One more track? Or the one that will lead to the elucidation of one of Italy’s most famous legal enigmas? Forty years and 19 days after the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandiinformation broadcast by the private television channel La7 now opens another track.
The 15-year-old girl disappeared on June 22, 1983. After leaving her singing cl, Emanuela did not return home to the Vatican. The tiny state, not even twice the size of the Luxembourg Gardens, already had several hundred inhabitants dedicated, for the non-religious, to the functioning of the Holy See. His father, Ercole Orlandi, worked at the prefecture of the Papal Household, the Pope’s “cabinet”. He lived there with his wife and their four daughters and their son Pietro, who continues to stir the media regularly for answers. The thesis of the kidnapping was imposed two days after the disappearance of the teenager: a man calling himself “The American” had demanded the release of Mehmet Ali Agca against Emanuela’s life, the man who attempted to inate Pope John Paul II in May 1981, Saint-Pierre square.
Over the years, the case has seen many twists and turns, commensurate with the collusion and power struggles within the smallest state in the world, and the fantasies it engenders. The “Disappearing Vatican” affair has given rise to countless speculations implicating the KGB, the secret services, the mafia, the high Vatican authorities or Freemasonry. This case also inspired a recent hit documentary series, “Vatican Girl,” which aired on Netflix.
According A7, the Vatican prosecutor handed over to his counterpart in Rome, a few weeks ago, an exchange of letters between a high dignitary of the Vatican and a priest in September 1983, three months after the disappearance of the young girl. Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, who was then No. 2 in the Vatican, wrote through diplomatic channels to a priest who had been the spiritual adviser to the Orlandi family. He asks her to confirm that Natalina Orlandi, one of Emanuela’s sisters, was ly hared by their uncle, Mario Meneguzzi, now deceased. In response, the confessor, sent to Colombia by John Paul II, recognizes that the young girl confided in him in this sense, and that she was silent for fear of losing her job in the Chamber of Deputies where her uncle, who ran the bar, had hired her.
This revelation is not really one: Natalina Orlandi, according to La7, had told the investigators everything. Even if the robot portrait of the man seen with Emanuela the day of his disappearance resembled his uncle, the investigation could not demonstrate his involvement. The investigation against Meneguzzi, close to the internal security services at the time, inducted spokesperson for the family, was quickly abandoned, but no reason could be found.
Pietro, Natalina and their lawyer, Laura Segro, who pushed the Vatican and then the Rome prosecutor’s office to reopen the file at the beginning of the year, do not believe at all in the implication of their uncle in the disappearance or the death of Emanuela. They accuse the Holy See of wanting to “exonerate” itself from its supposed responsibility in this affair. “I am angry, furious. They have crossed the line like never before (…) They cannot shift the responsibility for everything onto a family,” Pietro Orlandi told the news agency. Adnkronos.