The disappearance of a Vatican schoolgirl 40 years ago, one of Italy’s longest-running mysteries, began a new chapter when her brother met with a Vatican investigator whom Pope Francis has given wide reign to solve the case.
In an effort to learn more about Emanuela Orlandi’s fate, a number of tombs have been uncovered, bones have been removed from unmarked graves, and conspiracy theories abound.
The Mystery of Vatican Schoolgirl
Orlandi, who was 15 at the time and was the daughter of a Vatican usher whose family resided in the Vatican, disappeared after leaving a piano lesson in Rome on June 22, 1983.
Following the publication of the Netflix series ‘Vatican Girl’ in late 2017, the case, which has been the focus of intermittent investigations in Italy and the Vatican, has received new global attention.
After receiving data from his retired predecessor, Vatican chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi restarted an earlier, unsuccessful Vatican probe in January.
On Tuesday afternoon, Diddi was meeting with Pietro, Emanuela’s older brother, and Laura Sgro, the family’s attorney.
Diddi stated that Pope Francis wants the truth to emerge without any reservations in an interview with Corriere della Sera published before the meeting.
In regard to the situation, he claimed the pope had an iron will.
There are many different explanations for Orlandi’s disappearance. Italian media suspected in the 1980s that Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk who had been imprisoned in 1981 for attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II, had been kidnapped in exchange for her release; however, the link was never established, and the rumor eventually faded.
Some accounts connected her to the tomb of gangster Enrico De Pedis, who was interred in a basilica in Rome.
Nothing was discovered when his tomb was uncovered in 2012, and Diddi said in an interview with Corriere della Sera that the alleged connection between the girl’s disappearance and the Rome criminal family had been overanalyzed.
Site of Mysterious Search for Missing Girl’s Remains
The Orlandi family received an anonymous letter in 2019 claiming that Emanuela’s body might be buried among the dead in the Teutonic Cemetery, which is located just outside the Vatican walls and has the Latin inscription “Requiescat in Pace” (Rest in Peace).
Nothing was discovered when two tombs were uncovered, not even the remains of the two 19th-century princesses who were supposed to be interred there.
Before Orlandi was even born, it appears that they had already been relocated amid reorganization efforts.
A media frenzy in 2018 suggested that bones discovered during construction at the Vatican embassy in Rome might belong to Orlandi or to Mirella Gregori, another adolescent who vanished the same year. DNA tests came out empty.
The lower house of Italy’s parliament authorized the creation of a parliamentary inquiry to look into the disappearances of both girls last month.
Authorities have never ruled out the idea that Orlandi was either a victim of human trafficking or that he was kidnapped and possibly assassinated for reasons unrelated to the Vatican.
