The mystery has been the subject of a documentary on Netflix. The Holy See announced on Tuesday the opening of an investigation into the disappearance in 1983 of a teenager living in the Vatican, a case with drawers never elucidated. The Vatican’s “promoter of justice”, the equivalent of a prosecutor, “has opened an investigation” demanded for decades by the family, said the press service of the Holy See.
Emanuela Orlandi, 15 at the time, and whose father worked for the Vatican, disappeared after a music lesson in Rome on June 22, 1983. Since then, the case has given rise to multiple theories, which have never been proven. A former mistress of Enrico de Pedis, a ‘boss’ suspected of being part of both the Mafia, the P2 Masonic lodge and parts of Vatican finance, has claimed he abducted the girl and cast his body in concrete.
“She’s in Heaven”
To verify, Italian justice went so far as to open in 2012 the tomb of the “boss”, one of the leaders of a Roman criminal group known as “la banda della Magliana”, killed in 1990 in a settling of scores. According to some theses, the teenager was kidnapped by this criminal group to recover a loan from the former American president of the Vatican Bank (IOR), Paul Marcinkus.
Another theory evokes a kidnapping of the teenager to snatch the release of Mehmet Ali Agça, the Turk who had tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. In an open letter, the man, released in 2010, had assured in 2019 that Emanuela Orlandi was alive and that it was necessary to seek her trace in the archives of the CIA. This disappearance was the subject of a 2022 series on Netflix in which Emanuela’s brother claims that Pope Francis allegedly said to him, “She is in heaven”, implying – according to the family – that the Vatican knows what what happened to the girl.
“So far, the Vatican has done nothing”
The family’s lawyer, Laura Sgro, now wants to know the intentions of Vatican justice. “We don’t know what the Vatican is going to do. In the next few hours I will request a meeting with the promoter of justice to understand. So far, the Vatican has done nothing,” she said.
“What are the documents they want to review, those of the investigation of the Rome prosecutor’s office or do they have a file they want to share? she wondered. “I have been asking for years that certain personalities belonging to the top of the Vatican be heard (…), unfortunately some have died in the meantime”, concluded Me Sgro.