Son of Gelli: Who is the man who shocked when appearing in the Pope’s funeral

“Nicaragua does not currently have an accredited ambassador with the Vatican,” explains Antonella Beccaria, journalist and author of several books on P2. “The mere fact that Maurizio is the son of Licio already carries a symbolism. But the current political context between Managua and the Holy See gives his presence an even greater weight.”

Maurizio was not alone. Beside his side was Monica Robelo, Nicaragua ambassador in Italy since 2015. Daughter of businessman Álvaro Robelo, linked to both Gelli and banker Roberto Calvi, Monica is part of Ortega’s power circle. In 2007, when he returned to the presidency, Ortega tried to name Álvaro Robelo as ambassador with the Holy See. The Vatican refused, suspicious of the businessman’s connections with Paul Marcinkus, then president of the Institute for Religion Works (IOR), known as the “Vatican Bank.”

The weight of a name

Licio Gelli was the Gran Maestro of the DUE advertising, or P2, a clandestine Masonic store that operated as a true “parallel network of power”, with tentacles that surpassed Italian borders and extended through military governments in Latin America.

In 1981, a list of almost a thousand affiliate names was found in Gelli’s house and revealed to the world the existence of P2. The network included entrepreneurs, military, secret service agents, judges and journalists, many of them Argentines, Uruguayans and Brazilians. In the same year, the Uruguayan police found a second file at Gelli’s house in Montevideo.

Although many consider P2 a closed chapter, its branches still reverberate. Even dead, Gelli was recently pointed out as one of the bomb attack financiers at Bologna train station on August 2, 1980, which killed 85 people and left more than 200 injured.