Mystery Signals
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Mister, where’s my body?
It was the cry of a little girl who had been stolen by an evil magician. The man had taken her to his castle in the mountains and locked her up in a dungeon there. He would torture her if she didn’t answer her riddle correctly: “Where is your body?” It was the cry of a young woman whose husband had been lost at sea.
She couldn’t find him anywhere on the island when they landed with their boat and were told he must be somewhere on the mainland. That was how she found herself alone, without even a dog or a cat, in the middle of a vast expanse of ocean. Her voice echoed from one end of the empty horizon to the other.
It was the cry of a soldier who lay dying under enemy fire. His fellow soldiers were all dead around him but he still hadn’t given up his life for them. He knew that this act might save others, so he held out until help arrived for him too.
These voices – and many more – can be heard throughout the town and country roadways in Italy as night falls on the last day of October. A chill wind blows through the pines and oaks near Turin.
One evening in November, a group of people set off toward the mountain village of Sestri Levante, a short drive away from Genova and Portofino.
They pass by a farmhouse and make their way along a narrow track, which winds its way up to a small town surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire. It’s late in the afternoon and the sun is beginning to sink into the sea behind the city of Genova.
The group has come here to pay homage to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, who died almost two thousand years ago. They are following the same route the emperors of Rome used between the eighth and ninth centuries.
The emperor had been born in the city of Rome during the reign of the emperor Augustus. He was raised as a Christian, but later converted to Buddhism when he lived in the court of King Ashoka in India. When he returned to Rome, he took part in the persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero.
But after Nero’s death, Pius turned against the Christians again. He followed Constantine, who made Christianity legal once more, and then, after he became emperor himself, persecuted the Christians once more. In the year 590 AD, Pius was murdered by the pagans of Carthage.
By then the emperor had become such an important figure in the history of the world that his bones were dug up and sent back to Rome.
His mummy was put on display in the basilica built over the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. And now it was time to return his remains to the place where he was buried. This procession of thousands of people – monks, nuns, priests, politicians, artists, writers, actors, musicians, doctors, students, and workers – is returning his bones to the imperial tombs in the ancient necropolis in Rome. If they are careful, everyone will get home before dark.
Crowds gather to watch the procession of pilgrims climb the steep streets of Rome. Some have climbed the hillside pathways themselves or joined the crowds on the wide boulevards; others have watched the procession pass in front of them on the road running along the Tiber River.
As they follow the procession down Via del Corso towards Saint Peter’s Square, people shout out praise for Pius, the greatest emperor in Rome’s long history. Many wore red robes like monks or nuns and carried crosses, while others threw roses into the air to show their respect.
One woman in the crowd had come from the east of Italy to see the procession. She had never met a pope before. Now she could claim to have seen three. Pope Leo IX visited Rome in 955 to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Holy Church. Then in 1798, Pope Pius VI journeyed to Rome, where he helped defeat the French troops.
It was only a few days earlier that his successor, Pope Pius VII, had led the worldwide celebration of the centenary of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus.
Just outside the walls of St. Peter’s Square stands a small stone building covered with ivy. It looks like the kind of place you’d find in any village, small and dark with low ceilings and a peaked roof, but this isn’t just a cottage or a barn.
That’s where the Vatican Bank is based.
Within an hour of the procession reaching the Basilica di San Pietro, the body of Pius XI was laid out on a velvet cloth in front of the altar. Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione and the archbishop of Genoa, Cosimo de Medici, were the men in charge of the ceremony.
They prayed quietly together in a corner of the basilica and then walked around the basilica with the guards, welcoming each person who came to view the tomb of the new pope. Some went straight to the altar, kneeling on the floor and praying. Others stopped in front of the coffin and crossed themselves.
A man dressed in black stood at attention nearby. He was wearing gold epaulets and a gold earring in one ear. His face was hidden behind a white mask and he held a staff in his hand. No one knew who he was. It wasn’t until the next morning that the media realized he was the famous Swiss banker Paul von Hindenburg.
It was the second time in a row that a banker from Switzerland had been appointed papal commissioner. The previous one had been the German Karl König. He left Rome after only a week, claiming his duties were too heavy for him. Only a few months later, he committed suicide in his apartment in Geneva.
Paul von Hindenburg was born in 1876 in Leuk, Switzerland. He studied medicine in Germany and worked as a doctor in Berlin. From there, he moved to the city of Basel, where he set up offices for a bank called Julius Bär. At first, the bank specialized in trade between Europe and Asia, but soon von Hindenburg began lending money to foreign banks.
He rose in the ranks of the company. Soon, he was its chief executive. Julius Bär became known as the leading international banking house. It had branches all over the world, including in Britain, France and the United States. When the First World War broke out in 1914, von Hindenburg joined the army, rising swiftly through the ranks.
By 1917, he was commander-in-chief of the German forces in Russia and, by 1918, he was general staff leader in Berlin. After the war, he returned to work for Julius Bär. In 1920, he married a Russian princess, who was almost ten years younger than him. Five years later, he started a family.
The two brothers who ran Julius Bär were keen to expand their business. They wanted to open a branch in Rome. With the help of von Hindenburg, they did so, hiring two Italian bankers to run it. The new office quickly grew into something much bigger.
Before long, Julius Bär was employing more than 1,500 people in Italy. Its headquarters were located in a grand old palace near the Spanish Steps in central Rome. It had become the largest bank in Europe.
In July 1922, the company announced that it would begin to offer loans to governments, becoming the first bank in the world to do so. Two months later, the pope himself showed up at Julius Bär’s headquarters and asked for a loan. This was the start of a friendship between the pontiff and the Swiss banker.
When Mussolini came to power in Italy, von Hindenburg was quick to support him. He sent food and arms to the dictator, who rewarded him with several government posts: president of the Reichsbank (the national bank), president of the Swiss Bankers Association, and president of the International Federation of Banks.
His name was also put forward to be the head of the European Union, but he turned down the job.
By 1936, von Hindenburg was working for both Mussolini and Hitler. As far as Mussolini was concerned, von Hindenburg was a loyal friend; as for Hitler, he believed Von Hindenburg had betrayed Germany in the First World War.
But if von Hindenburg supported Mussolini, he didn’t forget the Germans who had lost their lives during the war. He bought the former field hospital in Celle, Lower Saxony, which had been used by the Red Cross. There, he opened a museum dedicated to those who had died in the conflict.
While the Second World War was raging, von Hindenburg fell ill with tuberculosis. He fled to Switzerland and lived in seclusion there. On Christmas Eve, 1942, he died in the private clinic of a doctor named Fritz Böhmer. His obituary was published in the newspapers in three languages. His funeral was attended by Mussolini and Hitler, who laid wreaths on his casket.
The End