Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the Cia, and the Mafia

by Paul L. Williams

most investigators, including Judge Parisi, had come to the conclusion that the kidnapping case revolved around sex and the problem of pedophilia that was mounting within the Holy See. If the matter was simply financial, Archbishop Marcinkus would have provided the restitution. If the matter was political, the resolution would have been made by Cardinal Casaroli, the Secretary of State. But the extortion appeared to revolve around a considerably more sinister episode. Rumors had been rampant about Archbishop Marcinkus’s taste for young girls and for sex parties within his private apartments.44 A scenario was gradually compiled that served to explain the kidnapping, the Vatican’s attempts at obstruction, and Cardinal Poletti’s participation in the payoff. Emanuela, by this account, had been sexually molested by Marcinkus. When the Banda received news of the incident, they kidnapped the girl in order to blackmail the IOR head for the money they had lost through Ambrosiano. Exposure of the statutory rape would have been devastating in the wake of the Sindona episode, the P2 headlines, the collapse of the Vatican’s shell companies, and the strange death of Roberto Calvi. Emanuela represented a $200 million baby. Marcinkus, after personally verifying that the girl was in the Banda’s custody, worked through P2 and Cardinal Poletti—not to secure Emanuela’s immediate release but to ensure her perpetual silence.