One of Italy’s most notorious gangsters, Enrico De Pedis, is buried in a Roman Catholic basilica near Piazza Navona.
Why the Vatican allowed a top mobster to be buried in Sant’Apollinare has been a source of furious speculation since 1997, when the resting place of De Pedis — gunned down seven years earlier — was first revealed. The answer taking shape looks like something bestselling author Dan (The Da Vinci Code) Brown would have had trouble dreaming up. The story goes back to the 1980s and includes money-laundering allegations against the Vatican’s bank, the attempted assassination of the late Pope John Paul II, the murder-suicide of two Vatican Swiss guards, and the widely publicized kidnapping of a teenage girl. The shocking tale’s many threads began meshing in the mid 2000s. They were revived this week by the latest in a series of leaks that have rocked the Vatican — leaks observers believe are the result of an internal power struggle, one that has fuelled speculation about jostling to succeed Pope Benedict XVI. This time, a January letter fro...