Image caption Schoolgirl Emanuela Orlandi went missing in Rome in June 1983 
 
 A former mafia mobster has written to the Pope asking to confess three "very important secrets", including details about one of Italy's most famous missing persons cases, it's been reported. 
 
 In a six-page letter, Vincenzo Calcara says he is "convinced" his confessions "can change the course of certain events", according to La Repubblica newspaper. Calcara was a member of Sicily's Cosa Nostra, before becoming a so-called "pentito", or police collaborator. 
 
 Now he wants to meet Pope Francis one-to-one, apparently to divulge information relating to the disappearance of 15-year-old schoolgirl Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, who went missing in Rome in 1983, Il Messaggero newspaper reports. 
 
 "The truth on this incident has been kept hidden for years," Calcara writes. "Because to reveal it would be like opening a box and bringing to light truths so weighty as to throw into crisis a system that links the Vatican with other deviant entities." 
 
 At meeting with mafia victims' families in March, Pope Francis warned mafia operatives they would "end up in hell" unless they choose to repent. The speech is considered one of the Vatican's strongest attacks on Italy's organised crime networks. 
 
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 BY BRUCE JOHNSTON IN ROME THE MAFIA WAS behind the assassination plot which left the Pope badly injured in 1991, according to a supergrass. 
 
 Vincenzo Calcara, a turncoat described by Mafia watchers as a serious and reliable collaborator, said Ali Agca, the Turk who shot the Pontiff in St Peter's Square, was a hit-man working for the Mafia. 
 
 Calcara said that Salvatore "Toto" Rina, the Mafia's now jailed Godfather, and Antonio Vaccarino, a former mayor of a small town who has been embroiled in many organised-crime inquiries, were behind the attempt. 
 
 Also working together with them was a man called Antonov, whom the other two later had killed and secretly buried near Milan, Calcara said. 
 
 Magistrates in Sicily have sent transcripts of his testimony to colleagues in Rome; however reports said that a search for a body following the turncoat's indications had produced nothing, adding that investigators had expressed their doubts as to the veracity of the claims. "In the beginning it was said that the Mafia had ordered that the Pope be killed, but there is nothing to suggest that this is true," said Antonio Marini, the prosecutor who handled investigations into the assassination attempt. 
 
 However, Agca did visit Palermo four months before he shot the Pope; and Calcara recently accused a leading Vatican figure and Sicilian criminal exponents of recycling dirty money. Meanwhile, the Mafia's jailed "cashier", Pippo Calo, has become the object of a new arrest warrant. ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Pope was uncompromising in his criticism of the mafia as he met family members bereaved by organised crime 
 
 Pope Francis has launched a stinging attack on the mafia, warning gangsters that they will go to hell unless they repent and stop doing evil. 
 
 "Blood-stained money, blood-stained power, you can't bring it with you to your next life. Repent," he said. 
 
 He was speaking at a prayer vigil for relatives of those killed by the mafia. 
 
 The Pope has spoken out frequently about the evils of corruption and wrote a booklet on the subject in 2005 when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. 
 
 'No joy' 
 
 The meeting near Rome on Friday - organised by a citizens' group called Libera - was aimed at demonstrating the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to organised crime, and rejecting what some critics say were links between parts of the Church and mafia bosses who claimed to be good Catholics. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The vigil is held every year, but this was the first time that it was attended by the Pope 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption The Pope told told Italy's mobsters to relinquish their 'blood-stained money' which 'cannot be taken into paradise' 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption More than 1,000 people attended prayers with the Pope at a church near the Vatican 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The meeting was an attempt to draw a line under the church's historic ties with mafia dons claiming to be God-fearing Roman Catholics 
 
 The vigil was filled with those who have suffered at the hands of the mafia, including people whose family members and loved ones had been killed. 
 
 As the names of those murdered were read out, the Pope listened, deep in sombre thought, says he BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome. 
 
 After expressing solidarity with the 842 people at the vigil, he said that he could not leave the service without addressing those not present: The "protagonists" of mafia violence. 
 
 "This life that you live now won't give you pleasure. It won't give you joy or happiness," he said. 
 
 "There's still time to not end up in hell, which is what awaits you if you continue on this path." 
 
 Our correspondent says there is a long list of brave priests in Italy who have stood up to the mafia, and some have paid with lives. 
 
 But he says that the wider Church has been accused of not doing enough to confront the gangsters. 
 
 Anti-mafia activists hope that the Pope's words are a signal that he is on their side.
– In what could be one of history's more intriguing cases of a Catholic confessing his sins, a former mobster has asked for a meeting with Pope Francis so he can confess three "very important secrets." Vincenzo Calcara, described by the BBC as a "mafia turncoat" who was a member of Sicily's Cosa Nostra before becoming a police informant, wrote a six-page letter to the pope claiming that what he has to say "can change the course of certain events," according to local media. (This after Pope Francis in March warned mobsters to repent or "end up in hell.") Specifically, he implies he has information about the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee. Calcara wrote that what happened has been kept secret "because to reveal it would be like opening a box and bringing to light truths so weighty as to throw into crisis a system that links the Vatican with other deviant entities." It's not Calcara's first run-in with the church: Years ago, he claimed that Ali Agca, who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in a St. Peter's Square shooting in 1991, was a hitman hired by the mafia, according to the Catholic Herald. And in 1994, the AP reported Calcara claimed that a US archbishop who once ran the Vatican bank had helped mobsters launder $6.5 million through the bank. That allegation was denied by the cardinal who ran the Vatican bank at the time.