Rome prosecutors launch fresh probe into Orlandi case
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Fresh investigations have been launched by Rome prosecutors on the basis of documents supplied by the Vatican into the June 22, 1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Vatican citizen Emanuela Orlandi, the prosecutors’ office said Monday. Orlandi disappeared while returning home from a flute lesson in Rome on 22 June 1983. The girl’s disappearance sparked an intense media frenzy in Italy that has resulted in the case being called “Italy’s most famous unsolved mystery”, and it inspired a hit Netflix dour part documentary called Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanule Orlandi last year. Emanuela was the fourth of five children of Ercole and Maria Orlandi. Her father was a Vatican employee and the family lived inside Vatican City.
Orlandi’s brother Pietro recently caused controversy by linking the case to an alleged Church paedophile ring and reporting rumours that late Saint Pope John Paul II used to leave the Vatican looking for girls with Polish cardinals, a claim rubbished by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin who however said a Vatican probe into the Orlandi case would nonetheless continue. Pope Francis called Pietro Orlandi’s recent suggestions about the late Polish pope, who died in 2005 and became a saint in 2014, unfounded and offensive.
Speculation on Orlandi’s disappearance, and that of another 15-year-old girl in the same summer of 1983, has been rife over the years. The Orlandi case has spawned several theories over the years, including that she was murdered to gain traction to have pope John Paul II’s Turkish shooter Mehmet Ali Agca freed, or that organised crime was involved. Ali Agca was questioned in the case.
