The Vatican has reopened an investigation into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a case that has gripped Italy for almost 40 years and embroiled the powerful Holy See.
Emanuela was 15 when she vanished on 22 June 1983 while making her way home from a flute lesson in Rome. The Orlandi family lived in Vatican City, where her father was a lay employee in the papal household.
The case has triggered several theories, including that Emanuela was kidnapped by a gang in order to blackmail the Vatican into releasing Mehmet Ali Ağca, who was jailed in 1981 after trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II, but has never yielded any concrete answers.
The Vatican’s promoter of justice, Alessandro Diddi, has reopened the case after several requests from Emanuela’s older brother, Pietro, who has relentlessly campaigned to discover the truth behind her disappearance, according to the news agency LaPresse.
“We only found out about the investigation through the media,” said Laura Sgrò, the Orlandi family’s lawyer. “We wrote to the pope a year ago with the intention of speaking to the promoter of justice. We are of course happy that they are doing an investigation but we really hope this will truly provide concrete answers.”
Diddi confirmed the reopening of the investigation to LaPresse after it was first reported by the news agency Adnkronos, which said “all files, documents, reports, information and testimonies” connected to the case would be re-examined in order to clarify an array of questions and “leave no stone unturned”.
Furthermore, the investigation will focus on the case of Mirella Gregori, who was also 15 when she disappeared in Rome weeks before Orlandi after telling her mother she was going on a date. It has long been believed that there could be a connection between the two disappearances.
The inquiry comes a few months after the release on Netflix of Vatican Girl, a documentary exploring the theories surrounding the Orlandi case. In the most startling claim, a childhood friend of Emanuela interviewed in the documentary said that the teenager was molested by “someone close to the pope”, who at the time was John Paul II.
Another theory revealed in the documentary was that Emanuela was taken to London, where she lived for years in a youth hostel owned by a Catholic congregation, with her expenses funded by the Vatican. According to this theory, Emanuela died in London before her body was transferred back to Rome and buried in the Vatican.
In 2019, two tombs in the Vatican were exhumed and reopened after a tipoff that Emanuela may have been buried there. But no human remains were found.
Other theories have linked Emanuela’s disappearance to Vatican financial scandals, an alleged sex ring run by Vatican police and Rome’s criminal underworld.
The reopening of the case also comes after Georg Gänswein, the long-time personal secretary and close confidante of the late ex-pope Benedict, said he would address the Orlandi mystery in his tell-all book, which is due to be published on 12 January.
