| Vatican Accused of Aiding in Thirty Year Old Disappearance of Girl
By Bridgette P. Lavictoire
Lez Get Real
April 4, 2012
http://lezgetreal.com/2012/04/vatican-accused-of-aiding-in-thirty-year-old-disappearance-of-girl/
In June of 1983, Emanuela Orlandi disappeared. She was the fifteen year old daughter of a Vatican employee, and now prosecutors in Rome are saying that someone in that vast edifice knows what happened to her. Almost three decades ago, she was kidnapped by unidentified men, and her disappearance may be connected to the alleged financial misdeeds of the Vatican bank.
According to the Telegraph:
One theory is that the girl's father, a Vatican employee, had stumbled on documents that connected the Vatican's bank with organised crime in Rome and that she was seized in an attempt to silence him. The alleged mastermind of the kidnapping was Enrico "Renatino" De Pedis, the leader of the Magliana gang, Rome's most ruthless criminal band.
He was shot dead by rival gangsters in a street in central Rome in 1990 and his body interred in a crypt in the Basilica of Sant' Apollinare.
It has always been seen as highly unusual that a known mafioso should have been given the honour of being buried in a church in which popes and cardinals are interred.
Right now, it comes down to a war of word between the two sides on this one. The Vatican is denying knowing anything about Miss Orlandi's disappearance.
The fact that the Vatican is being targeted in this investigation is significant. Unlike past years, this means that the Vatican is starting to lose some of it's unassailability, and is now increasingly vulnerable to allegations like this one.
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