Vatican City - The Vatican weighed in Tuesday on reports implicating an archbishop and former top Vatican official in the kidnapping and murder of a 15-year-old girl, condemning them as "unfounded."

"The deep pain of the Orlandi family has been revived, without showing respect and humanity to people who have already suffered so much," said a Vatican statment, referring to the unresolved disappearance 25 years ago of Emanuela Orlandi.

Italian newspapers Tuesday gave front-page coverage to a woman's claims that her former lover, a Rome underworld boss, murdered Orlandi at the behest of the late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the disgraced former head of the Vatican's bank.

Criminal informants have in the past linked the June 1983 disappearance of Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, to the Rome-based Banda della Magliana gang.

But with her claims, Sabrina Minardi, the former lover of the gang's boss, Enrico De Pedis, has for the fist time implicated a Vatican official.

"The decision (to kidnap and kill Orlandi) came from high levels, such as Marcinkus" and was meant "as a message," Minardi was quoted as saying in a police interrogation report published by the daily Corriere della Sera.

She also claims to have witnessed De Pedis tossing into a cement mixer a plastic bag, which he told her contained Orlandi's body

Prosecutors are examining Minardi's claims, news reports said.

But the Vatican vigorously denied any involvement in the case by American-born Marcinkus, who died in 2006 aged 84.

"Slanderous and unfounded accusations are being made with regard to His Eminence Monsignor Marcinkus, who has been dead for some time and cannot defend himself," the Vatican statement said.

When Marcinkus died, he left unanswered many questions about his time as head of the Vatican's bank during the 1970s and 1980s.

These included dealings with Michele Sindona, a convicted fraudster linked to the mafia who died in prison in Italy in 1986 after drinking coffee laced with cyanide.

Marcinkus also oversaw the Vatican's stake in Banco Ambrosiano and knew the Italian bank's chairman, Roberto Calvi, who was found hanged from a London bridge in
1982.

Marcinkus was protected by Vatican diplomatic immunity from being questioned by Italian prosecutors about his role in Banco Ambrosiano's collapse.

Minardi, who in the early 1980s left her former husband - the then Lazio football star Bruno Giordano - for De Pedis, currently lives in a centre for people recovering from substance abuse.

De Pedis was shot dead in a Rome street in 1990 in what was described as a gangland killing. (dpa)