Commentary
By Vittoria Caroli / Matthew staff | Edited by Kayla Muller
The case of Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance is one of the most discussed, if not the most complex, dark, and mysterious crime cases that Italy has dealt with for the past 41 years.
On June 22, 1983, after her usual flute lesson at the Music School in Piazza di Sant’Apollinare, Rome, the 15-year-old Vatican citizen never came back home. Her father, Ercole Orlandi, worked as clerk of the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, so Emanuela lived within the walls of the Vatican all her life.
“The Vatican gardens were available to us as if it was our own back garden,” Pietro, Emanuela’s brother, told The Guardian. “We felt we were in the safest place in the world.”
Before going missing, she called her sister and told her that a man stopped her to offer her a job to distribute flyers on a fashion runway. That was the last time Emanuela’s voice was heard, and the last time she was ever seen. This is the story that Emanuela told her two friends, who were waiting with her at the bus stop on the day of her disappearance. However, she never got onto that bus. The day after, Rome’s walls were covered with posters depicting Emanuela’s description. Yet days, weeks, months, and years passed by, and Emanuela became a remote memory.
Narrated as such, it sounds like any other crime case, but it is not.
The case of Emanuela Orlandi is one of the most discussed, if not the most complex, dark, and mysterious crime cases that Italy has been dealing with for the past 41 years.
It has been four long decades since Emanuela’s family received any information about their teenager. Too many secrets have been kept from the family. The worst is that the Vatican, the major Christian institution, has received criticism over the years by investigative journalists, like late Andrea Purgatori, for suspicion of hiding crucial information that may have brought the truth forward, or at least have given Emanuela’s family some peace – instead of having their hopes crushed a million times as they live every day only with a far memory of their young Emanuela.
Emanuela Orlandi’s case has an extensive history with many dreadful particularities.
This case has become an international matter, involving not only the Holy See and the major vertexes of the Church, but criminal organizations, and international terrorists. From the moment it became an international-caliber crime case, the Orlandi story has been closed and reopened innumerable times.
When Emanuela’s brother Pietro Orlandi and his family first began fighting to get information about what happened to Emanuela, more obstacles arose in the investigation as time went by. Italian institutions like Vatican and the Government or the Magistrature have not given the case the priority it deserves – they don’t seem to be interested in looking for the truth, and if there is a truth, it has been hidden since the day Emanuela vanished.
Since the day of Emanuela’s disappearance, the Orlandi family received several anonymous calls. One specifically caught the media’s attention: a call by “the Americano” – an alias for an anonymous informant– who told Emanuela’s family that she was exchanged for a right-wing Turkish extremist named Mehmet Ali Agca, who, on May 13, 1981, attempted to shoot Pope John Paul II (Carol Wojtyla), and accused the CIA of having documents about Emanuela’s case, urging the agency to reveal them.
Moreover, it has been claimed that the Cardinal Secretary of State of the Vatican, Agostino Cesaroli was also involved in the case, since he was asked to be an intermediary for the liberation of the Turkish extremist in exchange of Emanuela, both for religious and policy reasons.
Is this true?
Another clue in her disappearance came from Sabrina Minardi, the romantic partner of a mafia boss from the Roman criminal group Banda della Magliana, Enrico De Pedis. In a documentary, Minardi revealed that Emanuela was one of the few Vatican citizens who may have been used as an exchange to end the pact between the Institute for the Works of Religion (Instituto per le Opere di Religione) and the Banda, for an enormous sum of money. The negotiation was unsuccessful, and Emanuela was supposedly killed after being imprisoned. Once again, several investigations have been conducted into this, but no solid evidence has come to light.
Another explanation for the young girl’s disappearance is connected to Mirella Gregori’s story, another teenager who went missing only four weeks earlier than Emanuela, along with 321 teenagers. Judges have been able to make a connection between the two cases due to a presumed pedophile network in 2002 within the Catholic Church in which minors are recruited for sexual exploitation.
Read more: Scores of priests involved in sex abuse cases – The Boston Globe
In 2016, the Court of Cassation confirmed the case’s dismissal. In 2018, new DNA analyses on human bones found in the Nunziatura Vaticana have been conducted, without any correspondence to Emanuela. The year after, in 2019, the proposal to open a commission of parliamentary inquiry was accepted. Throughout all these years, the Orlandi family, especially Pietro Orlandi, was never discouraged, even after his hopes were frequently dashed by unfounded confessions, unclear documents, or dismissal and reopening of commissions.
In 2022, the Netflix series Vatican Girl, written and directed by Mark Lewis, recalls the entire story and investigation, including interviews with journalists who have followed the case from its beginning and with Emanuela’s friends who have seen her last. A series that shows original recordings and unedited testimonies to expose the hidden details of the case.
In 2023, the Italian Senate gave the definitive response to re-open the commission of inquiry for both Emanuela’s and Mirella Gregori’s cases, and finally Pietro Orlandi started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Senate approval came 8 months after the one given by the Chamber of Deputies, with a Senator who belongs to Centrist for Europe abstaining and claiming that the institutions that were taking care of the case re-opening will not be able to find any other useful information that would unite the pieces of the twisted puzzle that this case has become.
Emanuela’s disappearance has been renamed as “the cold case” for its mysteriousness. One peculiarity happened on March 18, 2023, when, at the end of the usual Angelus (a catholic prayer in honor of Maria), Pope Francis ran into Pietro Orlandi and his mother near the Saint Anna Vatican Church and said four simple words that left Pietro shaken: “Emanuela is in heaven.” These four empty yet self-explanatory words prompted Pietro to dig into the case to uncover why the Pope wanted them to understand that he knew what happened to their Emanuela. However, no matter how often he asked to meet Pope Francis privately, he never got an answer.
More recently, this year, Pietro Orlandi resurfaced an audio recording for the Italian newspaper, Il Fatto Quotidiano, with what Emanuela’s father thought to be the voice of a young girl screaming. These audios, defined as “torture tapes,” were given to Emanuela’s family a month after her disappearance. Emanuela’s father was convinced that it was his daughter’s voice until his death. Pietro feels the same way.
Another fundamental clue emerged this year, regarding the fact that Emanuela was said to be locked up in a convent in London until 1993. During an interview with the Italian TV program Verissimo, Pietro Orlandi revealed the name of the man who is said to have been one of Emanuela’s jailers: an ex-member of the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR), Vittorio Baioni. Orlandi named him publicly since, as he said, “no one looks for him.”
Who is responsible for the disappearance of the innocent 15-year-old girl? Why are there so many tracks and clues, yet no conclusion? Why are there secrets that are being kept away from the family? Why are both the Vatican and the Church said to be involved in the case, and most importantly, why are they not speaking more about it, if they present themselves as ‘blameless’ to the media?
After 41 years, the Orlandi family has not received the closure that they deserve: the truth about their daughter and the right to live in peace knowing that the truth has come to light in one way or another.
Four decades, and it seems to be an impossible case to resolve. Is this the nation we want to be proud of? The one that does not fight to defend the rights of their own citizens? The one whose institutions hide crucial information? Or the one who assures the well-being and security of the population, and stands by their side, not by the side of criminals?
Recent Updates
Pietro Orlandi: “Mia sorella Emanuela usata per far diventare vittima papa Wojtyla”
Caso Emanuela Orlandi: una nuova teoria scuote l’inchiesta • il Millimetro
Emanuela Orlandi, il fratello Pietro: “Pignatone archivio’ per volonta'” – Italia – Ansa.it Folla alla Sapienza per il parente della giovane scomparsa nell’83: “Diddi? Solo danni”
Emanuela Orlandi, il fratello Pietro: “Pignatone archivio’ per volonta'” – Italia – Ansa.it
Suggested Readings
Andrea Purgatori e il caso Emanuela Orlandi: “Il Vaticano ha usato la strategia del silenzio”
Emanuela Orlandi search: Empty tombs fail to solve Vatican mystery
Scomparsa Emanuela Orlandi, Chaouqui: “Non ho nulla da aggiungere, lasciatemi in pace”
Francesca Chaouqui racconta l’arresto in Vaticano: “Anni peggiori della mia vita, una guerra contro di me” La papessa del caso Vatileaks ospite di Massimo Giletti per raccontare la sua verità sul processo che ha scosso il Vaticano.
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