By Frances D'Emilio -
The Associated Press
Pope Francis publicly defended his saintly predecessor John Paul II on Sunday and condemned the "offensive and unfounded inferences" made against the late pontiff.
In a message to tourists and pilgrims in the Vatican's St. Peter's Square, Francis said he aspired to interpret the sentiments of the faithful around the world by expressing his gratitude to the memory of Karol Józef Wojtyła of Poland, who became pope from 1978. and 2005.
A few days earlier, the Vatican had described as "defamatory" an audio recording from an alleged Roman mobster who suggested that John Paul II was looking for underage girls to abuse.
Francis recites a prayer from his study window overlooking St. Peter's Square on Sunday, April 16, 2023. Andrew Medichini / AP
The recording was played on an Italian television program by Pietro Orlandi, brother of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee, whose disappearance in 1983 is still a mystery that has given rise to endless theories and investigations. .
[Francisco is released from the hospital and jokes: "I'm
still alive"]
Pietro Orlandi met for hours last week with Vatican prosecutors, who reopened investigations into the disappearance this year.
The Italian Parliament has also launched a commission of inquiry into the case.
Emanuela Orlandi disappeared on June 22, 1983 after leaving her family's apartment in Vatican City to attend music lessons in Rome.
Her father was a legal employee.
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Among the theories about what happened to him, there are some that link the disappearance to the failed assassination attempt on John Paul II in 1981 in St. Peter's Square or to the international financial scandal surrounding the Vatican bank.
Other theories point to a role played by the underworld of Rome.
The Netflix documentary
Vatican Girl
explores these scenarios and provides new testimonies from a friend who claims that the young woman told her a week before her disappearance that a high-ranking Vatican cleric had made sexual advances on her.
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His brother has long insisted that the Vatican knows more than it has let on.
The prosecutor in charge of the investigation affirms that the Pope has given him free rein to try to discover the truth.
During his stay at the Vatican last week, Pietro Orlandi provided prosecutors with an audiotape from an alleged Roman mobster in which he insinuated that John Paul II was out looking for underage girls to abuse them.
The editorial director of The Vatican noted in a scathing editorial that the insinuation lacked "evidence, indications, testimony or corroboration."
Andrea Tornielli, director of the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano, wrote an editorial in which he said that this insinuation lacks "evidence, indications, testimony or corroboration."
“No one deserves to be vilified like this, without even an iota of a lead, based on rumors
of
some unknown figure in the criminal underworld or some sleazy anonymous comment produced on live television,” he wrote.
John Paul II's secretary for many years, Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, criticized the insinuations as "unreal, false and laughable if not tragic and even criminal."
Pietro Orlandi's lawyer, Laura Sgro, has insisted that her client was not accusing anyone by releasing the recording.