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Italian gangster Antonio Mancini has said that the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee was killed in 1983 because a criminal gang was irate over the loss of funds deposited in the Vatican bank.
Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared in 1983 after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was an employee of the Holy See.
A former member of the Magliana gang, Mancini said that young Emanuela Orlandi was kidnapped after Mafia figures learned that they had lost “more than 200 million dollars” that they had sought to launder through the Vatican bank. Depositors took huge losses because of the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, with which the Vatican bank had extensive ties.
“There was a problem with money not being returned, and the choice was between leaving some cardinal’s body by the side of the road or hitting someone close to the Pope,” said Mancini. He added that Enrico De Pedis, a noted crime figure in Rome, drove the car that was used in the abduction of Emanuela Orlandi.
Police investigators exhumed the body of Enrico De Pedis, searching for clues that might help to solve the mystery of Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance. Several organized-crime figures have said that De Pedis was involved in the girl’s disappearance.
De Pedis’ body was located in the basilica of Sant’Apollinare. One informant had suggested that Emanuela Orlandi might have been buried in the same tomb.
Investigators found only one body but had found some 200 containers with bones near De Pedis’ tomb in the ossuary, and said that they would be tested in the coming days and weeks.
The remains of Enrico De Pedis will be re-interred in another burial ground—not in the Roman basilica.
Image Times Colonist
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- Former gangster says mob kidnapped daughter of Vatican employee
- Vatican mystery intensifies, bones found in grave
- Who Is Emanuela Orlandi?
News category: World.
