Magistrates are to ask the Vatican for permission to open the tomb of a murdered gangster in the crypt of a Rome church to check whether it contains the remains a teenage girl who vanished 25 years ago, according to Italian reports. Magistrates have re-opened the inquiry into the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, in the light of new evidence.
Sabrina Minardi, former girlfriend of Enrico De Pedis, boss of the notorious Magliana Gang in Rome, has told investigators Ms Orlandi was kidnapped as part of a Vatican-linked plot, but was killed and thrown into a cement mixer at a building site on the coast near Rome.
Two years ago an anonymous caller to presenters of an Italian television programme on missing persons suggested they should "take a look" at the tomb of De Pedis in the crypt of the church of Sant' Apollinare (Saint Apollinaris) near Piazza Navona. The church is next to the music school where Ms Orlandi attended a flute lesson before she was spotted by a policeman getting into a dark green BMW with a man, the last time she was seen alive.
It has never been clear why De Pedis, who was shot dead by riuval gangsters in a Rome street in 1990, was given the highly unusual honour of burial at Sant' Apollinare. Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the then Vicar of Rome, who gave permission, died in 1997.
Former members of the Magliana Gang have said De Pedis was "very religious", and gave "huge donations" to the Church before he died, perhaps to atone for his crimes. However a persistent theory is that the tomb in fact contains Ms Orlandi's remains, or some clue to the riddle of her disappearance.
This week the Vatican defended the late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced head of the Vatican Bank, against Ms Minardi's claim that he ordered the abduction of Ms Orlandi. Archbishop Marcinkus, an American of Lithuanian parentage, died in Arizona in 2006 at 84.
The Vatican said "defamatory and baseless accusations" had been made against the Archbishop, "who has been dead for some time and is unable to defend himself". It criticised media outlets which had reported the charge.
The predominant theory is that the girl was kidnapped to put pressure on Italy to release the Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who tried to kill Pope John Paul in 1981. Anonymous callers to the family said she would be freed if Agca was released.
However, an alternative theory is that the kidnapping was connected to financial dealings between the Magliana Gang, the Vatican Bank and the Italian banker Roberto Calvi, who had links to both the Vatican and the Mafia and was found dead beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982, leaving behind him massive debts to underworld figures.
A third theory, which the Italian news agency AGI said had also emerged from Ms Minardi's testimony, was that the girl was kidnapped because her father Ercole, a clerk in the Prefecture of the Vatican, "was in possession of documents that he should not have seen," possibly documents relating to money laundering, the Magliana Gang and the Vatican Bank.
Police said that the church of Sant' Apollinare was under Vatican control and therefore considered "extraterritorial" Vatican property. Permission for the white marble tomb to be opened would therefore have to be given not only by the Rome diocese but also by the Holy See, as well as by De Pedis' widow, Carla Di Giovanni.
Father Pedro Huidobro, the rector of Sant' Apollinare, said he had no objection to opening the tomb if permission was granted. He said curiosity about the tomb, hidden behind a locked grille, was interfering with the normal routine of the church. He said De Pedis' widow visited the tomb discreetly "once or twice a year" to lay flowers.
The Orlandi family says it does not believe Ms Minardi, a recovering drug addict formerly married to the Lazio football star Brunio Giordano, because her testimony is unreliable and "full of inconsistencies".
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