ROME
The Guardian (United Kingdom)
John Hooper in Rome
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 April 2012
The Vatican is under pressure to help resolve one of the strangest of many enigmas lingering in Italy from the cold war years.
For four years, prosecutors in Rome have been making a renewed attempt to get at the truth behind the disappearance in 1983 of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee.
They are seeking to ascertain whether she was seized by a notorious band of Rome criminals, and whether this has any bearing on the fact that the leader of the gang was buried in a Vatican basilica normally reserved for cardinals and other illustrious prelates.
Last month, Walter Veltroni, a former deputy prime minister, asked the interior minister in Mario Monti’s government to confirm that the basilica of Sant’Apollinare, a few yards from the Piazza Navona in central Rome, did not enjoy extra-territorial status and was thus subject to Italian law.
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