Emanuela Orlandi, Vatican reopens case: new investigation underway

Nearly 40 years after the disappearance, Vatican promoter of justice Alessandro Diddi together with the Gendarmerie have decided to reopen the investigation of an affair that shook the Holy See.
The Vatican reopens the case of Emanuela Orlandi. Nearly 40 years after her disappearance, Vatican promoter of justice Alessandro Diddi together with the Gendarmerie have decided to reopen the investigation of an affair that has shaken the Holy See and its highest institutions, in a judicial and investigative journey that has touched on all kinds of disturbing hypotheses.

As far as the goal of the investigators is to plumb again all the files, documents, reports, reports, and testimonies. A 360-degree work to leave no stone unturned, to try to clarify shadows and questions of all kinds, and finally put an end to even the most incredible inferences. According to the work plan developed at the office of the promoter of justice, they will start again from the data acquired in court, they will follow new leads and old indications that at the time were not too thorough: in short, the work will start again from the examination of every single detail starting from that afternoon of June 22, 1983, when a 15-year-old girl, Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared into thin air. She had closed the door of her home behind her at 4 p.m. on that early summer day to go to music class in St. Apollinare Square. Near the basilica of the same name where many years later it was discovered that one of the leaders of the Magliana gang, ‘Renatino’ Enrico De Pedis, according to several witnesses material executor of the kidnapping “on behalf of high prelates,” was buried there.

The initiative of the Vatican judiciary moves in the wake of the search for truth and transparency at all costs desired by Pope Francis, and as far as the Orlandi affair is concerned, it fits into the wake of the attention shown to the case by other pontiffs, starting with John Paul II (he was the first, in his appeal during the Angelus, to formalize the hypothesis of the kidnapping).

New investigations,new revelations.

The new investigations into Emanuela could also reach a glimpse of light on the affair of her peer Mirella Gregori, who also disappeared that year. Obviously, the pontifical judiciary’s decision goes to fit into and supports the desperate search for truth claimed by the 15-year-old’s family, which has never surrendered to the blanket of mystery and omertà.

New revelations, successful docufiction, unreleased leads. Never before have the spotlights been turned back on the story of the disappearance of the very young Emanuela, spotlights that had been extinguished in October 2015 when the Gip, at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and for lack of substantial evidence, dismissed the investigation into the disappearances of Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori, initiated in 2006 following statements by Sabrina Minardi and which had six suspects for conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping among others including Monsignor Pietro Vergari, former rector of the basilica of Sant’Apollinare where De Pedis had been buried until 2012. Three years later came the last breath of hope for the families of both girls who disappeared into thin air. The Vatican, consistent with the Holy Father’s indications of transparency, gave the go-ahead for a DNA analysis of some bones found during restoration work in the Vatican Nunciature building on Via Po in Rome. The investigation, entrusted by the Holy See to Italy, and in particular to the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Scientific Police, was aimed at comparing those bones with Emanuela Orlandi’s genetic code. Nothing happened there either. Today we start all over again, for the umpteenth (and last) time.