Monday, January 9, 2023 | 8:00 p.m.
The Vatican said Monday that it has reopened the investigation into the 1983 disappearance of the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee, months after a new Netflix documentary purported to shed new light on the case and weeks after her family requested to the Italian Parliament to support the cause.
Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi has opened a file into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, based in part “on requests made by the family in various places,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.
Laura Sgro, a lawyer for the Orlandi family, said she had no independent confirmation of the investigation, which was first reported by the Italian news agencies Adnkronos, LaPresse and ANSA. She noted that the last time she brought the case to the Vatican was in 2019.
Orlandi disappeared on June 22, 1983 after leaving his family’s apartment in Vatican City to attend a music class in Rome. His father was a lay employee of the Holy See.
His disappearance has been one of the Vatican’s enduring mysteries and, over the years, has been linked to various events, including the plot to assassinate Saint John Paul II and a financial scandal involving the Vatican bank to the underworld of Rome’s underworld.
The recent four-episode Netflix documentary “Vatican Girl” explores such scenarios and also provides new testimony from a friend who claims that Emanuela had told her a week before she disappeared that a high-ranking Vatican cleric had made sexual advances on her.
For their part, Sgro and Orlandi’s brother Pietro announced a new initiative last month to create a parliamentary commission to investigate the case. Three initiatives previously submitted to the Italian parliament failed to get off the ground, but lawyer Sgro and opposition lawmaker Carlo Calenda argued that the Vatican could not close the case with so many unanswered questions.
Speaking to RaiNews24 on Monday, Pietro Orlandi called Diddi’s decision a “positive step” that the Vatican has apparently changed its mind, put its opposition behind it and will now review the case from the beginning.
