Prosecutors want to investigate the suspicion and indications that Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Curia employee and a citizen of the Vatican, was kidnapped or murdered. The teenager did not come home on June 22, 1983 after a music lesson in the historic center of Rome. A body has never been found.
The start of investigations from the Vatican was confirmed on Monday evening after the Adnkronos news agency was the first to report the new development. “This is good news,” says Pietro Orlandi, the brother of the disappeared, from the newspaper “La Stampa” (Tuesday). “I am convinced that there are many people in the Vatican, including in high positions, who know what happened then.”
There have been countless rumors and theories surrounding the case over the past four decades: for example, that Orlandi was kidnapped to free the pope’s assassin, Ali Agca; that the young woman was abused by a senior Curia official; that the Roman mafia clan Banda della Magliana is involved in the case.
The missing person case had recently become internationally known through its own Netflix series (“Vatican Girl”), which showed various scenarios and suspicious elements related to the Orlandi case. As reported by the Italian media, the Vatican’s chief prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, now wants to re-examine all evidence and documents from that time and hear witnesses, including cardinals.
At the end of 2015, the public prosecutor’s office in Rome archived the case. Orlandi’s relatives then turned to the Vatican and directly to Pope Francis. Observers speculate that the pope himself has recently put the pressure on.
The recently deceased emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. and his private secretary Georg Gänswein appear in the case. Pietro Orlandi is convinced that Gänswein knows something about it from a Vatican file – the German archbishop himself said this to the lawyer of the next of kin.
However, in a book to be published this week, Gänswein writes: “I have never put anything straight in relation to the Orlandi case. This phantom file has not been made public simply because it does not exist.”
(SDA)