Nearly 40 years after the disappearance of 15-year-old Italian girl Emanuela Orlandi, the Vatican’s tribunal has reopened the case, which has received a fresh wave of attention after being featured in a Netflix documentary last year.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed the news to Crux, saying the Vatican’s Promotor of Justice, Alessandro Diddi, “has opened a file in response to requests made by the family in various settings.” …
Orlandi, who lived in Vatican City State and whose father was a Vatican functionary, disappeared on her way home from a music lesson in 1983. Speculation over what happened has ranged from suggestions that she was kidnapped in a bid to secure the release of Mehmet Ali Ağca, Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin; that she was abducted by the KGB to pressure John Paul II over his support for Solidarity in Poland; that she was taken by the Italian mob to secure a reimbursement for losses in Vatican bank scandals; and that she became a victim of a ring of Vatican pedophiles.
With her brother Pietro leading the charge for answers some 40 years later, Orlandi’s case is known throughout Italy and is still a source of keen interest, most recently as the subject of a four-part Netflix documentary titled, “Vatican Girl,” which introduces the story and documents the various theories that have been tested without leading anywhere.
[May they all be found and their families be given closure. We have too many of these cases in the US as well. Forensic genealogy is solving some of them now. — Ed]
Join the conversation as a VIP Member