Reagan and Casey may not have been banking on any priest breaking the seal of the Confessional, but they certainly knew the Vatican had access to data from missionaries in 197 countries, too many of which the US had no real access.  JPII knew what he had in terms of his intelligence gold mine and leveraged it for all he could get.  The Vatican has played this game for a very long time and this is precisely why Putin and Francis talked much longer than Francis and Trump.  Callista Gingrich got her position because of Newt, not her.