Pope Francis Denies Claims That John Paul II Prowled For Underage Girls Like Missing Teen Emanuela Orlandi
Pope Francis on Sunday weighed into a decades-old scandal that has rocked the Vatican, defending Pope John Paul II after the brother of a missing teen raised allegations that the former pope sought out underage girls to molest.
Francis’s comments came up in relation to the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl who lived in the Vatican and vanished in 1983. Her brother, Pietro Orlandi, has vowed to discover what happened to her, and he recently met with the Vatican’s chief prosecutor who was assigned to the case earlier this year.
After meeting with prosecutor Alessandro Diddi on Tuesday, Orlandi appeared on an Italian talk show, where he played an audio recording in which an alleged Italian mafia member claimed John Paul knew of people bringing women into the Vatican to molest them.