Italy to Crack Open Mobster's Tomb in Bowels of Rome Church As Part of Search for Missing Girl

National Post
April 25, 2012

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/25/italy-to-crack-open-mobsters-tomb-is-bowels-of-rome-church-as-part-of-search-for-missing-girl/

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who attempted to kill pope John Paul II in 1981, shows a picture of Italian girl Emanuela Orlandi who vanished when walking through central Rome in June 1983 during his press conference in Istanbul, on March 29, 2010

Photo of Emanuela Orlandi

ROME — Italian prosecutors have authorised police to open the tomb of a crime boss in a church in Rome, as part of a probe into the suspected kidnapping of a Vatican employee's daughter in 1983.

Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared. Her body has never been found and Italy has been gripped for years by a mystery which mixes a notorious band of criminals, the Magliana gang, with the murky world of Vatican finances.

Enrico de Pedis, the leader of the band which terrorised Rome in the 1970s and 1980s, has long been suspected of playing a part in her disappearance.

De Pedis, who is thought to have had ties with the Sicilian mafia, Italy's shadowy P2 Masonic lodge and the Vatican bank, was murdered by rivals in 1990 and rather oddly buried in a basilica in Rome usually reserved for cardinals.

There are many conspiracy theories surrounding Orlandi. The band is thought to have kidnapped the young girl in an attempt to recover money invested in the Vatican's bank — or because her father was involved in laundering their cash.

Another has it the aim was to swap her for Turk Mehmet Ali Agca, who had attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

In 2005, the case was reopened when an anonymous caller rang a missing person television programme and said investigators should search De Pedis' tomb in the Sant'Apollinare basilica for clues to the teenager's fate.

Then in 2008, his former girlfriend Sabrina Minardi also said De Pedis was involved in Orlandi's disappearance, and that she'd been murdered on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, then president of the Vatican Bank.

On Tuesday, the go-ahead finally came to open the tomb, which will be excavated in May according to media reports.

Orlandi's family, particularly her brother Pietro, have long accused the Vatican of secrecy and Italian officials of failing to follow up leads.

On April 14, the Vatican insisted it had cooperated "with commitment and transparency" with Italian authorities on the affair.

Earlier this month, Raniero Cantalamessa, a preacher to the papal household, gave a speech in front of the pope decrying the country's many enigmas.

"How many atrocious crimes have been left without anyone found guilty, how many unresolved cases there still are in our Italy," he said.

For the Italian media, there was little doubt that he was referring to the Orlandi case.