Fresh queries in Vatican kidnap mystery

Evidence implicating members of a Rome underworld gang in the kidnapping of a Vatican schoolgirl has raised fresh questions over a 40-year-old mystery.

Mystery still surrounds the disappearance of Italian teenager Emanuela Orlandi in 1983.

Evidence implicating members of a Rome underworld gang in the kidnapping of a Vatican schoolgirl has raised fresh questions over a 40-year-old mystery that has ­embarrassed the Holy See.

Emanuela Orlandi, then aged 15 and the daughter of a Vatican messenger, was on her way home from a flute lesson when she disappeared from a street in Rome on June 22, 1983.

The case was at one point linked to an international plot to blackmail the Vatican, with suggestions Orlandi was being held by Turkish terrorists ­demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Later investigators looked into claims she had been seized by members of the Magliana Band, a criminal organisation, in an attempt to recover money lost by gangsters in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, a Vatican-linked bank.

Roberto Calvi, the Banco ­Ambrosiano chairman known as “God’s banker” because of his close association with the Holy See, fled Italy before the bank’s collapse.

His body was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982.

Testimony first delivered in 2008 by Salvatore Sarnataro is throwing fresh light on Orlandi’s case. Sarnataro told police that his gangster son had confessed to participating in an operation to shadow and kidnap the girl on the orders of Enrico De Pedis, a boss of the Magliana Band.

According to a report published at the weekend by La ­Repubblica, Sarnataro told police that his son Marco, who died in 2007, had made the admission when both men were in prison on drugs ­charges. Sarnataro said Marco told him he had been rewarded for the “courtesy” with the gift of a Suzuki sports motorbike.

“I really don’t know why Marco decided to tell me about his role in the Orlandi kidnap. I understood immediately that he was living through a period of great fear,” Sarnataro told police.

The father’s testimony in 2008 came two days after two of Orlandi’s friends had identified Marco in a police photo as the person who had followed them when they were with Orlandi in the days leading up to her kidnap.

Maurizio Abbatino, a former boss of the Magliana Band who has collaborated with the police, told writer Raffaella Fanelli that De Pedis had organised the kidnap in order to recover money he had lost in a Vatican bank.

On the first occasion, a man sitting in the passenger seat of a car had reached out of the window and touched Orlandi’s arm, saying to his companion: “That’s her.”

On the second, the same man had trailed the group persistently until Orlandi had walked through the gates of the Vatican.

A police report records the testimony of her friend, identified as Angelo R, after viewing an album of 18 photographs. “After examining the photos carefully, Angelo states with a high degree of certainty that the subject is present in photo number 8.” The subject was Marco Sarnataro.

In the run-up to the 39th anniversary of his sister’s disappearance, Pietro Orlandi said he had received evidence that had convinced him people in the Vatican knew what had happened.

“I am 100 per cent sure, thanks to these sources, that Pope Francis knows the truth about my sister.”

The Times