http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Portugal-Nazi-Gold.html

May 4, 2000

Portugal Shrine Admits Nazi Gold Use

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- In an embarrassing disclosure a week

before a visit by Pope John Paul II, officials at Portugal's famed

Fatima shrine have admitted that the shrine once owned Nazi gold.

Ingots bearing the German Third Reich insignia were among the

shrine's gold deposits from 1976 until 1986, according to a

statement faxed Thursday to The Associated Press. The Nazi gold was

not purchased by the Roman Catholic shrine's authorities, the

statement said.

The shrine 70 miles north of Lisbon is built on the site where

three children in 1917 claimed to witness a vision of the Virgin

Mary. The shrine receives about 6 million pilgrims a year.

In 1970, shrine authorities granted Banco Pinto de Magalhaes a loan

in gold. When the bank, which no longer exists, repaid the debt in

1976, some of the ingots it supplied bore the stamp of the Third

Reich, the statement said.

Between 1982 and 1986, the shrine sold the gold to pay for

construction. The whereabouts of the Nazi gold is not known, the

statement said.

The statement came after weekly magazine Visao reported the bank

held four gold ingots in the shrine's account that may have been

looted from Holocaust victims.

Portugal, a neutral country during World War II, was the largest

recipient after Switzerland of gold sold by Germany during the war.

Portugal provided Germany's war machine with tungsten and other

materials used to produce weapons-grade steel, as well as canned

food and other goods.

Rector Luciano Guerra said in the statement that he saw the ingots

in the bank's vaults in 1976 and thought they were ``curious'' but

took no action. He did not say how many ingots he saw.

The shrine's authorities said they were willing to cooperate in

tracing the gold, but declined to answer further questions. The

pope visits the shrine May 12-13.

A Portuguese panel of inquiry, headed by former President Mario

Soares, last year concluded that Portugal owed no further financial

restitution to Holocaust survivors because it didn't knowingly

handle gold looted from them by Nazi Germany.

Portugal returned almost 4 tons of Nazi gold -- then worth $7.2

million -- in 1953 through the Allied Tripartite Commission, which

was in charge of recovering stolen gold after the war. The

commission had initially demanded that Portugal return 44 tons of

gold plundered by the Nazis from the banks of occupied countries

and the melted-down valuables of Holocaust victims.