Francis wants the mystery of Emanuela Orlandi, a girl who disappeared 40 years ago in the Vatican, to be clarified

One of Italy’s most enduring mysteries, the disappearance of a Vatican schoolgirl 40 years ago, entered a new chapter Tuesday when her brother met with a Vatican investigator who was given free rein by Pope Francis to get to the bottom of it. of the case.

Over the past four decades, graves have been opened, bones have been exhumed from forgotten graves, and conspiracy theories have abounded in an attempt to determine what happened to Emanuela Orlandi.

The daughter of a Vatican usher whose family lived in the Vatican, Orlandi, then 15, he did not return home on June 22, 1983 after a music lesson in Rome.

The case, which has been the subject of intermittent investigations in Italy and the Vatican, has drawn new global attention following the release of the Netflix series late last year. “Vatican Girl”.

In January, the Vatican’s chief prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, reopened an earlier inconclusive Vatican investigation after he inherited files from his retired predecessor.

In an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper before the meeting, Diddi said the Pope Francisco wants to “The truth emerges without reservation.” He said the pope had an “iron will” regarding the case.

Emanuela’s older brother, Pietroand the family lawyer, Laura Sgromet with Diddi at the Vatican for more than five hours on Tuesday afternoon.

“We hope this can shed light on this episode and write a page of history.”Sgro told reporters afterwards, saying the Vatican’s openness and the pope’s determination They were “absolutely positive”.

Theories about Orlandi’s disappearance have run the gamut. In the 1980s, the Italian media speculated that she had been kidnapped in an attempt to secure the freedom of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk imprisoned in 1981 for attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II, nothing came out of the link though and the suggestion vanished.

Other reports linked it to the tomb of Enrico DePedis, a mobster buried in a basilica in Rome. Her grave was opened in 2012, but nothing was revealed, and in an interview with Corriere della Sera, Diddi said that the alleged link between the girl’s disappearance and the criminal clan in Rome it had been “over-evaluated”.

In 2019, the Orlandi family received an anonymous letter stating that Emanuela’s body could be hiding among the dead in the Teutonic Cemetery just inside the Vatican walls, where a statue of an angel holding a book reads “Requiescat in Pace,” Latin for “Rest in Peace.”

Two graves were opened and nothing was found, not even the bones of two 19th-century princesses who were supposedly buried there. Apparently they had moved in during the restructuring works decades before Orlandi was born.

In 2018, bones found during fieldwork at the Vatican embassy in Rome sparked a media frenzy that suggested they might belong to Orlandi or to Mirella Gregory, another teenager who disappeared the same year. DNA tests came back negative.

Last month, Italy’s lower house approved the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate the disappearances of both girls.

Police have never ruled out the possibility that Orlandi was kidnapped and possibly killed for reasons unrelated to the Vatican, or that she was a victim of human trafficking.

Now he would be 55 years old.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.