Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, has spoken out on the mysterious case of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old teenager who disappeared in 1983 and whose whereabouts remain unknown to this day.
"The idea of the Holy See is to clarify things, to see what was done in the past, both on the Italian side and the Vatican side, and to see if something more can be done, always with this objective: to come to clarify," the Cardinal indicated in declarations to the Ansa agency this April 19.
"I think we owe it first of all to the mother (of Emanuela), who is still alive and suffers a lot. We do it with the best intentions," he added.
The Vatican reopened the case:
In January of this year, the Vatican announced the reopening of the Orlandi case, which had been closed in April 2020 without results.
The Holy See's decision was in response to repeated requests from Emanuela's brother, Pietro Orlandi, who for nearly 40 years has led a campaign to resolve the case.
The rumors surrounding the enigmatic disappearance of this teenager, the daughter of a Vatican employee, involve members of the mafia, members of the clergy, and the "Turkish Liberation Front" that demanded the freedom of Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to assassinate St. John Paul II in 1981.
In 2012 they called for an investigation when they found unidentified skeletal remains next to the tomb of Roman mafia leader Enrico De Pedis in the Basilica of St. Apollinaris. The bones did not belong to the young woman.
In 2018, other skeletal remains were found in the basement of the Nunciature in Rome, but investigations determined that they predated 1964.
In March 2019, the family received an anonymous letter with a tomb photo and the phrase, "Look where the angel indicates."
The place that would appear in the photograph is the Teutonic Cemetery, inside the Vatican, so they asked the Holy See to open it. The remains were not those of Emanuela Orlandi, and the investigation of the case was closed in April 2020.
In a television interview last April 11, Pietro Orlandi made controversial statements, considered by Pope Francis as "offensive and unfounded," accusing St. John Paul II not only of inappropriate behavior but of having been involved in the case and of having wanted to hide it.
This has elicited several reactions, including those of his secretary for more than 40 years, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz; those of the Italian Episcopal Conference; those of the Polish Episcopate; and those of Pope Francis himself.
Walter Sanchez Silva is a senior writer for ACI Prensa. He has experience in researching and covering international ecclesiastical events such as World Youth Days (WYD) in Cologne 2005, Madrid 2011, and Rio 2013; the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American Episcopal Council in Aparecida; as well as the trips of Pope Benedict XVI in May 2007 to Brazil and in 2012 to Mexico. He covered Pope Francis' trip to South Korea in 2014 and the Synods of Bishops in the Vatican in 2015 (on the family) and 2019 (on the Amazon). He was also sent to cover the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and served as a field producer in Buenos Aires in 2013 for the documentary "Pope Francis: The Pope of the New World".
