Pope dismisses accusations against John Paul II.
Pope Francis defended St. John Paul II, condemning as "offensive and baseless" insinuations that recently surfaced about the late pontiff. The Vatican's media apparatus had described as "slanderous" an audiotape from a purported Roman mobster who insinuated that John Paul would go out looking for underage girls to molest. The disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee who lived at the Vatican, in 1983 is an enduring mystery that has spawned countless theories and so far fruitless investigations in the decades since.