Girl ‘snatched by Vatican and held in London’
Tom Kington, Rome
September 19 2017, 12:01am, The Times
A poster on the streets of Rome after Emanuela Orlandi, 15, the daughter of a Vatican employee, went missing in 1983
Leaked Vatican documents show that a teenage girl allegedly kidnapped from a Rome street in 1983 was secretly taken by the Vatican to London and held there for years, the girl’s brother has claimed.
Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, went missing aged 15. Her disappearance led to theories that she was snatched by the mafia in an attempt to blackmail the Vatican, or by terrorists seeking the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk jailed for trying to assassinate John Paul II.
Her suspected kidnapping has now been linked to the Vatican itself after the publication of an alleged Holy See document listing Vatican payments of about €250,000 relating to her case, including medical bills and accommodation in London. “This document suggests the Vatican took Emanuela to London and looked after her for a long period of time,” said Emanuela’s brother, Pietro, who has lobbied Pope Francis for help in finding the truth.
The 1998 list of expenses begins in 1983, the year that Emanuela went missing while on the way to her parents’ house inside the Vatican from a music lesson, and ends in 1997. “If she died then and the document is real the Vatican needs to answer questions about kidnapping and hiding a body,” Mr Orlandi said.
The five-page document, published in a book by Emiliano Fittipaldi, an Italian journalist, was dismissed as “false and ridiculous” by a Vatican spokesman. Titled “A summary of spending” on Emanuela Orlandi, the document lists payments between 1983 and 1985 to a London address that appears to correspond to a women’s hostel run by the Scalabrini Fathers, a missionary group, on Clapham Road in south London. Numerous visits to London by Vatican officials are listed, as well as the involvement of “Commando 1”. This was possibly a Vatican secret service unit, Mr Fittipaldi suggested.
Between 1988 and 1993, the document shows fees apparently being paid to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington and to Lesley Regan, who was appointed senior lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology there in 1990. Professor Regan did not return calls for comment.
A visit to London by Renato Buzzonetti, a doctor who served four popes including Benedict XVI and died in January, is also listed.
If the Vatican was funding Emanuela’s stay in London the document does not explain why she was there, or whether she was there against her will.
The alleged author of the document, Cardinal Lorenzo Antonetti, who was then head of the Vatican’s property office, is now dead. One of the alleged recipients, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, told Italian media yesterday that he had never received it.
Mr Fittipaldi claimed that the five pages, given to him by a source, were part of a stash of secret documents stolen from a Vatican office in 2014 and then returned anonymously.
He said that if the pages were an elaborate fake they could have been invented to hurt the reputation of Vatican officials, a throwback to the era of the Vatican “crows” — anonymous officials who allegedly leaked damaging documents to undermine their rivals during the Benedict papacy.
Laura Sgrò, a lawyer representing the Orlandi family, said: “If it’s real it’s very serious. If it’s fake we want to know what the document was doing in a safe at the Vatican all these years.”
Mr Orlandi said: “I consider the document reliable and we now need to investigate in London.”
Emanuela Orlandi 'was kidnapped for sex parties for Vatican police'
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.
By Nick Squires, Rome
Father Gabriele Amorth, who was appointed by the late John Paul II as the Vatican's chief exorcist and claims to have performed thousands of exorcisms, said Emanuela Orlandi was later murdered and her body disposed of.
In the latest twist in one of the Holy See's most enduring mysteries, he said the 15-year-old schoolgirl was snatched from the streets of central Rome in the summer of 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.
"The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up a victim of this circle," Father Amorth, the honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists, told La Stampa newspaper.
The debate over who kidnapped Emanuela and what became of her has raged in Italy for three decades.
It has been suggested that she was taken by the leader of a notorious gang of criminals, who wanted to put pressure on Vatican officials to recover money that he had allegedly lent them.
Another 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.
But Father Amorth, 85, dismissed the "international dimension", saying that a Vatican archivist had also come to the conclusion that Emanuela was abducted for sexual exploitation.
A controversial and outspoken priest, Father Amorth has claimed that yoga is Satanic because it leads to a worship of Hinduism and that the Harry Potter books are dangerous because they encourage children to believe in black magic and wizardry.
Earlier this month investigators opened the tomb of Enrico "Renatino" De Pedis, the gang leader, in order to check long-standing claims that the remains of the teenager were buried alongside him.
They found his remains inside the tomb in the Sant' Apollinare basilica in Rome and also, intriguingly, other bones in a crypt nearby.
Investigators said the unidentified bones probably dated from the early 19th century, but they are being analysed by forensic experts to see if any of them might belong to Emanuela.
In 2005, an anonymous caller to a crime programme on Italian TV claimed that the key to the schoolgirl's kidnap lay in the tomb of the mobster, who was gunned down by rival gangsters in 1990.
PAT SAYS:
I was sent this story the other day by one of the Westminster priests who keeps in touch with me.
He himself said:
"Pat, I thought you may be interested in this. I had heard of this first during one of my visits to Rome.
I think the most rational explanation was that the girl was pregnant and shifted to London to have her baby, and was cared for into adulthood.
Where she is now, no one knows. Was her identity changed to protect the father of the child?
Who was the father of the child (if indeed she were pregnant) that the Popes own doctor would visit London for no ostensible reason"?
In any event it a very sad story.
Anyone who knows the truth is morally obliged to reveal it.
I hope the girl is alive and not dead.
I think her family deserve the truth.
Is this one of the VATICAN DISAPPEARED?
PAT SAYS:
I was sent this story the other day by one of the Westminster priests who keeps in touch with me.
He himself said:
"Pat, I thought you may be interested in this. I had heard of this first during one of my visits to Rome.
I think the most rational explanation was that the girl was pregnant and shifted to London to have her baby, and was cared for into adulthood.
Where she is now, no one knows. Was her identity changed to protect the father of the child?
Who was the father of the child (if indeed she were pregnant) that the Popes own doctor would visit London for no ostensible reason"?
In any event it a very sad story.
Anyone who knows the truth is morally obliged to reveal it.
I hope the girl is alive and not dead.
I think her family deserve the truth.
Is this one of the VATICAN DISAPPEARED?
