Emanuela Orlandi: The Vatican hands over evidence in 1983 of the disappearance of an employee’s daughter

CNN
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The Vatican said Thursday that it would hand over evidence of A.’s disappearance 15-year-old daughter one of its employees for 40 years to the Prosecutor of the City of Rome.

Emanuela Orlandi, who was the daughter of a prominent Vatican official and lived within the walls of the Holy City, disappeared in the summer of 1983 while on her way home from a music lesson in central Rome.

The Vatican – which has come under scrutiny over the years for its handling of the issue – announce In January they opened a new investigation.

In a statement Thursday, the Vatican said the office of Alessandro Dede, the promoter of justice in the Vatican, “collected all the evidence available in the various institutions of the Vatican and the Holy See, while also seeking evidence through conversations with people in charge of certain offices at a time.” events.”

Didi said through the Vatican press office that he had found “some investigative leads that deserve further study”. Therefore, his office will send “all the relevant documents of the past weeks to the public prosecutor in Rome, so that he can review them and proceed in the direction he deems most appropriate.”

It was not clear what the documents refer to, if they are new or from an archive.

Thursday’s development marks the first time the Vatican has publicly handed over documents to Italian authorities.

The statement noted that the Vatican investigation was now complete, but Didi vowed to “continue his activities in this direction in the coming months,” while remaining “aware of the anguish one feels over the disappearance of a relative.”

Orlandi disappeared on June 22, 1983, after a lesson at the music school adjacent to the Catholic Church of Sant’Apollinari Opus Dei near Piazza Navona in Rome.

Her father, Ercole Orlandi, who died in 2004, worked at the Institute for Religious Works of the Holy See. Her mother, Maria Orlandi, still lives in the family’s apartment in Vatican City. Her brother, Pietro Orlandi, has spent his life trying to uncover what happened to his sister and has often blamed the Vatican for concealing information.

He called a Sunday mass rally in Rome in front of Castel Sant’Angelo, the last place it was thought the little girl’s body might be buried, and then proceeded to St. Peter’s Square to be present when the pope gave Sunday prayers. Angelus Prayer. Orlandi organizes parades every year around the anniversary of the disappearance.

A four-part Netflix series by Mark Lewis released last year sparked renewed interest in the high-profile case and brought to light many of the most prominent conspiracy theories, including that her kidnapping was linked to Mohamed Ali Agca, who was at the time in prison over the attempted assassination of John Paul II. In Saint Peter’s Square in 1981.

Searches for Orlandi’s remains have been conducted several times over the past four decades. Human remains were found in 2018 at the Embassy of the Holy See in Italy in central Rome, but Dr.NA tests did not establish a match.

A year later, the Vatican approved the exhumation of two princesses believed to be buried in the cemetery of the Pontifical Teutonic College within Vatican City. The princesses’ remains were not found in the tomb, nor were Orlandi’s, but two ossuaries were found under a secret door in the tomb.