The following notes are taken from:
http://marlowe.wimsey.com/~rshand/streams/masons/mpolitics.html

The following is a blend of fact, opinion and conjecture.

A Political Force
(excerpt)

(3) P2 Lodge and the Vatican Banking Scandal

"...The Agency, through some of its priest 'assets' in the Vatican, had
placed six bugging devices in the Secretariat of State, the Vatican Bank and
the Apostolic Palace, where the Pope actually lived and worked. The devices
were sufficiently powerful to enable conversations to be overheard within
rooms with walls thick enough to withstand artillery-fire. Working from
’safe houses' in high-rise buildings overlooking the Leonine walls of the
tiny city-state, CIA operatives had recorded often highly confidential
discussions about papal plans.
"The Agency’s surveillance had increased since 5 July 1979, when Walesa
[future president of Poland] telephoned the Pope asking whether John Paul
would approve of the name ’solidarity' being used for the fledgling union.
Walesa had explained that he had selected the word from the pontiff’s
encyclical, 'Redemptor Homis' - a treatise devoted to the redemption and the
dignity of the human race. At its core had been an appeal for 'acting
together'. The significance of Walesa’s request was not lost on the pontiff
- or on the 'Department D’s electronic eavesdroppers."
     - Gordon Thomas, Journey into Madness

The Italian Masonic Lodge P2 "provided a means of furnishing anti-Communist
institutions in Europe and Latin-America with both Vatican and CIA funds.
Calvi [who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982]
also claimed that he personally had arranged the transfer of $20,000,000 of
Vatican money to Solidarity in Poland, although the overall total sent to
Solidarity is believed to have exceeded $100,000,000. Prior to his
indictment for murder [of an Italian investigator], Michele Sindona was not
only P2’s financier, but the Vatican’s investment counselor as well, helping
the church to sell its Italian assets and re-invest in the United States.
His services for the CIA included passing funds to 'friends' in Yugoslavia,
as well as to the Greek colonels prior to their seizure of power in 1967. He
also channeled millions of dollars into the funds of the Christian Democrats
in Italy."

In March 1981, Italian police raided the villa of Licio Gelli, the
ultra-right leader of P2. Although his files had vanished the index was
discovered. Some of the headings included the Opus Dei, "Giulio Andreotti,
currently Italian Foreign Minister and alleged...to be a member of the
Prieure de Sion. And they included the organization known officially as the
Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem - the organization,
that is, which today claims a direct lineal descent from the Knights
Templar."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

"A list of [P2] members drawn up by Gelli contained the names of nearly a
thousand of Italy’s most powerful men. One prosecutor’s report later stated:
'Lodge Propaganda Due is a secret sect that has combined business and
politics with the intention of destroying the country’s constitutional
order.' "Among the names were three members of the Cabinet (including
Justice Minister Adolfo Sarti; several former Prime Ministers including
Giulio Andreotti who had held office between 1972 and 1973 and again between
1976 and 1979; forty-three Members of Parliament; fifty-four top Civil
Servants; 183 army, navy and air force officers including thirty generals
and eight admirals (among them the Commander of the Armed Forces, Admiral
Giovanni Torrisi); nineteen judges; lawyers; magistrates; carabiniere;
police chiefs; leading bankers; newspaper proprietors, editors and
journalists (including the editor of the country’s leading newspaper Il
Corriere Della Sera); fifty-eight university professors; the leaders of
several political parties; and even the directors of the three main
intelligence services. "All these men, according to the files, had sworn
allegiance to Gelli, and held themselves ready to respond to his call. The
953 names were divided into seventeen groupings, or cells, each having its
own leader. P2 was so secret and so expertly run by Gelli that even its own
members did not know who belonged to it. Those who know most were the
seventeen cell leaders and they knew only their own grouping."

"Of the many political groupings in Italy, Gelli’s files showed that only
the Communist Party had no links with P2."
"Magistrates sifting the documents from the Villa Wanda [from whence Gelli
had fled] found hundreds of top secret intelligence documents. Colonel
Antonio Viezzer, the former head of the combined intelligence services, was
identified as the prime source of this material and was arrested in Rome for
spying on behalf of a foreign power."
"Fascist, torturer of partisans in the Second World War, friend and adviser
of Peron and coordinator of right-wing corruption in Italy - was an agent of
the KGB." "From the beginning Lodge P2 was a KGB-sponsored program aimed at
destablizing Italy, weakening NATO’s southern flank, sweeping the Communists
into power in Italy and sending resultant shock waves throughout the western
world."
"With the failure of the ministers, generals and admirals to cooperate with
investigators, "NATO was forced to support the attitude of the corrupt
Freemasons in Italy’s armed forces. Officials in Brussels and Washington
suggested discreetly that it was not the right moment to create a vacuum of
power in the Italian army, navy and secret services."
     - Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood

"The P2 was more than a subversive political organization. The documents
collected by the parliamentary commission show it was a kind of full-service
international organization influencing everything from arms sales to
purchases of crude oil."
     - Pino Ariacchi, sociologist at the University of Florence

Propaganda Due or P2 was "a lodge originally formed by the Italian Grand
Orient as a lodge of research. In 1975 an Italian fascist named Licio Gelli
was made the Venerable Grand Master of P2, and the following year that lodge
was disavowed and suspended by the Grand Orient of Italy, so whatever it
was, P2 ceased to be an official Masonic organization."
"...Gelli brought in Michele Sindona, the leading financial advisor to the
Vatican. Then, in 1977, Sindona brought in Roberto Calvi, head of the Banco
Ambrosiano in Milan, which was closely associated with the papal bank, one
of its major shareholders....Calvi brought to the table his most valued
contact, the Instituto per lo Opere di Religione, the Institute for
Religious Works (the 'IOR'), a financial institution often erroneously
referred to as the 'Vatican bank'. The IOR belongs not to the Vatican
city-state, but to the pope alone."
"...The Banco Ambrosiano helped to set up foreign shell companies, including
ten in Panama, which were controlled by the papal bank. Then the Banco
Ambrosiano loaned these shells up to one and a third billion dollars. The
papal bank also put in funds of its own, but not one in Rome will even hint
at the amount or purpose of these extensive fundings."

When Archbishop Marcinkus, head of the IOR, invoked the Italian Concordat
which guarantees Vatican sovereignty "when he learned he had been indicted
by the Italian government." This decision was backed up by the Italian
Supreme Court. "...The papal bank agreed to pay and paid over to the Banco
Ambrosiano the incredible sum of 244 million dollars, while denying any
guilt, or even any material involvement, in the great fraud. Together with
the reputed loss of 450 million dollars, this means that the affairs between
the papal bank and the Banco Ambrosiano cost the Catholic church almost 700
million dollars, over ten times the 1987 operating loss that Catholics all
over the world were asked to make up with extra donations..."
     - John J. Robinson, Born in the Blood

In late 1983, "the pontiff had recently sent Archbishop Luigi Poggi to
Moscow to begin secret discussions in the Kremlin on the prospect of coming
to a mutually acceptable accommodation over Poland: the pontiff would
control Walesa if the Church was given more freedom."
     - Gordon Thomas, Journey into Madness