The Vatican is defending the late archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank whose tenure was marred by financial scandal, from media reports…that he ordered the killing of a 15-year-old girl in 1983.

Marcinkus, an American who died in Arizona in 2006 at the age of 84, was accused by the girlfriend of a slain mobster of hiring hitmen to kidnap and kill Emanuela Orlandi in 1983…

There has also long been speculation of a link between the Orlandi case and alleged mafia involvement in Vatican finances.

Such theories connect Orlandi’s disappearance and the still unsolved death in 1982 of Italian Roberto Calvi, known as “God’s Banker”, who was found hanged from Blackfriars Bridge in London after the institution he ran, Banco Ambrosiano, collapsed.

Calvi was first ruled to have committed suicide, but an Italian court found last year that he had probably been murdered by the mafia for losing money he was supposed to launder.

The Vatican is upset about journalists who are “sensationalizing” the case. At least they didn’t have the chutzpah to call the story “implausible” or “unlikely”.




  1. badcowboy says:

    Wow, first they protect child molesters and now corrupt mafia hit men. Me thinks there head is in the wrong place.

  2. BrianS says:

    According to the story, the Vatican is upset because Marcinkus is dead and can’t defend himself. What about the girl? She died when she was 15. Marcinkus lived until he was 84.

    I guess this is what you get when the Pope’s background is as Head of the Office of the Inquisition. (previous title for the department he ran before becoming Pope)

  3. eyeofthetiger says:

    God’s love.

  4. Ah_Yea says:

    Conspiracy Theorist Unite!

    While I am no huge fan of the Vatican, I have to call this one. Even the article quoted above states: “One judge who oversaw cases related to the Magliana gang and Calvi said that, while it was possible the mob kidnapped Orlandi in the hope of securing a ransom to recover money they had lost in Banco Ambrosiano, accusing Marcinkus was ‘pure fantasy'”.

    And pure fantasy it is…

  5. I think like badcowboy- their behavior is very strange.

  6. GigG says:

    I knew that Godfather III sucked. What I didn’t know was that it was a documentary.

  7. Personality says:

    Where is mr. mustard to defend this?

  8. Rick Cain says:

    Well we can always trust the honesty of the church, look at its history. I mean the purges, witch burnings, holding back of science, nazi collaboration, pedophilia, and mobster ties were committed by a few bad apples and don’t reflect the church in general.


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