Leaning out of the window of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis this time did not want to leave any room for rumors during the Angelus this Sunday. “Convinced of interpreting the feelings of the faithful around the world, I address a grateful memory to John Paul II, who these days is the object of offensive and baseless insinuations,” he said, in a very clear defense statement of the venerable Polish pope, applauded by the faithful present.
Karol Wojtyla is at the center of accusations that have generated a strong storm in the Vatican. They have to do with nothing less than the mysterious disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl, the daughter of a Vatican employee, who vanished on her way back from her music class in 1983 without her family ever knowing anything more about her. Forty years later, and after the premiere of a Netflix documentary – The Girl from the Vatican – that has gone around the world, the Holy See has reopened the case and last week the promoter of justice (Vatican prosecutor), Alessandro Diddi, she received her brother, Pietro Orlandi, for the first time, who has never stopped looking for her. After more than eight hours speaking with the promoter, Orlandi went on Italian television and hinted that Pope John Paul II, proclaimed a saint in 2014, was linked to the disappearance.
On the set of Di Martedì, from the private channel La 7, Orlandi appeared with a recording that contained an alleged testimony of a former member of a criminal group, the Roman gang of La Magliana, linked for years to the disappearance of the girl. In the audio, in which the identity of the recorded person is not identified, this man said, without proof and referring to John Paul II, that “he took them to bed; when the situation was already disgusting, the Secretary of State decided to intervene. But not by getting Wojtyla out of the way, but by talking to ‘that guy’. He, being an expert in prisons, because he was a chaplain in the reformatory and then in a prison, he addressed the prison chaplains. The prison chaplains, one from Calabria and the other a smart-ass, a certain Luigi and a certain Father Pietro, all they did was call De Pedis and say: ‘This is happening, can you give us a hand?’ And point. The rest is nonsense.” De Pedis is the bloodthirsty Enrico de Pedis, one of the three bosses of the Magliana gang, who donated a huge amount to be buried in the crypt of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinaris, in the center of Rome.
After showing the audio, the brother of the missing young woman indicated in the program: “They tell me that at night Wojtyla went out with two of his friends, Polish monsignors, sometimes he went out in his car for a drive. They tell me that she surely needed to breathe some air because the pontificate was hard. It makes me think… One tells me that surely he was not going to bless houses…”, he assured, in statements that have caused enormous controversy and that have been condemned by several important people in the Vatican before they The Pope intervened. The prosecutor, Diddi, summoned both Orlandi and her lawyer, Laura Sgrò, on Saturday to provide evidence about the insinuations, before which she invoked professional secrecy. The lawyer backed down and remarked that her client never accused John Paul II, but rather she limited herself to requesting that the facts “that have been referred to” be investigated.
The Polish Cardinal Estanislao Dziwisz, archbishop emeritus of Krakow and for years faithful personal secretary of John Paul II, has declared in a harsh statement that despite the fact that “what was done to Emanuela and her family was a gigantic crime”, it is also “it is criminal to profit from it with uncontrollable ravings”, and who wishes “that the image of John Paul I be freed from the whirlwind of deceit, mythomania and looting”. Also the editorial director of Osservatore Romano (the official Vatican newspaper), Andrea Tornielli, wrote that Orlandi’s accusations are “absurd and defamatory”, and that “defamation must be denounced because it is unworthy of a civilized country to treat in this way to any person, living or dead, clergyman or layman, pope, metalworker or unemployed youthâ€.
