ROME
National Post (Canada)
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.
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