Vatican mired in crime boss controversy
The Vatican is embroiled controversy as reports emerge that it accepted one billion lire 22 years ago to ensure that a crime boss was interred in a basilica.
Reports in Britain say the decision regarding the burial of Enrico De Pedis was made despite initial reluctance from the then vicar-general of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti.
De Pedis was the former boss of Rome's notorious Magliana gang.
The Belfast Telegraph reports that the money was used on missions and to restore the Basilica of St Apollinare, where the mobster was laid to rest next to popes and cardinals after his death in 1990.
The Independent said that last week Vatican officials decided to move the remains of De Pedis from his crypt.
Speculation is growing that De Pedis' gang was behind the 1983 kidnap and murder of Emanuela Orlandi, 15, the daughter of a Vatican official and that she was kidnapped in a bid to keep him silent about links between the Vatican Bank and organised crime.
Emanuela's brother, Pietro Orlandi, has joined calls for De Pedis' tomb to be opened amid claims that Emanuela's body may also be bured there.
The Vatican says there are no secrets to reveal.
Note: This article was published today, but then I found another article, about this same thing, but it's from 2010:
Hollywood Goodfella-Anthony Fiato: The Vatican, kidnap and Mafia gangsters tomb
The Vatican has given Italian investigators permission to open up the tomb of a mafia gangster in an attempt to solve one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries – the kidnap of a teenage girl nearly 30 years ago.
It has long been suspected that the tomb, in an underground crypt, may contain not only the body of the mobster but also the remains of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, who is thought to have been kidnapped by his gang in June 1983.
The saga of Miss Orlandi’s disappearance is one of the murkiest intrigues to have embroiled the Vatican in modern times.
Intriguing sub-plots involve the attempted assassination of John Paul II, the imprisonment of his Turkish assailant, far-right political groups and “God’s banker”, Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in 1982 and had links with the mafia.
The alleged mastermind behind the kidnapping of Miss Orlandi was Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, the leader of the Magliana gang, Rome’s most ruthless criminal band.
He was gunned down by rival gangsters in a street in central Rome in February 1990 and his body interred in the crypt in the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare (Saint Apollinaris), a Vatican-owned church near Piazza Navona.
Only his widow, Carla Di Giovanni, is said to possess the keys to the sarcophagus.
In 2005 an anonymous caller to the Italian equivalent of Crimewatch suggested that investigators hoping to solve the mystery of the teenager’s disappearance should open up the crypt.
The man who made the call to the television programme has since been identified as the son of a member of the Magliana gang.
Five years on, the Vatican, through the Vicariate of Rome, has finally given police and magistrates permission to prise open the marble crypt and analyse its contents.
“The Vicariate of Rome expresses no objection to the request of Italian magistrates that the tomb of Signor De Pedis be inspected,” the church body said in a statement.
Church officials also consented to the corpse being removed from the crypt, in the hope that it could shed some light on the decades-old puzzle of the teenager’s disappearance.
Police are busy interviewing witnesses in the case, which was reopened two years ago, and are unlikely to open the tomb until next month or in September.
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 buried.
The church is adjacent to the music school which Miss Orlandi attended and where she was last seen alive, getting into a dark green BMW with an unidentified man.
The teenager’s family said they were sceptical over claims that her remains might be in the tomb.
“We will await the facts,” said her sister, Natalina Orlandi. “But I have never believed that Emanuela could be buried with De Pedis. As a Catholic, to think that an underworld boss could be laid to rest in a basilica is upsetting.”
Over the years it has been claimed that Miss Orlandi was kidnapped so that she could be used as a bargaining chip for the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and wounded John Paul II in St Peter’s Square in 1981. Ali Agca was released from a prison in January.
Her parents received anonymous phone calls in which it was proposed that their daughter would be released in exchange for Agca, who was a member of an ultra-right Turkish group called the Grey Wolves and allegedly carried out the assassination attempt on the orders of Bulgarian intelligence and the KGB.
Another theory is that the girl’s father, a Vatican employee, had stumbled on documents that connected the Vatican bank with the Magliana gang and that she was kidnapped in a bid to silence him.
It has even been suggested that the kidnapping was carried out on the orders of a Catholic archbishop, Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced head of the Vatican bank, known as the Istituto per le Opere di Religione.
Marcinkus, an American who died four years ago, was accused of having links not only with Calvi but with organised crime groups.
Link:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europ...ear-old-mystery.html
