Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media/Handout through Reuters
Pope Francis on Sunday weighed right into a decades-old scandal that has rocked the Vatican, defending Pope John Paul II after the brother of a lacking teen raised allegations that the previous pope sought out underage women to molest.
Francis’s feedback got here up in relation to the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old lady who lived within the Vatican and vanished in 1983. Her brother, Pietro Orlandi, has vowed to find what occurred to her, and he just lately met with the Vatican’s chief prosecutor who was assigned to the case earlier this yr.
After assembly with prosecutor Alessandro Diddi on Tuesday, Orlandi appeared on an Italian discuss present, the place he performed an audio recording by which an alleged Italian mafia member claimed John Paul knew of individuals bringing ladies into the Vatican to molest them.
“They inform me Wojtyla [Karol Józef Wojtyła, the birth name of John Paul II] used to exit within the evenings with two Polish monsignors and it actually was to not bless homes,” Orlandi mentioned on the present, based on Reuters.
The fervor surrounding Orlandi’s feedback finally reached Francis on Sunday, who decried the concept that John Paul dedicated any sexual crimes.
“Sure that I'm deciphering the feelings of the devoted from all around the world, I categorical a grateful thought to the reminiscence of St. John Paul, who in nowadays has been the item of offensive and unfounded insinuations,” Francis mentioned throughout his weekly midday handle in St. Peter’s Sq., based on Reuters. John Paul II was canonized as a saint in 2014.
The feedback had been additionally derided by John Paul’s longtime secretary, Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who labeled them as “unreal, false and laughable in the event that they weren’t tragic and even legal,” based on the Related Press.
Orlandi defended his feedback, saying it was not him who made the allegations. As a substitute, he informed Reuters, he was “repeating what others had mentioned. I actually didn't see it myself.”
The suspicion relating to Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance was rooted in allegations that the Vatican typically housed intercourse slaves—younger ladies and nuns—who had been abused by clergymen. The long-standing concept was supported by the late Father Gabriele Amorth, as soon as the Vatican’s chief exorcist, who claimed in 2012 that her disappearance was “a case of sexual exploitation leading to homicide.”
Pietro Orlandi has petitioned the court docket to pursue each lead, together with the excavation of a re-sealed tomb in 2019 that, per an nameless tip, he believed his sister might have been buried in. Emanuela Orlandi’s physique was not discovered within the tomb—which was empty, regardless of itemizing its inhabitant as a German noblewoman—the Vatican confirmed on the time.