Vatican mystery: Police open mobster’s grave

[seemslikeadream]

Vatican mystery: Police open mobster’s grave seeking missing girl’s body

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press May 14, 2012 – 8:55 PM ET | Last Updated: May 14, 2012 9:24 PM ET

Forensic police officers work in the courtyard of Sant’ Apollinare Basilica in Rome. They are seeking evidence in a 1983 disappearance.

An overwhelming stench filled the air as forensic experts in white pantsuits and masks mingled with priests in black clerical garb during the exhumation of a reputed Italian mobster from the crypt of a Roman basilica.

The scene Monday outside the church of Sant’Apollinare was hectic, with television cameras jostling for views inside the chapel and the adjacent courtyard of the Opus Dei-run Pontifical Holy Cross University, where forensic vans came and went.
Related

Mysterious bones found inside mobster’s Vatican tomb

Italy to crack open mobster’s tomb in bowels of Rome church as part of search for missing girl

The chaotic scenes were part of an investigation into one of the Vatican’s most enduring mysteries: the 1983 disappearance of the teenage daughter of one of its employees.

Medical experts took samples from the remains of Enrico De Pedis and removed boxes of old bones from the nearby ossuary, as part of the investigation into whether Emanuela Orlandi may have been buried alongside him, said a De Pedis family lawyer.

.

Emanuela Orlandi, 15, the daughter of a Vatican lay employee, went missing in 1983.

Ms. 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 a lay employee of the Holy See.

Mr. De Pedis, a member of Rome’s Magliana mob, was killed in 1990. His onetime girlfriend has reportedly told prosecutors he kidnapped Ms. Orlandi. In 2005, an anonymous caller told a call-in TV show the answer to the girl’s disappearance lies in his tomb.

Amid a new push to resolve the case, the Vatican said last month it had no objections to opening the tomb.

Father Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said Monday the inspection of the De Pedis tomb was “certainly a positive fact” aimed at carrying out “all possible steps so the investigation could be completed.

“The prosecutors’ office can continue to count on the full collaboration of the church authorities,” he said.
‘I think it’s something very positive, both from the point of view of the Vatican and the prosecutors’

Lorenzo Radogna, the De Pedis’ lawyer, said investigators had found 200 containers with bones near Mr. De Pedis’s tomb in the ossuary, and these would be tested.

Initially, the ANSA news agency reported the boxes had been discovered in Mr. De Pedis’s casket itself, but later said they were found in the ossuary.

Ms. Orlandi’s brother, Pietro, said samples from Mr. De Pedis’s body had been taken for further tests and the tomb reclosed. He said the corpse was in relatively good condition, but there was only one body — that of a male — inside the casket.

There had initially been speculation Ms. Orlandi’s kidnapping was linked in some way to an assassination attempt on pope John Paul II two years earlier and the jailing of the gunman, Ali Agca.

Doubts have also been cast on whether the Vatican itself had co-operated fully with the investigation.

In 2008, Italian news reports quoted Mr. De Pedis’s former girlfriend as telling prosecutors Ms. Orlandi had been kidnapped by the Magliana gang on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the U.S. prelate who had headed the Vatican bank and was linked to a huge Italian banking scandal in the 1980s.

Bishop Marcinkus, who has since died, had always asserted his innocence in the scandal and the Vatican at the time of the allegation said the woman’s claims had “extremely doubtful value.”

A forensic police officer enters the courtyard of Sant' Apollinare Basilica Monday.

In a lengthy statement last month, Fr. Lombardi insisted the Holy See had done everything possible to try to resolve the case.

Mr. Orlandi said the move to open the tomb was a step forward in the investigation, and he hoped it showed a new willingness by the Vatican to co-operate fully and show full transparency about what it knows.

“I think it’s something very positive, both from the point of view of the Vatican and the prosecutors,” he said.

Speculation has long swirled around the location of Mr. De Pedis’s tomb — in a prominent church alongside important Catholics — an unusual final resting place for a reputed mobster. Sant’Apollinare is right next to the elegant Piazza Navona in Rome’s historic centre.

It is believed that when Mr. De Pedis was gunned down in 1990 by a rival on a Rome street, his family asked if he could be buried in a crypt in the basilica because they feared his grave would be desecrated by gang rivals if he were buried in a public cemetery.

Church officials first said no, but later changed their minds after the mobster’s family made a contribution of one billion lire, about $640,000 today, according to Italian media reports.

As the exhumation went on in the crypt, a priest was solemnly celebrating Latin mass.

Among those in the adjacent courtyard speaking with medical personnel was Monsignor Pedro Huidobro, rector who was a coroner before being ordained a priest.

Mr. De Pedis’s casket is expected to be moved to another location for reburial in the near future.

[cptmarginal]

So apparently this is technically untrue:

"Dozens of boxes of unidentified human bones found in mobster's sarcophagus during search for daughter of Vatican bank worker"

Although they were "tucked inside a niche of the ancient crypt" near his sarcophagus. How old do these bones appear to be, what kind of boxes were they in?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ma ... sfeed=true

Read previous posts on this topic here:

viewtopic.php?p=458070#p458070

[82_28]

I was watching some documentary on the mob two days ago. And here is an interesting fact it passed along.

When the mob "began", they were not a criminal organization -- as in they had no designs on violence -- basically an Italian first union. They were simply competing and wanted to assimilate with American "culture". We're talking 1800s. But because of racism or some shit they wound up becoming criminal. The mafia, mob, etc, was borne out of American racism very early and yet quite late -- just depends on when you lived.

[jingofever]

Missing teenager kidnapped for sex parties, claims exorcist.

A teenage girl whose disappearance in Rome has remained
a mystery for 30 years was kidnapped for sex parties by a
gang involving Vatican police and foreign diplomats, the
Roman Catholic Church's leading exorcist has claimed.
Father Gabriele Amorth, who was appointed by the late John
Paul II as the Vatican's chief exorcist, said Emanuela Orlandi
was later murdered.
In the latest twist in one of the Holy See's most enduring
mysteries, he said the 15-year-old was snatched from the
streets of central Rome in 1983 and forced to take part in
sex parties.
"This was a crime with a sexual motive. Parties were
organised, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the 'recruiter'
of the girls, Father Amorth, the honorary president of the
International Association of Exorcists, told La Stampa
newspaper. "The network involved diplomatic personnel
from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela
ended up a victim of this circle."

[cptmarginal]

Interesting twist, but I don't trust Amorth:

Chief exorcist says Devil is in Vatican

Pope 'exorcised two men in the Vatican', claims new book

'Harry Potter and yoga are evil', says Catholic Church exorcist

Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.

He added that the assault on Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve by a mentally unstable woman and the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries, were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See.

Father Amorth, who claims to have conducted thousands of exorcisms, wrote: "It is no mystery that the Pope's acts and words can enrage Satan...that simply the presence of the Pope can sooth and in some way help the possessed in their fight against the one who possesses them."

[jingofever]

Interesting twist, but I don't trust Amorth

His interpretations are colored by his religious faith but that doesn't mean what he describes isn't happening. He blames the devil, we blame people, but we're all looking at the same fucked up Church. Or books. Or exercise fads. And I wouldn't be surprised if some schizophrenics swallow bits of glass and iron. But these new claims contain none of that mystical baggage. Just a gendarme grabbing girls for embassy personnel. He seems to assert the existence of this group and speculates that they were responsible. He knows something nasty is going on there.

[cptmarginal]

Yeah, and the specifics of what he's describing there sound very realistic; it wouldn't surprise me at all if this were the truth. Or at least part of it - I think a lot of people are assuming this has to do with P2 and the Vatican bank, some kind of ransom or revenge situation maybe.

[cptmarginal]

Here's a repost of some articles on this, from the other thread:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... s-ago.html

Italian Police Probe Vatican, Mafia Links in Teen’s Disappearance 30 Years Ago

Apr 17, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Almost 30 years ago the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee disappeared. Now Italian authorities want to know if she’s buried with a Mafia don on the grounds of a Vatican church—and how much Holy See officials know about her disappearance.

The faint smell of incense and candle wax permeates the church of Sant’Apollinare near Rome’s famous Piazza Navona. The basilica is one of a handful of churches outside the walls of Vatican City owned by the Holy See. It is used primarily by members of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei prelature for special masses for student priests and for celebrations of marriage and baptism of those affiliated with the sect. Behind a side door near the back of the basilica is a small courtyard that’s closed to the public. There, in an external crypt near the ornate sarcophaguses of bishops and cardinals, is the curious tomb of Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, a prominent member of the infamous Magliana organized-crime gang who was ambushed and murdered by rival gang members in 1990.

Why a known-mobster like De Pedis is buried on the grounds of a Vatican church has been the object of much speculation since 1997, when a church maid revealed the tomb’s existence to an inquisitive journalist. The Vatican was always cagey about why the mobster was buried in one of its churches, and ultimately, the church’s silence spurred countless conspiracy theories. Now, thanks to shocking Vatican letters leaked in the Vatileaks scandal that is rocking the Holy See, the Italian police are less interested in why he’s buried there. Instead, they want to open the tomb to see if the remains of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi are interred with those of the mobster.

Orlandi was the daughter of a prominent non-clerical Vatican employee who worked in the Vatican’s special events office that organizes papal functions and Catholic celebrations. She disappeared without a trace after leaving her Vatican apartment for music lessons on the afternoon of June 22, 1983. Her lessons were in a music school adjacent to Sant’Apollinare church, and the last witnesses to see her alive told investigators the girl crawled into a dark green BMW, though that lead could never be corroborated. Her disappearance came at a tense moment for the Vatican, and nearly everyone associated her presumed kidnapping with a wider scandal. In 1981, Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot Pope John Paul II, nearly killing him. Orlandi’s parents received a series of phone calls from thugs who said they would give back their daughter if the Vatican released Ali Agca. The calls soon stopped and the Orlandi family was left wondering if their daughter was alive or dead.

Another theory surfaced a year later, when an unidentifed tipster told police Orlandi was kidnapped to keep her father quiet. Mr. Orlandi, it was said, had stumbled upon sensitive documents that tied Roberto Calvi, known as God’s Banker for his close association with both the Holy See and its primary banking facility, Banco Ambrosiano, and to an organized-crime syndicate. Calvi had been found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982, and speculation was swiftly turning from suicide to homicide in that case. It made sense that if the elder Orlandi knew something, taking his daughter would surely seal his lips.

At the time of the teenager’s disappearance, the Vatican secret service firmly believed she was kidnapped to be used as leverage either by supporters of Ali Agca or Calvi. Last Saturday, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Federico Lombardi, acknowledged they probably were wrong. “At the time, the authorities shared the prevailing opinion that the kidnapping might have been used by some obscure criminal organization to send messages or enact pressure in the context of the jailing and interrogation of the pope’s attacker,” he said.

But because the Vatican is a sovereign city-state, Italian police do not have jurisdiction to investigate so-called Vatican crimes. The investigation began in earnest again after a series of breaks in late 2004, but John Paul II died shortly after the new lead surfaced, and the thread was lost in the transition in leadership at the Holy See. In 2008, the case was opened again when the transcript of an Italian police interrogation with De Pedis’s lover tied the mobster to the girl’s disappearance. The lover told police the young girl was kidnapped on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who was then the head of the Vatican bank.

Marcinkus, an American, died in 2006, but records show that even the Vatican was suspicious of the priest. De Pedis’s lover said the death was to avenge a debt after the Vatican reneged on mafia loans secured by De Pedis, and that the girl’s body was dumped in a cement truck near the Roman seaside town of Ostia. De Pedis, having exacted his revenge, then forgave the loan in exchange for the prestigious burial plot inside the Vatican church, she said.

Now, the focus of the investigation has turned to the Vatican itself, and, according to revelations in a letter leaked to the Italian press last week, the Vatican is taking it very seriously. A three-page letter from Lombardi to church higher-ups indicated even he suspected a cover-up. In the letter, shown on Italian Rai Tre state television, Lombardi wrote of his concerns and asked how to address the press. “Was the non-collaboration [in the initial Orlandi investigation] normal and justifiable affirmation of Vatican sovereignty, or if in fact circumstances were withheld that might have helped clear something up.”

Italian magistrates are now wondering the same thing, and say they feel the Vatican may still be covering up vital information about Orlandi’s mysterious disappearance. They are picking up on a series of leads that stalled in 2005, starting with a tip from an anonymous caller to an Italian detective program Chi’l’ha Visto (“Who Has Seen”). The caller said Orlandi was kidnapped on the orders of the then vicar of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, and that “the secret to the mystery lies in a tomb in Sant’ Apollinare basilica.”

Last month, former Rome mayor and vice premier Walter Veltroni took up the case, asking the Italian interior ministry to ascertain whether the church of Sant’Apollinare is protected from Italian law or whether investigators could exhume De Pedis’s tomb. The Vatican quickly offered access to the tomb and suggested that perhaps moving the mobster’s remains was a way to quash speculation once and for all. But in an about-face this week, the prosecutors backed down and said they won’t be opening the tomb anytime soon—saying instead that it’s time for someone inside the Vatican to tell the truth. “There are those in the Curia who know elements of the circumstantial evidence,” Giancarlo Capaldo, assistant prosecutor in the case, said on Italian television. “There are people still alive, and still inside the Vatican, who know the truth.”

In the meantime Orlandi’s family is hoping investigators change their minds and open the tomb, even though De Pedis’s widow, Carla Di Giovanni, reportedly is the only person with keys, and now even she is under preliminary investigation in the nearly three-decade-old mystery and probably not feeling very cooperative.

“The declaration by the prosecutors that the truth is known in the Vatican is very heavy, but it’s overshadowed by the strange decision not to open De Pedis’s grave,” Orlandi’s brother, Peter, told La Stampa newspaper over the weekend. “Implicating the Holy See directly is a huge step forward. Now the Holy See has a moral duty to give a response after years of refusing to cooperate.”

But as long as it’s sealed, the mobster’s grave won’t give up any ghosts, or shed any light on the mystery.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eur ... story.html

Vatican insists: not hiding anything that could solve ‘83 disappearance of employee’s daughter

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican insisted Saturday it has done everything possible to try to resolve the 1983 disappearance of an employee’s teenage daughter and has no objections to allowing inspection of the basilica tomb of a reputed mobster from a gang purportedly linked to her presumed kidnapping.

Its chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, made the assertion following media speculation that the Vatican knows something it has not revealed about the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi in Rome. Sparking the speculation was a Good Friday homily on April 6 in St. Peter’s Basilica by the papal preacher, who decried that many “atrocious” crimes go unsolved.

With Pope Benedict XVI among those listening, the preacher, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, included this ringing appeal in his homily: “Don’t carry your secret to the grave with you!”

The priest didn’t name any names or specify any crimes, but his unusual choice for Good Friday reflection immediately sparked speculation that the appeal must have been meant for some Vatican official with knowledge about the Orlandi case, which the Vatican has viewed as a kidnapping.

Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a lay employee of the Holy See.

Because she vanished two years after the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square, some, Vatican officials among them, “shared the prevailing opinion that the kidnapping might have been used by some obscure criminal organization to send messages or enact pressure in the context of the jailing and interrogation of the pope’s attacker,” Lombardi said, referring to the Turkish gunmen, Mehmet Ali Agca.

Referring to the recent speculation, Lombardi said in a written statement that “doubt has been raised as to whether Vatican institutions or personalities truly did everything possible to contribute to the search for the truth about what happened.”

Lombardi gave details of what he said were Vatican efforts to help during the early days of the case.

“Just to give one example, the investigators, and above all, SISDE (intelligence) agents had access to the Vatican switchboard to hear possible calls from the kidnappers,” he said. He added that the Vatican authorized Italian investigators to tap the Orlandi family’s phone and to come and go to speak with the family without having to first ask Vatican permission.

“All the Vatican authorities collaborated, with commitment and transparency, with the Italian authorities to deal with the kidnapping in the first phase, and, then, later in the successive investigations,” Lombardi maintained.

“As far as we know, there is nothing hidden, nor are there ‘secrets’ n the Vatican to reveal on the subject,” Lombardi said. “To continue to assert it is completely unjustified; also, we reiterate, yet again, all the material from the Vatican was handed over, in its time, to the investigating magistrates and to police authorities.”

Apparently in hopes of putting to rest speculation, the Vatican is willing to allow a reputed mobster’s tomb in the Vatican Basilica dell’Apollinare, a Rome church, to be inspected, and the remains moved elsewhere, Lombardi added.

Four years ago, Italian news reports quoted the dead man’s former lover as telling Rome prosecutors that mobsters from the city’s crime syndicate, known as the Magliana gang, had kidnapped the girl and had her body dumped in a cement mixer near a beach outside the capital.

Italian prosecutors cannot publicly discuss a case while it is under investigation, so it is unclear if these claims have shed any light on Orlandi’s disappearance.

The Vatican at the time described the woman’s claims as having “extremely doubtful value.” The woman’s lover, Enrico De Pedis, was gunned down in 1990 as he rode his motorscooter in Rome.

The 2008 media reports also claimed the woman told prosecutors that the girl had been kidnapped on orders from Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the late U.S. prelate who had headed the Vatican bank and was linked to a huge Italian banking scandal in the 1980s. Marcinkus had always asserted his innocence in the scandal.

Lombardi noted in his statement that the De Pedis tomb in the basilica “has continued and continues to be the motive of questions and discussions,” but he offered no explanation as why a reputed mobster would be buried in a Vatican church.

He recalled John Paul’s “intense personal involvement” in the suffering of the girl’s family, and said “suffering unfortunately is revived with every new path of explanation, so far without result.”

[cptmarginal]

Here's something interesting I found while looking for new information on the Emanuela Orlandi disappearance case, an opinion piece written in the wake of Gabriele Amorth's allegations.

http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... 1266183%2F

It's tricky for me to tell, reading text auto-translated from Italian, some of what this article is saying. But here's a list of theories with things I hadn't heard of:

- The "political kidnapping", to exchange with Emanuela turkish terrorist Ali Agca, a hypothesis that was rejected by prosecutors as early as 15 years ago, just as little credence was lent to other cases of kidnapping as:

- The "rapture of the Magliana banda", to get back the money lent to Pope Wojtyla to finance anti-communist opposition in his native Poland;

- The "rapture of the Secret Service," with attached "track in London" and Emanuela "locked in an asylum center of London";

- "Transfer in the palace of Liechtenstein", with finger pointed at the current reigning Prince Hans Adam;

- The number of avenues that give Emanuela still alive or in Turkey or in the East, after being spotted as in Bolzano, Paris, Eastern Europe, in Mosul, Iraq ....

- Rape with deadly outcome by the then rector of the Basilica of St. Apollinare, don Piero Vergari. Apollinaris, Don Piero Vergari. Hypothesis launched by an anonymous letter in August 2008, but suddenly taken into account by Peter Orlandi, Emanuela's brother, after the failure of the raid on the mortal remains of De Pedis. Which, according to the anonymous of 2008, would seek to remove the clutter of Don Vergari corpse;

- The only credible alternative to the parallel of the Montesi case is that of "white slavery", suggested earlier by the late lamented Cardinal Silvio Oddi, and may find support in the words of the lawyer Gennaro Egidio, the legal and Orlandi mom Mirella, when excluding the abduction, he referred to the unrest that characterizes the two girls, which implies an inclination to fall victim to scams and solicitations, and if that argument were valid, were not, however, only two cases As Emanuela and Mirella, over all these years;

concluding with the latest that have badgered in this half of 2012:

- The satanic ritual sex with eventual death, hypothesis recently launched by Father Gabriele Amorth, also known as esosrcista Vatican's official;

- To use and orgies with girls enrolled consuno of diplomats from a Swiss Guard Oltretevere, launched from Amorth also hypotheses;

- Last in order of time, the "trail Boston", also known as the "pedophile priests", launched on the 4th of this month of June by the Corriere della Sera.

[jingofever]

Ex mobster offers Pope lead on mysterious disappearance of teenage girl

A former mafia gangster has promised to reveal to Pope Francis secrets about one of the Vatican’s murkiest chapters – the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl more than 30 years ago.
Vincenzo Calcara, who was a member of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra until he became a “pentito” or informer, has requested a private audience with the Pope in order to reveal “very important, urgent secrets”.
In a six-page letter, he claimed that the information he had would “change the course of certain events”, particularly relating to the unresolved disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who went missing in Rome in June 1983.
The teenager was the daughter of a Vatican employee and there have been several theories as to who kidnapped her.
One theory is that she was abducted to be used as a bargaining chip for the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill John Paul II in St Peter’s Square in 1981, reportedly on the orders of the KGB.
Another is that she was snatched by a criminal gang who wanted to put pressure on Vatican officials who allegedly owed them money.
Two years ago a former Vatican chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, claimed that she had been kidnapped for sex parties involving Vatican police and foreign diplomats. She was later murdered, he said.
“The truth of this affair has remained hidden for years because to reveal it would be like opening a box and would bring to light truths so weighty that they would throw into a crisis a system that links the Vatican with other deviant entities," the former mafia criminal wrote in his letter.
Those “deviant entities” included Cosa Nostra, the ‘Ndrangheta mafia of Calabria, the Masons and the Italian secret services.
The information he had on the Orlandi mystery was just one of three secrets he held, Calcara claimed.
In 2005, an anonymous caller to a crime programme on Italian TV claimed that the key to the schoolgirl’s kidnapping lay in the tomb of Enrico "Renatino" De Pedis, a criminal boss who was gunned down by rival gangsters in 1990.
For years there had been claims that the remains of the teenager were buried alongside him.

Normally I would add spaces between the paragraphs but not when they are one sentence long. He mentions claims that Emanuela Orlandi's corpse was buried with Enrico De Pedis but does not mention that they opened that crypt to check out the theory. If I recall correctly, they found bones that were not his and sent them to the United States for analysis. That was a couple years ago. I have heard nothing since then. I have to wonder if the pope's recent excommunication of all mafiosi is related to this.

[jingofever]

The Orlandi Code: The Mafia, communist spies, the Pope and the twisted mystery of a kidnapped Vatican girl.

None of the bones in the tomb were Orlandi's. There is supposed to be a report on a new investigation released at the end of the year.

[cptmarginal]

This is why I check AP, Reuters, UPI - separately, and on a regular basis. I initially saw this reported at UPI.

Bones found at Vatican property reopen questions on 1983 mysteries

Elise Harris - SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
Oct 30, 2018


A poster regarding the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi on a wall in Rome. (Credit: Stock image.)

ROME - Late Tuesday night the Vatican announced that fragments of human bones were found during the recent remodeling of a building attached to the Vatican’s embassy to Italy, though there are still no details about the age of the remains or the person to whom they belonged.

As soon as the bones were found, a Vatican statement said, the Vatican’s Gendarmerie corps informed Italian authorities as well as those within the Holy See, and an investigation has been launched.

Rome’s Chief Prosecutor, Giuseppe Pighatone, has tasked the Scientific Police and a mobile team of Rome’s police headquarters to study the remains in order to determine their age, sex and the date of the person’s death.

Details are slim on what bones were found, however, according to Italian agency ANSA, the bones consist of a skull and teeth.

In some quarters there is already speculation that the remains could belong to a young Italian woman named Emanuela Orlandi, who disappeared in 1983 at the age of 15, and whose father at the time worked for the Institute for the Works of Religion, better known as “the Vatican bank.”

Orlandi’s body was never found, and numerous hypotheses and conspiracy theories have circulated since her disappearance concerning the circumstances and motives of what might have happened.

Mirella Gregori is another young Italian woman who also disappeared in 1983, just over a month ahead of when Orlandi went missing. Police are likely to make DNA comparisons to determine whether the bones belong to either of the young women.

[seemslikeadream]

thanks for the update cptmarginal

[seemslikeadream]

Vatican embassy bones were not from missing girl: source

FILE PHOTO: Italian Army members and police stand in front of Holy See Embassy to Italy where workers had discovered human bones in Rome, Italy, October 31, 2018. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo
ROME (Reuters) - Human bones found at the Vatican’s embassy in Rome belong to a male who died more than 50 years ago, a judicial source said, dispelling speculation they might solve one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries: the 1980s vanishing of two teenage girls.

An almost complete skeleton and other bone fragments were unearthed last month during work on an annex to the Holy See’s imposing embassy compound near Rome’s famous Villa Borghese museum.

The discovery sparked media stories suggesting the remains might belong to Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee who vanished in 1983, or to Mirella Gregori, another Rome teenager who disappeared the same year.

However, the judicial source said DNA testing showed the bones were male, while carbon dating showed they predated 1964.

The mystery surrounding Orlandi’s fate has bedevilled Italians for decades, with that of Gregori thought linked to it.

Orlandi’s disappearance was initially connected to a possible attempt by unknown persons to win freedom for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 and was then serving a life sentence in an Italian jail.

In 2005, an anonymous caller to a television talk show said the secret to her kidnap was buried along with Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis, a mobster who once led the feared Magliana gang which terrorized Rome in the 1980s.

Police eventually opened his tomb in a Rome basilica in 2012 looking for clues but came up empty handed.

A Vatican exorcist, Gabriele Amorth, once alleged that he had discovered during his exorcism work that she had been seized by Vatican insiders and used as a sex slave.

Reporting by Domenico Lusi; Writing by Crispian Balmer
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vati ... SKCN1NS1K2

[seemslikeadream]

Vatican mystery over missing girl deepens; bones found

The Vatican noted at the time that structural work had been carried out on both the college building and cemetery near St. Peter’s Basilica in the 1800s and more recently, and that further investigation would be done. (File photo: AP)
The Associated Press, Vatican CitySaturday, 13 July 2019
Text size A A A

The mystery of the 1983 disappearance of the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee took yet another twist Saturday following excavations this week at a Vatican City cemetery: The Vatican said it had discovered two sets of bones under a stone manhole that will be formally opened next week.

The Vatican on Thursday had pried open the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses in the cemetery of the Pontifical Teutonic College in hopes of finding the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, after her family received a tip she might be buried there.

Those hopes were dashed when the tombs turned out to be completely empty, creating yet another mystery about where the dead princesses were.

The Vatican noted at the time that structural work had been carried out on both the college building and cemetery near St. Peter’s Basilica in the 1800s and more recently, and that further investigation would be done.

On Saturday, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said those investigations had centered on the areas adjoining the tombs and had “identified two ossuaries, located under the pavement of an area inside the Pontifical Teutonic College, covered by a manhole.”

He said the area was immediately sealed off and would be opened in the presence of forensic experts July 20.

Gisotti added that the bones were located in two holes carved out of a large stone that was covered by an old pavement stone a few meters behind the princesses’ tomb. That area is now technically part of the building of the Teutonic College, after expansion work on the building encroached onto the cemetery field.

The last recorded structural work done on the Teutonic College and cemetery was in the 1960s and 1970s. Orlandi disappeared in 1983.

She vanished after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a lay employee of the Holy See.

Her case has been one of the enduring mysteries of the Vatican, kept alive by the Italian media and a quest by her brother to find answers and closure. Over the years, her disappearance has been linked to everything from the plot to kill St. John Paul II to the financial scandal of the Vatican bank and Rome’s criminal underworld.

The last major twist in the case came in 2012, when forensic police exhumed the body of a reputed mobster from the crypt of a Roman basilica in hopes of finding Orlandi’s remains as well. The search turned up no link.

Last year, bones were found underneath the Vatican’s embassy to Italy in Rome. Italian media immediately speculated the remains could belong to Orlandi or another girl who went missing at around the same time. But forensic tests showed the bones long predated their disappearances.

In 2017, a leading Italian investigative journalist caused a sensation when he published a five-page document that had been stolen from a locked Vatican cabinet that suggested the Holy See had been involved in Orlandi’s disappearance. The Vatican immediately branded the document a fake, though it never explained what it was doing in the Vatican cabinet.

The document was purportedly written by a cardinal and listed supposed expenses used for Orlandi’s upkeep after she disappeared.

Orlandi’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, has long demanded the Vatican give the family full access to all information it has about Orlandi’s disappearance, keeping the cold case alive for more than three decades.

Gisotti said this week that the Holy See “has always shown attention and closeness to the suffering of the Orlandi family and in particular Emanuela’s mother” and that its decision to excavate the Teutonic cemetery at the family’s request was evidence of that attention.
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Missing girl kidnapped in 1983 on Vatican archbishop's order
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