Fr. Lombardi answers claims made
in Italian media about a 1983 cold case
Translated from
April 14, 2012
The following is a translation of a statement from Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press Office, in response to various allegations in the Italian media accusing the Vatican of failing to provide Italian investigators with information regarding the abduction and disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a Vatican functionary, back in 19083.
The tragic abduction of the girl Emanuela Orlandi has been brought back to public attention in recent months by some initiatives and interventions that have been echoed in the press, where doubts have been raised again whether the relevant institutions or personalities in the Vatican had really done everything possible to seek the truth about what really happened.
Since a considerable time has passed since the facts in question (the abduction occurred on June 22, 1983, almost 30 years ago), and a good part of the persons then in positions of responsibility at the Vatican have died, it is not possible to carry out a detailed re-examination of the events.
Nonetheless, it is possible - thanks to some testimony that is especially reliable and a re-reading of available documentation - to substantially verify the criteria and attitudes with which Vatican authorities at the time proceeded to face the situation.
The principal questions to be answered are the following:
- Did the Vatican authorities at the time commit themselves genuinely to face the situation and did they collaborate with Italian authorities in this sense?
- Are there any new elements, not previously disclosed but known by anyone in the Vatican that could be useful in order to lead to the truth?
It is only right to recall first of all that Pope John Paul II personally showed himself to be specially concerned about the tragic event, and that he intervened publicly many times (at least eight in one year) with appeals for the liberation of Emanuela to whoever had taken her; paid a visit to the family; and saw to it that her brother Pietro would be guaranteed employment at the Vatican. This personal commitment by the Pope was matched by that of his co-workers.
Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Secretary of State, and therefore, the Pope's primary collaborator, personally followed the investigation, to the point that, as it was known at the time, he had a special telephone line installed for the abductors to use if they wished to.
As he has attested in the past and again recently, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who was at the time, principal counselor at the Secretariat of State, and who is today the principal and most authoritative witness as to what took place then, not just the Secretariat of State but even the Governatorate was committed to doing everything possible to confront the sad situation by providing the necessary collaboration to the Italian authorities who obviously had the competence and the responsibility for the investigations, since the crime happened in Rome. [The girl was believed abducted from a city street in Rome as she was waiting for a bus to go home after school.]
The full availability for collaboration on the part of the Vatican personages who occupied positions of authority at the time was the outcome of facts and circumstances. Just to cite one example, the investigators (particularly the SISDE [Italy's security information service]), had access to the Vatican switchboard in order to monitor any possible calls from the abductors, and on other subsequent occasions, Vatican authorities called on the Italian authorities to help unmask various tricks attempted by persons claiming to have information about the crime.
The truth was affirmed in the Note Verbale of the Secretariat o State No. 187,168, dated March 4, 1987, in response to the first formal request for information presented by the Italian investigating magistrate dated November 13, 1986, which stated that "all the information related to the case... was transmitted at the time to the prosecuting magistrate Dott. Sica".
Since all the letters and information coming from the Vatican were promptly turned over to Dott. Domenico Sica and to the Inspectorate of Public Security assigned to the Vatican, it was assumed that such documentation was given to the custody of the competent Italian judicial authorities.
In the second phase of the investigation, years later, the three formal requests for information and questionnaires addressed to Vatican authorities by the Italian investigators (one in 1994 and two in 1995) were answered accordingly (Notes Verbale from the Secretariat of State No. 346,491, dated May 3, 1994; No. 369,354, dated April 27, 1995; and No. 372,117, dated June 21, 1995).
As demanded by the investigators, Mr. Ercole Orlandi (Emanuela's father), Commandant Camilo Cibin (then commandant of Vaticna security), Cardinal Agostino Casaroli (then Secretary of State), Mons. Eduardo Martinez Somalo (then Deputy Secretary of State), Mons. Giovanni Battista Re( then principal counselor at State), Mons. Dino Monduzzi (then prefect of the Pontifical Household), and Mons. Claudio Maria Celli (then Under-Secretary for Relations with States) presented depositions to the judges of the Vatican Tribunal on the questions asked by the investigators, and the documentation was sent through the Italian Embassy to the Holy See, to the Italian authorities who requested them. Copies of the files are still available and continue to be at the disposition of investigators.
It must also be pointed out that at the time of Emanuela's disappearance, Vatican authorities, in a spirit of true collaboration, conceded to the Italian investigators and to SISDE the authorization to monitor the Orlandis' family telephone, and free access to visit the Orlandi family home when they needed to without requiring any Vatican intermediary.
Therefore it is unfounded to accuse the Vatican of having refused to cooperate with the Italian authorities assigned to investigate the case.
This provides an opportunity to reiterate that it has always been the practice of the Holy See to respond to international inquiries, and it is unfair to affirm the contrary (as the media did recently regarding a questionnaire about the IOR, which was never transmitted to the Secretariat of State, to begin with, as confirmed by competent Italian diplomatic authorities).
The fact that an Italian magistrate was not present at the depositions in question, for which Italian authorities were requested to provide the questions to be asked the persons making the depositions, is also in accordance with ordinary international practice in judicial cooperation, and should not be a matter for surprise, much less for suspicion (See Art. 4 of the European Convention on Judicial Assistance in Penal Matters, April 20. 1959).
The substance of the question is that, unfortunately, the Vatican was not in possession of any concrete element that might be useful to solving the case, and therefore could not provide any such help to the investigators.
At that time, Vatican authorities - on the basis of messages received that referred to Ali Agca (the abduction came during the preliminary investigation into his assassination attempt on the Pope) - shared the prevailing opinion that the abduction had been the work of an obscure criminal organization to exert pressures against the possible conviction and imprisonment of Agca.
There was no ground to think of other possible motivations for the abduction. Attributing knowledge of secret information regarding the abduction itself to Vatican institutions without naming names, does not therefore correspond to any reliable or reasonably based information. Sometimes, it almost seems like an alibi in the face of the discouragement and frustration of failing to find the truth.
In conclusion, in the light of the testimonies and elements that are known, I wish to affirm decisively the following points:
- All the Vatican authorities collaborated with commitment and transparency with Italian authorities to face the situation in the first phase of investigation, and in all subsequent inquiries.
- Nothing has been hidden, nor are there any 'secrets' in the Vatican to be disclosed about this case. To continue to affirm this is completely unjustified, if only because - and this must be said once more - all the information that was available to the Vatican at the time was turned over promptly to the investigating magistrate and to police authorities. Moreover, the SISDE, the Police Questura of Rome, and the Carabinieri (Italian State Police) had direct access to the Orlandi family and to all documentation that could be useful to the investigation.
- If the Italian investigators believe that it is useful or necessary to present new questionnaires to be answered by Vatican authorities, they can do so at any time, following customary practice, and they will find, as always, the appropriate cooperation.
Finally, since the burial of Enrico De Pedis in a tomb in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare continues to be a matter of curiosity and discussion - even apart from its possible relationship to the Orlandi abduction - it must be reiterated that the Church will not place any obstacle to any inspection of the tomb, or that the remains be reburied elsewhere. in order to restore the serenity appropriate to such a sacred environment.
In conclusion, we wish to draw inspiration from the intense personal participation of John Paul II in the tragic fate of the young girl and the suffering of her family, who continue to be in the dark about what happened to her. The more so because this suffering is revived, unfortunately, by every new line of speculation that has so far been unsuccessful.
Persons who disappear every year in Italy, about whom nothing more is known despite all investigations and inquiries, are unfortunately numerous. But the story of this young and innocent girl who was a Vatican citizen continues to return to the spotlight.
Let this not be a reason to discharge the fault wrongly on the Vatican, but rather an occasion to bear in mind of the terrible and often neglected reality constituted by the disappearance of persons - especially the younger ones - and for everyone, with everything possible, to oppose every criminal activity that could be the cause of such disappearances.
*
Enrico De Pedis was the leader of a Mafia-life criminal gang operating in Rome who was slain in a gang battle and then inexplicably buried in the crypt of the Roman Basilica. It is thought that De Pedis's gang was involved in the Banco Ambrosiano collapse of 1982 in which the Vatican IOR was the majority stockholder, and that his gang may have abducted Emanuela because her father, who worked in the Pontifical Household, had come across some incriminating documents about the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, so it was an attempt to silence him. By coincidence, the bus stop where Emanuela was last seen is not far from Sant'Apollinare, but that does not explain why conspiracy theorists think that her body may be in the same tomb where De Pedis was buried!
Here's how AP reported on Fr. Lombardi's statement, providing another angle from which to consider the statement:
Vatican says it has 'no secrets'
about teenage girl's 1983 disappearance
By Frances D'Emilio
VATICAN CITY, April 14 (AP) — The Vatican insisted Saturday it has done everything possible to try to resolve the 1983 disappearance of an employee's teenage daughter and has no objections to allowing inspection of the basilica tomb of a reputed mobster from a gang purportedly linked to her presumed kidnapping.
Its chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, made the assertion following media speculation that the Vatican knows something it has not revealed about the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi in Rome.
Sparking the speculation was a Good Friday homily on April 6 in St. Peter's Basilica by the papal preacher, who decried that many "atrocious" crimes go unsolved.
With Pope Benedict XVI among those listening, the preacher, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, included this ringing appeal in his homily: "Don't carry your secret to the grave with you!"
The priest didn't name any names or specify any crimes, but his
unusual choice for Good Friday reflection immediately sparked speculation that the appeal must have been meant for some Vatican official with knowledge about the Orlandi case, which the Vatican has viewed as a kidnapping.
[D'Emilio makes it appear that this was the only content of Fr. Cantalamessa's homily. He worked it into his sermon the same that in 2010 he worked in a far more controversial statement - in which he referred to a Jewish friend who had written him that the media assault on the Church regarding the sex-abuse scandal reminded him of the pre-Holocaust anti-Semitic campaign by the Nazis. Perhaps Fr. Cantalamessa should consider the propriety of working in these topical references into his Good Friday homilies because they tends to backfire against the Vatican and always tend to overshadow his main homily theme. In the Orlandi case reference, he seems to assume the MSM viewpoint that the Vatican must be keeping something back, and IMHO, it was inappropriate to do this at the Good Friday homily. Unfortunately, this provides him the only occasion for public coverage, because his four Lenten sermons to the Curia are made in private, although the texts are eventually published in some Catholic media outlets.]
Emanuela Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared after leaving her family's Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome.
[No, she disappeared after the music lesson, when she was waiting for a bus to go back home.] Her father was a lay employee of the Holy See
[specifically, of the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household].
[D'Emilio continues by quoting various parts of Fr. Lombardi's statement.]
Apparently in hopes of putting to rest speculation, the Vatican is willing to allow a reputed mobster's tomb in the Vatican Basilica dell'Apollinare, a Rome church, to be inspected, and the remains moved elsewhere, Lombardi added.
Four years ago, Italian news reports quoted the dead man's former lover as telling Rome prosecutors that mobsters from the city's crime syndicate, known as the Magliana gang, had kidnapped the girl and had her body dumped in a cement mixer near a beach outside the capital.
Italian prosecutors cannot publicly discuss a case while it is under investigation, so it is unclear if these claims have shed any light on Orlandi's disappearance.
The Vatican at the time described the woman's claims as having "extremely doubtful value." The woman's lover, Enrico De Pedis, was gunned down in 1990 as he rode his motorscooter in Rome.
The 2008 media reports also claimed the woman told prosecutors that the girl had been kidnapped on orders from Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the late U.S. prelate who had headed the Vatican bank and was linked to a huge Italian banking scandal in the 1980s. Marcinkus had always asserted his innocence in the scandal.
Earlier this week, the UK Guardian ran this story on the Orlandi case, with a misleading headline about which the story says nothing more than what is stated in the headline.
Rome prosecutors link Vatican cleric
to 29-year mystery of missing girl
Investigators say senior Catholic has evidence about
1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi
by John Hooper in Rome
April 12, 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
[NO! Former Mayor of Rome], 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.
His question was interpreted as an attempt to clear the way for the prosecutors to order the reopening of the tomb in which gangster Enrico de Pedis has been interred since 1990.
Emanuela's body has never been found and, according to one of the many theories about her disappearance, it was laid to rest alongside that of De Pedis. But at the beginning of the month, prosecutors unexpectedly withdrew support for the exhumation while briefing Italian reporters that they believed at least one high-ranking Roman Catholic cleric had information about her disappearance.
A source close to the prosecution service was quoted as saying "behind the sacred walls, someone is still alive [and] in possession of evidential fragments of the truth".
[Then, name that someone!]
But in an interview with the daily Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said: "If anyone on the inside had known anything, he would have said it. We were all interested in clearing [the case] up."
Her brother, Pietro Orlandi, expressed astonishment at the prosecutors' decision not to open De Pedis's tomb. "I don't understand what could have made them change their minds," he said.
According to a report in the Rome daily
La Repubblica, the prosecutor leading the inquiry has visited the crypt where the gangster is buried under a marble structure copied from the tomb of a pope.
Conspiracy theorists have linked Emanuela's disappearance at a bus stop to any number of other events. She vanished as investigators were looking into the still obscure reasons for the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, and the murky affairs of the Vatican bank after the mysterious death in London of the financier Roberto Calvi.
In 2005, attempts to solve the case were given new life when an anonymous caller rang an Italian television programme to allege that Emanuela had been kidnapped as a favour to the man who was in 1983 the vicar general of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, and that whoever sought to solve the riddle should see who was buried in the basilica of Sant'Apollinare.
[What possible interest could Cardinal Poletti have in having the girl abducted?]
Subsequently De Pedis's former lover gave prosecutors another explanation: that Emanuela had been kidnapped and murdered by the gang on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, at that time the president of the Vatican Bank. Marcinkus died in 2006.
Last year, a former gang member offered a third version, saying the teenager had been seized and held hostage in an effort to get back money invested by its members through the Vatican bank.
Antonio Mancini said that De Pedis decided to write off the money and stop pressuring the Vatican, and claimed this was how the gangster earned his interment in one of Rome's most august places of worship.
De Pedis – nicknamed Renatino – was shot dead in an ambush in a cobbled street near the Campo de' Fiori in 1990. The moving of his body from a cemetery to the basilica of Sant'Apollinare only came to light seven years later because of investigations by a journalist.
It subsequently emerged that the move was authorised – in apparent violation of canon law – by Cardinal Poletti.
[Poletti (1914-1997) was Vicar general of Rome from 1973-1991, therefore under Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II. As Vicar of Rome, he would have had the competence to authorize burial in one of the Roman basilicas. In the second Conclave of 1978 which elected John Paul II, he was said to have received as many as 30 votes in the early ballotings. He was President of the Italian bishops' conference from 1985-1991.]
The rector of the basilica at the time, Piero Vergari, later wrote: "I never knew anything about [De Pedis's] relations with other people … He helped me a lot to prepare the soup kitchens I organised for the poor."
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/04/2012 01:55]