"I knew absolutely nothing about that story".

On the sidelines of the trial on the management of the Holy See's funds, the cardinal of Pattada Angelo Becciu responds to the affair of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old who disappeared in 1983 in mysterious circumstances in the Vatican.

In recent days, the revelations of the former deputy prosecutor of Rome , Giancarlo Capaldo have been discussed: in 2012, he said, two Vatican emissaries had offered to "do everything possible" to reveal where Orlandi was.

But in exchange they wanted something from the Italian judiciary, namely the exhumation of the body of the boss of the Banda della Magliana, Enrico "Renatino" De Pedis, in the basilica of Sant'Apollinare (where Emanuela had disappeared) to eliminate from the church a stone's throw from Piazza Navona in Rome "a too bulky corpse" whose discovery had caused great embarrassment in the Vatican.

In 2012 Becciu, now Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, was a substitute in the Secretariat of State. And yet, according to him, "I read those things in the newspapers".

THE PROCESS IN PROGRESS - As for the hearing of the trial on the management of the funds of the Secretariat of State in which Becciu is under investigation for embezzlement and abuse of office "the Court today ordered the transcription of the statements videotaped during the interrogations, in compliance with the requests from the defenses, which loudly requested the most transparent verification of what emerged from the investigations ", explain the lawyers Fabio Viglione and Maria Concetta Marzo.

"The authorization of the defenses to extract copies of the seized computer media, so far not issued by the Promotor of Justice, and not its mere consultation, unsuitable to fully guarantee the rights of defense, was then reaffirmed", they continue. "We await the decision on the further preliminary questions already posed and not yet decided by the Court - underline the two lawyers -, including the complete filing of the video recordings, without the omissions decided by surprise by the Promoters and never indicated in the minutes, in the hope of a swift start of the process within tracks of maximum legality ". "When and if the trial enters into the merits - they conclude - we will finally be able to demonstrate the Cardinal's absolute innocence from any accusation and his total institutional correctness".