ROME – The Vatican has decided to reopen its investigation into a four-decade-old mystery after a popular Netflix documentary drew renewed attention to the case late last year.
Vatican prosecutors will re-examine the case of Emanuela Orlandi, who disappeared from a street in Rome in 1983 at the age of 15. The decision comes after continued lobbying by Ms Orlandi’s family.
Matteo Bruni, director of the Press Office of the Holy See, said on Monday that Vatican Attorney General Alessandro Diddi “confirmed that he had opened a file, also on the basis of requests from the family” of Ms. Orlandi.
Mr Bruni refused to say whether the Netflix documentary Vatican Girl might have influenced the decision to reopen the case, previously reported by Italian news agency Adnkronos.
The Orlandi family’s lawyer, Lauro Sgrò, said Monday they learned of the decision from press reports. “We are happy and trust that there will be a careful and thorough investigation. If any responsibility rests with the Vatican, it is time that it came out. We must bring the truth to the family,” Ms. Sgrò said.
Over the decades, the disappearance of young Ms. Orlandi has fascinated and troubled Italians, spawning a variety of speculative theories that purport to explain it, including the connection with corruption at the Vatican Bank, the 1981 attempt to evict St. John Paul II .to murder, and the mafia.
On June 22, 1983, Ms. Orlandi, one of five children of a Vatican employee whose family lived within the walls of the Vatican, traveled about a mile to another part of Rome for a music class. She was spotted talking to a man in a green BMW that afternoon. Since then she has not been sighted. Investigations by the Italian authorities have not led to a definitive conclusion of the incident.
In 2012, the tomb of a crime boss from Rome was opened with a suggestion that her remains might be there. But their bones were not found. In 2019, after a tip that her remains could be buried in the Vatican’s German Cemetery near St. Peter’s Basilica, officials opened two graves there but found no human remains or urns inside.
Write to Francis X. Rocca at [email protected]
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