The Vatican today angrily rejected the accusation that a former official was behind the kidnap and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Rome 25 years ago.

In a statement it attacked the claim as an "infamous and baseless charge against a man who is dead and cannot defend himself".

Sabrina Minardi, the former mistress of Enrico De Pedis, a Rome criminal boss, has told police that Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, was kidnapped by De Pedis on the orders of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.

The Archbishop was the former head of IOR, the Vatican bank, and was implicated in events leading to the mysterious death of the Mafia-linked Italian banker Roberto Calvi.

"They did it to send a message to someone," she told prosecutors.

Archbishop Marcinkus later resigned in disgrace and died two years ago in Arizona aged 84.

Ms Minardi, whose testimony has led police to re-open the Orlandi case, claims that she was present when the teenager's body was put in a sack and thrown into a cement mixer at the resort of Torvaianica on the coast near Rome.

The most commonly held theory is that the Magliana gang abducted the girl to help KGB-backed conspirators put pressure on Italy to release Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish Grey Wolves gunman who attempted to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. The Orlandi family received a series of anonymous phone calls from men claiming that they could negotiate a deal, but the contacts came to nothing.

Ms Orlandi's mother, brother and three sisters continue to believe Ms Orlandi is alive. This week they have plastered Rome with replicas of the "missing" posters put up in 1983.

The family told Italian television they did not believe the claims made by Ms Minardi, who is a recovering drug addict. Before her affair with De Pedis, Ms Minardi was married to Bruno Giordano, the Lazio and Italy football star.

Inexplicably De Pedis, who had a long record of serious crime involving drugs trafficking, was buried in the church of Saint Apollinaris in Rome in a crypt normally reserved for prelates and saints after he was shot dead in a Rome street in 1990. A stylish underworld figure, he is alleged to have had close contacts with Church prelates and to have been "very religious". According to Ms Minardi Archbishop Marcinkus helped to launder money on De Pedis's behalf.

In its note the Vatican said that it had no intention of "interfering in any way" with the police investigation. But at the same time it could only express "strong regret and censure" over reports which owed "more to sensationalism than serious professional ethics" and had caused further pain to the Orlandi family.

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