The Vatican insisted today it has done everything possible to try to resolve the 1983 disappearance of an employee's teenage daughter and has no objections to allowing inspection of the basilica tomb of a reputed mobster from a gang purportedly linked to her presumed kidnapping.

THE Vatican defended the late archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank whose tenure was marred by financial scandal, from reports yesterday that he ordered the killing of a 15-year-old girl in 1983.

Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who had once been the top official at the Vatican’s bank, has died.