Talking about the case of Emanuela Orlandi, in the Vatican and in Italy, is synonymous with a story of intrigue. a luck of cinematic spy game with the Eternal City as the setting, where the kidnapping of the minor almost four decades ago continues to be an unsolved case. After various unsuccessful judicial investigations, Italy and the Vatican, separately, have recently returned to the news in relation to the case of Emanuela Orlandi; generating, in the media and on the streets, a climate of great expectation with the desire that the new investigations definitively clarify why Orlandi was kidnapped, keeping her family and Italian and international public opinion in suspense in the last forty years.
This Tuesday, Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela’s well-known brother, was received by the President of the Italian Senate, Ignazio La Russa, the most important position of the Italian Republic, only below the head of state; and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Lorenzo Fontana: “These two have the most power to try to open an investigation [parlamentaria]. I am happy, because I have verified the will to speed up the times”, Pietro Orlandi declared this Tuesday in relation to the possible opening, in the Italian Parliament, of a commission of inquiry to find out the truth about his sister Emanuela.
In recent weeks, moreover, the novelty has taken place that could imply a definitive before and after in the resolution of the Orlandi case. The prosecutor Alessandro Diddi and the Gendarmerie have made the decision to open, for the first time, a legal case within the Vatican to try to find out the whole truth about Emanuela’s disappearance. The Justice of the Holy See, according to the information that has recently become known, has set in motion all its machinery to restart investigations from scratch: documents, witnesses, evidence. Wipe the slate clean with the previous Italian investigations and begin anew the reconstruction of the events that led to Orlandi’s disappearance. “The new investigation is welcome, perhaps thanks to Pope Francis”, Pietro Orlandi has assured in recent weeks: “I am convinced that the truth is there, inside the Vatican. And I also trust in the full collaboration between Italy and the Vatican”, said Pietro, the spitting image, in Italy, of the desire for justice on the part of the Orlandi family.
Demonstration in the Vatican to demand justice for the disappeared young woman.
Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican citizen and daughter of a Papal Household official, disappeared in Rome at 7:00 p.m. on June 22, 1983 after having attended a music class. It is the strongest piece of information regarding the controversial case of Emanuela Orlandi, given that over four decades she has been a constant precisely the huge amount of evidence, clues and testimonials which have never been fully confirmed. A fact that has pushed the Vatican to start the investigation from scratch, trying to achieve what two transalpine investigations have not been able to clarify until today.
One of the most complex aspects of the case of Emanuela Orlandi is that, over the last forty years, the background to the disappearance of the minor of Vatican citizenship has often been related to dynamics linked to the Holy See itself, the attack on Pope John Paul II in 1983, the Cold War, the intelligence services of other countries and even the mafia in Rome, the well-known Gang of Magliana. inconclusive evidence of often anonymous witnesses and false testimonies with the aim of generating distraction; They have been two of the most frequent elements that have most complicated the action of the Italian Justice, specifically that of the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, which has carried out two investigations, between the years 1983-1997 and 2008-2015, both without definitive success.
[El misterio del cadáver de Emanuela escondido en el Vaticano, a punto de resolverse tras 36 años]
One of the most accredited journalistic hypotheses, reconstructed by Italian newspapers such as the prestigious Corriere della Sera; points towards a international context linked to the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi. Based on this geopolitical version, the young minor was kidnapped, as the daughter of a Vatican official close to Pope John Paul II, with the aim of putting pressure on the Holy See and releasing Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish terrorist who two years before he had attempted the life of the pontiff Polish. The international nuance of this version gains strength to the extent that, supposedly, Ağca would have maintained silence about his possible links with Bulgaria and the Soviet Union in exchange for his release and subsequent freedom, even having then been sentenced to life imprisonment. .
Within this hypothesis with an international focus, Emanuela Orlandi would have been persecuted and then kidnapped, certainly as the daughter of a Vatican official, but not at the highest level, since other civil officials of the Holy See they were able to protect their families and even assigning them official protection in the months prior to Orlandi’s kidnapping. Moreover, the fact that Emanuela became a Vatican citizen three months before her disappearance would support the thesis that her new nationality was useful precisely for those whose objective was to carry out an international blackmail plan against the Vatican, supposedly, from the then bloc of communist countries, in the middle of the Cold War.
[Quién es Emanuela Orlandi, la desaparecida cuyos restos podrían estar en el Vaticano]
After learning of the opening of the Orlandi case, for the first time, by the Vatican Justice, Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela’s well-known brother; has recently returned to be present as guest on various news programs of Italian television, such as door to door (Ray 1), Chi L’Has Seen (Ray 3) and atlantis (La 7) and the main newscasts of the transalpine country. Pietro Orlandi, in recent years, has signed two complaints that, according to his statements, would have mobilized the Holy See to start the first investigation inside the borders from Vatican City.
“This investigation could be opened and closed by the Vatican in half an hour. It is enough that they tell what they know. Pope Francis knows it and Ratzinger also knew it. I was born there inside the Vatican, i know how it works. They know the truth but it is so heavy that they will anything so that it is not known”, Pietro Orlandi stated a few weeks ago, with words marked by the despair of four decades of unknowns; where the Italian press constantly points out not only the existence of the latter, but also the enormous absence of evidence that has always marked Emanuela’s story. However, there is one piece of information that, for the Italian media and for the Orlandis, could be definitive: on his first Sunday as pontiff, in 2013, Pope Francis assured Pietro and his mother that “Emanuela is in heaven.”
In the era of digital platforms, the case of Emanuela Orlandi has taken shape under the format of a documentary miniseries with the title Vatican Girl (Netflix); where through four episodes the well-known Italian journalist Andrea Purgatori, by the hand of Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, reconstruct the most controversial event of the judicial history of the Vatican. A thriller apparently cinematographic that, however, far exceeds reality
