gelli, also interpreting a desire of the workers of our. Establishments, is committed to offering to the Supreme Pontiff a voucher for the delivery of 50 Permaflex spring mattresses which will be directly delivered to the offices of the Institutes designated by the Holy Father. Signed: Permaflex, with the signature in fountain pen of Licio Gelli, who in the 1960s became director of the second plant opened by the founder Pofferi in Frosinone, an Andreottian electoral fiefdom.

The occult favors

It would not have been the last favor asked of the Vatican and perhaps returned by the P2 lord. It is probably the most harmless compared to others, which few are aware of. Except for one, disturbing, which was known about ten years after the mud of his lodge was discovered.

It was when in 1993 the piduist financier Umberto Ortolani revealed that Bruno Tassan Din e Angelo Rizzoli, then editors of Corriere della Sera and members of P2, had phoned him because they had had some photo of John Paul II bathing in the swimming pool built in the Vatican. According to Ortolani, the two had also turned to Gelli who would have had them delivered, then taking them to Giulio Andreotti, which the Holy See had asked to block the publication of those scandalous snapshots. Among other things, it was the period in which in Poland the Catholic union of Solidarnosc was fighting a very hard battle against the communists. The photographs of the Polish pope would have been a political disaster, he explained.

The reconstruction made by the children of the Christian Democrat politician, Stefano and Serena, through the private diaries of August and September 1980, downsize for the role of Gelli and the relationship he had on that occasion with Andreotti, who dealt with Tassan Din and the publisher Rusconi. But those fifty mattresses promised to John XXIII were the first, soft bricks to build a wall of favors and complicity, of which traces still emerge from time to time.

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