Forty years after the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a Holy See employee, a new theory that would implicate a relative of the young woman as a suspect has further entangled one of Italy’s greatest unsolved mysteries, which has around the world thanks to a Netflix documentary, The Girl from the Vatican.
Emanuela Orlandi, 15, disappeared in June 1983 when she was returning from her music class in Piazza Sant’Apollinare, in the heart of Rome, without her family ever knowing anything more about her. She was the daughter of an official who worked directly with the Pope, and lived within the walls of the Vatican. Therefore, everything surrounding her case has always aroused great fascination, because it was thought that she could have been kidnapped to put pressure on the Holy See in some way. There have been clues of all kinds, since the CIA, the KGB, the P2 Masonic lodge, financial sectors of the Vatican, the Roman mafia of the Magliana, Bulgarian agents or even was related to the attempted assassination of John Paul II. in 1981 by the Turkish Ali Agca.
None of these hypotheses led to anything. In January, the Vatican unexpectedly announced the opening of the case, 40 years later, after Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, who has never stopped looking for her, wrote to Pope Francis to explain that there were “new elements” about the disappearance. He got the Vatican prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, to announce an investigation, the first formally opened within the Holy See, although Italy had already opened two other investigations without reaching any conclusion.
Months later, this alleged family clue has outraged the girl’s family, who accuses the Vatican of leaking to divert attention. It all comes after the news on the television channel La 7 announced an “exclusive” on Monday, some documents delivered by the Vatican prosecutor, Diddi, to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, in which “a new hypothesis” appears that implies as suspect the young woman’s uncle, Mario Meneguzzi.
According to this medium, the magistrates are studying the trail of the family drama after finding a letter between a priest and a senior Vatican leader dated three months after Orlandi’s disappearance. In it, the priest, spiritual confessor of Natalina Orlandi, the older sister of the disappeared girl, recounted that Meneguzzi – who died years ago – would have made sexual advances with Natalina, something that has caused a huge stir in the Italian media.
All of this has angered the family, who appeared at a press conference yesterday. Natalina, accompanied by the family’s lawyer, Laura Sgro, denied that her uncle had anything to do with Emanuela’s disappearance, and explained that he was traveling the day of the disappearance, and also denied that there was “sexual abuse”, but rather that what he experienced when he was 21 years old were “verbal courtships.” “When she understood that there was no possibility, she stopped. I only told my boyfriend, today my husband, and my confessor father, ”she remarked, and she regretted that the confession secret was leaked to the press. Next to her, Pietro Orlandi accused the journalists of scavengers and the Vatican of leaking these documents so as “not to take responsibility for her and to endorse her to other people”. “They target my uncle, but why don’t they target three or four pedophile cardinals?” asked Pietro Orlandi, urging Pope Francis to “take action on the matter.”
