Emanuela Orlandi (born 14 January 1968) was a Vatican teenager who mysteriously disappeared while returning home from music school in Rome on 22 June 1983. The case received worldwide attention from its very beginning, due to the public appeal of Pope John Paul II for her release after an unnamed terrorist organization claimed to be holding the girl in exchange for the liberation of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish terrorist who two years before attempted to assassinate the Pope. However, the subsequent investigation discovered that the allegation of international terrorism was a misdirection, and the real motive of the disappearance remains unknown. Over decades, the case has created much speculation about the involvement of international terrorism, organized crime, the role of a possible serial killer, and a plot inside the Holy See to cover up a sex scandal involving ecclesiastical figures.
Orlandi's family, in particular her brother Pietro,
consistently pressed the Vatican for the release of information about the case,
believing that the Holy See knew
more than it admitted. The Vatican
always maintained strict silence about the matter, denying any accusation of
involvement, but over the years, many voices from inside the Holy See suggested that someone
actually knew what happened to the missing girl.
Early life
Emanuela Orlandi
was the fourth of five children of Ercole
Orlandi and Maria Pezzano. Her
father was a lay employee in the papal household. The family lived inside Vatican City, and the children had the
free run of the Vatican Gardens,
according to her older brother Pietro.
Orlandi was in her second year of secondary school in Rome.
Although the school year had concluded, she continued to take flute lessons
three times per week at the Scuola di
Musica Tommaso Ludovico da Victoria, connected with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music.
She was also part of the church choir at the Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri in the Vatican.
Chronology
Disappearance
Orlandi usually traveled by bus to the music school, located
in Piazza di Sant'Apollinare. She
would get off after a few stops and walk the last few hundred meters. Upon
leaving home around 4:00 pm on 22 June 1983, Orlandi was late to class and the
weather was extremely hot. She asked Pietro to drive her, but he had other
commitments. "I've gone over it so
many times, telling myself if only I had accompanied her maybe it wouldn't have
happened", he recalled decades later.
At the end of class, Orlandi phoned home and explained to
her sister Federica that before the
lesson, she had received a job offer from a representative of Avon Products to hand out flyers at a
fashion show for two hours and added that she would meet him again at the end
of the lesson to give him an answer. Federica told her not to accept the offer,
believing the compensation to be excessive and thus unreliable, and suggested
discussing the matter with their parents first. While leaving school, Orlandi
spoke of the job offer with two female classmates, who then left her at a bus
stop in Corso Rinascimento, in front
of Palazzo Madama. She was last seen
around 7:30 pm at the bus stop, in the company of another girl, who was never
identified.
Later that night, after hours of waiting, Orlandi's family
began to worry and started looking for her in an area between the Vatican and
the music school. They called the director of the music school to ask if any of
their daughter's classmates had any information about her. Her father then went
to the police to report her as missing, but they assumed she was with friends
and suggested waiting. Orlandi was officially declared missing the next
morning. Over the next two days, announcements of her disappearance were
published in the Italian newspapers Il
Tempo, Paese Sera, and Il
Messaggero.
Subsequent events
In the first days after the disappearance, Giulio Gangi, a young agent of the SISDE and friend of the Orlandis,
supported the family in the initial investigations. Gangi questioned the two
police officers who were on duty in front of the Senate on the evening of the
disappearance. Both of them confirmed they saw a girl that could fit Orlandi's
description talking to a man who was holding an Avon cosmetic bag, although
they disagreed on the time. One of them placed this event before the music
lesson, while the other thought it was around 7:00 pm, by the time the class had
ended. According to the police, the man was driving a dark green BMW. Gangi
managed to track down the car, which was being repaired by a mechanic, as one
of its windows had been broken from the inside. Gangi discovered that the car
belonged to a woman, but before he could dig deeper, he was removed from the
investigation by his superiors.
At 6:00 pm on Saturday 25 June, a phone call was received
from a youth who claimed to be a sixteen-year-old boy named "Pierluigi". He reported that
he and his fiancée had met Orlandi in Piazza
Navona that afternoon. The young man mentioned her flute, hair, and a pair
of glasses that she did not like to wear, along with other details that fit the
missing girl. According to "Pierluigi",
Orlandi had just had a haircut and had introduced herself as "Barbarella", stating that she
had just run away from home and was selling Avon products.
On the same day, agents of the Italian secret service
visited Orlandi's house and made an inspection, after which they suggested that
the Orlandi family should start recording all phone calls.
On 28 June, a man calling himself "Mario" phoned the family and claimed to own a bar near Ponte Vittorio, between the Vatican and the music school. He
reported that a new customer, a young girl named "Barbara", had confided to him about being a runaway but
said that she would return home for her sister's wedding. Two days later, a
large number of posters displaying Orlandi's photograph were plastered across
Rome.
During the Angelus on 3 July, Pope John Paul II issued an appeal to those responsible for
Orlandi's disappearance, making the hypothesis of kidnapping official for the
first time. Two days later, the Orlandi family received the first of several phone calls made by an anonymous male with an American accent, who would
later be called "the American".
The man claimed to be calling on behalf of a terrorist organization that was
holding Emanuela Orlandi prisoner and demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish man who
shot the Pope in May 1981. As proof, "the
American" played a recording of Orlandi's voice over the phone. The
anonymous caller also mentioned "Mario" and "Pierluigi" in the previous phone calls, identifying them
as "members of the organization".
Despite decades of investigations, the real identity of "the American" has never been discovered.
The next day, on 6 July, "the
American" informed the Agenzia
Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) news agency of the demand for a prisoner
exchange, asking for the Pope's participation within twenty days and indicating
that a wastebasket in the public square near the Italian Parliament would contain proof that Orlandi was indeed in
his hands. These were to have been photocopies of her music school identity
card, a receipt for tuition, and a note handwritten by the kidnapped girl.
On the instructions of the alleged kidnappers, an audio
cassette was found near ANSA's offices on 17 July, which appeared to be a
recording of a girl being tortured. Police told the family they did not believe
the victim to be Orlandi, although her brother has expressed doubts about this.
However, former DIGOS agent Antonio
Asciore, who first found and listened to the cassette, claimed that the recording
given to the family and later published was not the original one he found. He
claimed that the original recording was longer than the published recording,
and a male voice could be heard in the background. The presence of male voices
was also reported in the original transcription of the recording made by police
immediately after discovery, giving support to Asciore's claims that the
published recording had been manipulated or faked.
On 4 August 1983, ANSA received a written statement from an
organization calling itself the Turkish
Anti-Christian Turkesh Liberation Front, later simply referred to as "Turkesh", who claimed to be
holding Orlandi in exchange for Ağca's release. Turkesh sent seven letters in
total between August 1983 and November 1985. Although they showed no evidence
of Orlandi's captivity, Turkesh was able to provide many precise details about
her private life, even mentioning the number of moles on her back. In October
1983, Turkesh released a statement saying they were also responsible for the
disappearance of Mirella Gregori,
who had gone missing in Rome forty days before Orlandi. Italian President Sandro Pertini made a public appeal for the
girls' release on 20 October 1983, linking the two cases to the public
consciousness.
From this moment on, the Italian Secret Services appointed
to both the Orlandis and the Gregoris the legal aid of lawyer Gennaro Egidio, who had a long career
in international affairs, terrorism, and international crimes, including the
death of Jeanette Bishop Rothschild, to redirect all phone calls from
the alleged kidnappers to his office. In the following months, whenever "the American" called, Egidio
attempted to make a deal for the girls' liberation, or at least to secure proof
of their condition. However, no such proof was ever obtained. Years later,
Egidio stated that the lack of this proof demonstrated that there was no real
kidnapping.
On 24 December 1983, six months after the disappearance, Pope John Paul II visited Orlandi's house
and told the family that "the case
of Emanuela is a case of international terrorism" and assured them
that "the Holy See is doing as much
as humanly possible to have a positive ending". Years later, Pietro Orlandi commented that "from that moment, instead, the Pope
allowed silence to surround Emanuela's case".
Fourteen years later, in 1997, the first investigation of
the Orlandi case was dismissed by the public prosecutor of Rome due to a lack
of new evidence. In his official statement, the magistrature classified the
theory of Orlandi's kidnapping by international terrorists as a misdirection.
In 2013, a few days after his election, Pope Francis met the
Orlandi family after a mass and told them that "Emanuela is in heaven", implying the girl's death.
According to the family, this statement was proof that the Holy See knew what
happened to Orlandi, despite the Vatican
claiming over many years that it was not involved in the matter. Pietro asked
many times to have a meeting with the Pope to ask for more
information, but the Vatican never replied.
Theories
Orlandi–Ağca
connection theory, Turkesh, Stasi, and the KGB
In mid-2000, Judge
Ferdinando Imposimato, an Italian prosecutor with extensive experience with
high-profile investigations, suggested that Orlandi, by then an adult, was
living a perfectly integrated life in the Muslim community and had probably lived
for a long time in Paris. In a prison interview ten years later, Ağca, who had
once declared that Orlandi had been kidnapped by Bulgarian agents of the Grey Wolves, stated that Orlandi was
alive and living safely in a cloistered convent in central Europe.
No clues were found about the existence of Turkesh, and
neither Italian authorities nor international intelligence agencies believed
such an organization ever existed. However, the detailed information they
provided about the girl led Italian investigators to conclude that Turkesh was
a fake organization created by the people responsible for her disappearance,
with the intent to mislead them. The fact that Turkesh was aware of information
known only to Italian authorities led many to think that the kidnappers had
links to Italian intelligence agencies.
In 2008, Günter
Bohnsack, a former Stasi agent, said that the secret services of East
Germany used the Orlandi case to create a false connection between Ağca and the
Grey Wolves to divert
attention from investigations into the theory that Ağca was actually involved
with the secret services of Bulgaria as he prepared his attempted assassination
of Pope John Paul II. According to
Bohnsack, it was the Stasi who sent fake letters to the Vatican, written in
Turkish or Italian, to make them believe the Grey Wolves were holding the girl captive and wanted Ağca's
release. Bohnsack said the order for this operation (called "Operation Papst") came
directly from the KGB.
Organized crime
theory
Discovery of Enrico De
Pedis's grave
On 11 July 2005, an anonymous caller to the Italian
television program Chi l'ha Visto? said
that to resolve the Orlandi case, it was necessary to look at who was buried in
the crypt of the Basilica di
Sant'Apollinare, in Rome. It was discovered that the crypt contained the
grave of Enrico De Pedis
(1954–1990), leader of the Roman gang Banda
Della Magliana.
A controversy arose as to why De Pedis, a violent criminal,
had been buried in the crypt of a major Roman basilica, a mode of burial
normally reserved for high-ranking figures such as cardinals. In fact, a
newspaper article from 1997 had reported on this strange burial, provoking
protests from the police union, but when neither the Vatican nor Opus Dei
(owners of the basilica) felt the need to justify it, the matter was forgotten.
The official reply of the then-director of the Basilica, Don Piero Vergari, a friend
of De Pedis, was that the criminal was buried there due to his charity to the
poor who attended the basilica as well as his large donations to the
establishment itself. In 2012, Vergari was investigated for abduction and later
cleared, in 2015, when the second investigation of the Orlandi case was
dismissed.
The anonymous caller of 2005 also suggested they investigate
"the favor that De Pedis did for
Cardinal Poletti", implying this was the reason for his burial at the
basilica and the reason behind Orlandi's disappearance. In 2012, the Italian
Ministry of Interior confirmed that Poletti, who at the time of De Pedis'
burial was serving as president of the Episcopal
Conference of Italy and Cardinal
Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, had
indeed given his approval. Italian police subsequently opened the tomb and took
DNA samples. While no clues were found in the tomb linking De Pedis to Orlandi,
the controversy prompted speculation that Banda
Della Magliana was involved in the girl's disappearance.
Testimony of Antonio
Mancini and Sabrina Minardi
In February 2006, former Banda Della Magliana member Antonio
Mancini stated in an interview that he recognized the voice of "Mario", one of the anonymous
callers from 1983, as a subordinate of De Pedis named Ruffetto. This testimony was corroborated by Sabrina Minardi, De Pedis' former girlfriend, who claimed that
Orlandi was kidnapped by Banda Della
Magliana on the orders of Archbishop
Paul Marcinkus (1922–2006), the disgraced former head of the Institute for
the Works of Religion (Vatican Bank), as
part of a "power game".
Minardi also claimed to have held a drugged Orlandi captive in her apartment in
Torvaianica for several days before moving her to another apartment in Rome.
She added that she was instructed by De Pedis to drive the girl to a Vatican
petrol station and deliver her to a man dressed as a priest.
Minardi's credibility has often been questioned due to the
shifting and sometimes contradictory nature of her story, as well as her
history of drug abuse. When her initial testimony was leaked to the press in
June 2008, she began changing her story, confusing the sequence of events and
claiming the involvement of people who had been dead by 1983. In particular,
Minardi changed Orlandi's whereabouts several times, which altogether led
Italian authorities to doubt her testimony.
Possible role of
Vatican Bank and Banco Ambrosiano
Regarding reasons why Banda
Della Magliana allegedly kidnapped Orlandi, Mancini suggested in 2011, that
it was tied to large money transactions through the Milan-based Banco Ambrosiano, which had been
involved in both laundering money on behalf of Banda Della Magliana and lending this money to IOR, the Vatican Bank. During those years, the
IOR, led by Marcinkus, was using this money to fund the Solidarity movement to
fight communist rule in Poland, the pope's homeland. According to Mancini,
following Banco Ambrosiano's
collapse in 1982, the gang kidnapped Orlandi to force the Vatican to
pay restitution, although this theory would contradict Minardi's claims that
Marcinkus was the instigator of the kidnapping.
Vatican sex scandal
theory
Over decades of investigations, the circumstances of
Orlandi's disappearance led many investigators to doubt the abduction
hypothesis. First of all, the fact that the girl was last seen in Corso Rinascimento, one of Rome's
busiest streets, in full daylight, suggested that it was unrealistic that she
would have been taken by force without anyone noticing. Some investigators
concluded that it was more realistic to believe that the girl went with someone
she knew. Above all, over the following months, the alleged
kidnappers were never able to provide any actual proof of her captivity. The
only object they provided was a photocopy of her music school membership card,
which was available in the music school archives, and fell under Vatican
jurisdiction.
Since the early 2000s, Italian journalist Pino Nicotri, who conducted a detailed
study of the Orlandi case based on judicial documents, has rejected the
kidnapping hypothesis. Nicotri claimed that in 2005, he had come to know from a
source inside the Vatican that Orlandi died accidentally the night of her
disappearance, during a "convivial
meeting" with high-ranking Vatican figures. According to Nicotri,
Orlandi had been involved in this type of meeting for some time before her disappearance,
but on the night of 22 June 1983, she died under unknown circumstances. Nicotri
also stated that the theory of kidnapping by international terrorists was
contrived to divert attention from the scandal, while the hypothesis of the
involvement of Banda Della Magliana
in the 2000s was made up by the mass media after the anonymous phone call to Chi l'ha Visto? and Minardi's false
testimony. According to Nicotri's Vatican source, the Italian Secret Services
were aware of this.
In May 2012, exorcist Gabriele
Amorth claimed that Orlandi was the victim of a group of ecclesiastical pedophiles.
According to him, a member of the Vatican police was "recruiting" young girls for sex parties, and officials of
an unnamed foreign embassy were implicated.
This allegation re-emerged with the 2016 publication of Atto di dolore, a book by Italian
journalist Tommaso Nelli, which
contained an exclusive testimony from a friend of Orlandi's who claimed that,
some months before her disappearance, she had confided that she had been
molested by "someone close to the
Pope" in the Vatican Gardens
on several occasions. An interview with the anonymous woman was mentioned in
the Netflix documentary miniseries Vatican
Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, released in October 2022,
although in this interview, the woman said that this revelation occurred only
one week before the girl's disappearance.
On 14 December 2022, Italian journalist Alessandro Ambrosini published an exclusive recording of Marcello Neroni, a man affiliated with
De Pedis and Banda Della Magliana,
who implied that Orlandi was made to disappear or was kidnapped by De Pedis at
the request of someone inside the Vatican to cover up a sex
scandal. After this, Italian authorities began searching for Neroni to
question him.
A presumed plot between Banda
Della Magliana and the Vatican
had already been mentioned back in 2009 by Maurizio
Abbatino, a Banda boss who had turned to aid the judicial system.
Vatileaks and London
trail
In 2017, Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi came into possession of secret Vatican
documents that had been stolen in 2014 in the Vatican leaks scandal. One of these documents, signed 28 March
1997 and sent to Archbishop Giovanni
Battista Re and Archbishop
Jean-Louis Tauran, allegedly shows that the Vatican spent over 483 million
lire (around 250,000 euros) on supporting Orlandi from 1983 until 1997,
including expenses for her education and medical care. The document suggested
that Orlandi had lived in London under Vatican
protection for several years and that her remains had been sent back to the Vatican following her eventual death.
Both the Vatican and Italian
authorities regard the documents as false. However, many—including the Orlandi
family—speculated that the documents were leaked as a warning between internal
factions within the Vatican to keep the truth secret.
This was not the first time the suspicion arose that Orlandi
was being hidden in London. On 17 June 2011, during an Italian television
program that included Pietro Orlandi, an anonymous caller, who identified
himself as a former SISMI agent,
claimed that she was still alive and being kept in a mental hospital in London.
The caller also claimed that the kidnapping was carried out because her father was aware of the money laundering involving the Vatican Bank and Banco Ambrosiano.
In April 2023, Pietro Orlandi revealed that he came into
possession of a 1993 letter by the then-Archbishop
of Canterbury, George Carey, to Cardinal Poletti. In the letter, Carey
mentions Orlandi and suggests a personal meeting with Poletti to talk about the
matter. The letter was mailed to 170 Clapham Road, London. At number 176 on the
same street is the Scalabrini Fathers' Female
Hostel, featured in the 2017 document, where Orlandi allegedly lived under Vatican protection. This letter lent
credence to the theory that Emanuela could have been transported to London
after being kidnapped. In May 2023, former archbishop Carey rejected the
authenticity of the letter.
Serial killer theory
In the 2000s, Judge
Otello Lupacchini and journalist Max
Parisi conducted a study of over twelve cases of young girls missing and
murdered in Rome between 1982 and 1990 and hypothesized that all of them were
victims of a serial killer, due to the similarities of the murders and their
proximity within the city. Some of these include the murders of Katy Skerl and Simonetta Cesaroni, two major unsolved crimes in Italy. Lupacchini
and Parisi put forth the theory that both Mirella
Gregori and Emanuela Orlandi
were victims of this serial killer. According to them, this man lured the girls
with job offers, like selling Avon products, and then kidnapped and killed
them. Gregori and Orlandi, who were the only two minors on this list of
victims, were also the only ones whose bodies were never found.
Possible role of
Marco Accetti
In 2013, Marco
Accetti, a photographer convicted for the death of Jose Garramon, claimed to be one of Orlandi's kidnappers. He stated
that this was done as part of an internal blackmail campaign and a feud between
rival factions within the Vatican. Accetti claimed that he was the one who took
Orlandi out of the music school and that he was "the American". He stated that the kidnapping was
originally meant to be temporary, but in the end, things got worse. As proof,
Accetti presented a flute, claiming it was the one Orlandi had at the time of
her disappearance. Although the Orlandi family believed the flute could be
Emanuela's, no DNA was found on the instrument, and one of the girl's music
teachers stated that Orlandi's flute was of a different brand. The lack of
evidence led the investigators to conclude that Accetti was a narcissist and a
pathological liar.
Although Accetti's credibility in the Orlandi case has been
questioned, he was able to provide precise details about other cases of missing
girls. A telephone analysis confirmed that "the
American" who once called the Gregori family was Accetti's voice. In
that phone call, "the American"
listed the precise dress worn by Mirella
Greogri at the time of her disappearance. In 2016, Accetti stated that the
grave of Katy Skerl, murdered in 1984, was empty. In 2022, it was shown that
Skerl's coffin had been stolen. Accetti also stated that Skerl's death was
linked to the Orlandi-Gregori cases. All these elements led some observers to
consider that Accetti could be the serial killer suggested by Lupacchini and Parisi.
Role of the Vatican
Investigations of the
Vatican City
Over the years, questions were raised as to why the Vatican never opened an official
investigation into Orlandi's disappearance, even though she was a Vatican citizen. The unofficial reply
from the Vatican was that since she
had disappeared on Italian territory, it fell under Italian jurisdiction.
However, on 12 October 1993, Italian authorities recorded a telephone
conversation between Raoul Bonarelli,
then-deputy chief of the Gendarmerie of
the Vatican City, and Monsignor
Bertani, then-Chaplain of His Holiness
to Pope John Paul II. The phone
call took place on the eve of Bonarelli's questioning by Judge Adele Rando about the Gregori case; Gregori's mother
claimed to have recognized Bonarelli as the man she saw in the company of her
daughter shortly before her disappearance. In the phone call, Bertani ordered
Bonarelli not to say anything to Italian police about the Vatican's investigations into the Orlandi case, suggesting that the
Vatican had opened an investigation
without informing Italian authorities.
Negotiations between
the Vatican and Giancarlo Capaldo
In 2012, years after the discovery of De Pedis' grave,
secret negotiations were held in the Palace of Justice between two emissaries
of the Holy See and Giancarlo Capaldo, the then-public
prosecutor of Rome. The two emissaries were Domenico Giani, the then-inspector general of the Gendarmerie of the Vatican City, and
his deputy, Costanzo Alessandrini,
who had been sent by the Vatican to ask Capaldo to remove De Pedis' grave from
the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare, as
it was a "great embarrassment"
for the Holy See to have a criminal
buried there, especially after an increase in public opposition to this.
Capaldo accepted the request in exchange for information on the Orlandi case.
Two days later, the emissaries accepted the trade and proposed to give Capaldo
documents with the names of people involved in the case. Capaldo replied that
alongside these documents, he wanted Emanuela
Orlandi herself, dead or alive.
Two weeks later, the two emissaries said that they were
accepting the exchange under the condition that Capaldo would give the Orlandi
family and the media a story that would absolve the Vatican of any responsibility. However, this negotiation was not
followed by any firm action, which is why, on 2 April 2012, Capaldo made a
public statement, saying that the Vatican was aware of the truth about the case
and that he was not going to disturb the De Pedis' grave for the moment. The
following day, he was removed from his position and replaced by Giuseppe Pignatone, who denied the
former's statement and ordered the grave to be removed.
Other public
speculation, activity
On the morning of 14 May 2001, the parish priest of the San Gregorio VII church, near the Vatican, discovered a human skull of
small dimensions and lacking a jaw in a bag with an image of Padre Pio in a confessional. Although
it was not identified as Orlandi's, the discovery generated suspicions that it
might be her skull.
On 6 April 2007, in a Good
Friday sermon in St. Peter's
Basilica, Reverend Raniero Cantalamessa advised the congregation to make
amends for sins before dying. He said,
"Don't carry your secret to the grave with you!" This provoked
speculation that he was suggesting someone at the Vatican held information about Orlandi's disappearance. Vatican spokesperson Rev. Federico Lombardi issued a
statement that detailed Vatican
cooperation with civil investigators over the years and said the Church had no objection to the opening
of the De Pedis tomb, which was then being discussed. The statement read, "As far as we know, there is nothing
hidden, nor are there 'secrets' in the Vatican to reveal on the subject. To
continue to assert it is completely unjustified; also, we reiterate, yet again,
all the material from the Vatican was handed over, in its time, to the
investigating magistrates and to police authorities."
In October 2018, remains found during renovation work on the
Holy See's embassy to Italy in Rome
were the subject of speculation related to the Orlandi affair. An attorney for
the Orlandi family objected to the media attention, saying, "We have no idea why the association
with Emanuela was made... We're still asking ourselves why you'd find some
bones and immediately assume they were Emanuela's." Test results
released on 1 February 2019 showed the remains belonged to a Roman man who died
between 190 and 230 AD.
In the summer of 2018, the Orlandi family's lawyer received
an anonymous letter with a picture of the statue of an angel in the Teutonic Cemetery, inside the Vatican. The letter read, "If you want to find Emanuela, search
where the angel looks". On 10 July 2019, it was announced that the Vatican would be opening two tombs
inside the Teutonic Cemetery, and
they would then be examined by forensic anthropologist Giovanni Arcudi. The tombs were the "Tomb of the Angel", meant to contain the remains of Princess Sophie of
Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Bartenstein, and an adjacent one, which was meant to
contain the remains of Duchess Charlotte
Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
The exhumations took place on 11 July 2019. Neither Orlandi's body nor those of
the two princesses were found. The Vatican
said it would conduct an investigation into the whereabouts of the
princesses' remains.
According to a report on 13 July 2019, the Vatican announced that two sets of
bones had been found near the tombs of the two princesses, raising speculation
that one might be the remains of Orlandi. The bones were discovered as staff
probed other locations to which the princesses' remains may have been moved
within the cemetery of the Pontifical
Teutonic College. Further inspection of the site revealed two ossuaries
placed beneath the floor of an area inside the college, closed by a trapdoor.
Thousands of human bones belonging to dozens of bodies were,
however, found on 20 July, in the underground ossuaries at the Teutonic College. Forensic
investigators analyzing the remains were expected to use carbon-14 methods to
obtain a rough estimate of their age.
In October 2022, Netflix
released a four-part docuseries entitled Vatican
Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi. The documentary explored
different theories surrounding Orlandi's disappearance, with a focus on
theories involving the Vatican and organized
crime.
2023 reopening of the
case
On 9 January 2023, the Vatican opened its first official
investigation into Emanuela Orlandi's
disappearance. Pope Francis appointed head prosecutor Alessandro Diddi to lead the probe. The Vatican plans to conduct a complete review that will re-examine all
files, reports, and testimony.
On 11 April, Pietro
Orlandi gave his first official testimony to Vatican City head prosecutor
Alessandro Diddi.
On 15 May, the Italian public prosecutor in Rome opened the
third official investigation into the Orlandi case.
In January, a few days after the opening of the Vatican investigation, the Italian Parliament started a process
for the institution of a parliamentary commission to investigate the
disappearances of Orlandi and Mirella
Gregori. The proposal of the commission was unanimously approved by the Chambers of Deputies on 23 March but
encountered difficulties in the Senate in April. On 6 June, Vatican head prosecutor Alessandro Diddi said that the Vatican did not support the institution
of an Italian commission, claiming that it would be a "dangerous intrusion" and that the investigation opened
by the public prosecutor of Rome was enough. Pietro Orlandi commented on the Senate's reticence, saying that it
was unacceptable that in Italian politics, there is still a "psychological subjection towards the
Vatican".
On 22 June, the Vatican
said it would hand over all the evidence collected to the Rome city prosecutor
for review.
On 25 June, during his Angelus address, Pope Francis remembered the fortieth anniversary of Orlandi's
disappearance, "expressing closeness
to the family, above all, the mother" and then extended the prayer to
all missing persons. It was the first time since 1983 that a pope publicly
mentioned Orlandi. The Orlandi family took the pope's message positively, as
another step towards transparency.
On 27 June 2023, the parliamentary commission was unanimously
approved in the Senate.
Vatican allegations
against the Orlandis
On 10 July 2023, the Vatican
released an "unedited file"
to the Italian TV news program TG La7 that
suggested a possible involvement of Orlandi's uncle, Mario Meneguzzi, in the disappearance of the girl. The document
noted an "impressive
resemblance" between Meneguzzi and the facial composite of the "Avon man" provided by the two
police officers on duty at the Senate and also included a letter sent by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli to Cardinal José Luis Serna Alzate, the
then-priest confessor of the Orlandis. In the letter, Casaroli asked Alzate if
it was true that Natalina Orlandi,
Emanuela's older sister, confided to him that her uncle Mario Meneguzzi once molested her. Alzate confirmed this to be
true. On TG La7, it was also
mentioned that Meneguzzi appointed Gennaro
Egidio as the Orlandi lawyer and that Meneguzzi had links to the Italian Secret Services.
The following day, the Orlandi family and their lawyer Laura Sgrò organized a press
conference. Natalina Orlandi confirmed
that this episode took place in 1978 (when she was 21 years old) but assured
the audience that her uncle's actions were not molestations but rather "verbal advances", which she
promptly refused, and that she and her uncle had maintained a good relationship
despite this episode. Natalina stated that she had already been questioned
about the incident by Magistrate
Domenico Sica in 1983, in the early days of the investigations. In an
interview on the following day, a retired police officer who was involved in
the early investigations said that Meneguzzi had been investigated in the early
days by the police, but the allegation was thought to be extraneous to
Emanuela's disappearance. In any case, on the evening that Emanuela went
missing, Meneguzzi was in his holiday home in Borgorose with his wife,
children, and sister-in-law Anna Orlandi.
The Orlandi brothers also pointed out that in the months
following the disappearance, their uncle had been the family spokesperson,
appearing in press conferences, interviews, and on TV multiple times, so it
would not have been odd for the police officers to confuse him with the "Avon man".
During the press conference, Natalina Orlandi revealed that she had already been aware of this
file because in 2017 she was summoned to the Vatican by Cardinal Giovanni
Angelo Becciu, the then-Substitute
for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State, who showed her the
documents related to the incident with her uncle. In those days, the Orlandi
family and their lawyer were asking the Vatican
for the release of a secret dossier about Emanuela, held in the Secretariat of State, as revealed to
them by Georg Gänswein. According to
Natalina, Becciu told her that if they were required to give the family the
dossier, the Vatican would divulge
the existence of the file describing the episode between her and her uncle.
Natalina commented that this seemed like blackmail. In the end, no document was
given to the Orlandis.
Both Natalina and Pietro
Orlandi commented that the release of these documents on television, rather
than to the investigating magistrates and to police authorities, was outrageous
and "a vile attempt by the Vatican
to publicly attack their uncle's memory and pass the responsibility off on the
family".
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