The disturbing case of the disappearance in 1983 of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee, is one of the most notorious mysteries in Rome. He has been linked to the CIA, the KGB, the mafia, the P2 lodge, Bulgarian agents and even the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 by the Turkish Ali Agca. Now, months after it went around the world thanks to the Netflix documentary The Girl from the Vatican, the Holy See has opened a formal investigation for the first time. Her brother, Pietro Orlandi, has never stopped looking for her.
Who is Emanuela Orlandi?
It was... it's my sister, born in 1968. We had always lived in the Vatican, and we had a better childhood than other children. The Vatican gardens were like the gardens at home, the keys were always put in the door.
There was a lot of security.
We thought it was the safest place in the world. We were very naive, we did not think that evil existed. Unfortunately, we found out that this was not the case. In 1983, Emanuela disappeared on her way back from her music class and we have not seen her since. From that moment there were multiple requests from the alleged kidnappers, many leads to follow, and things always got bigger. We suddenly find ourselves in a nightmare made up of secret services of the Italian State, of foreign countries, of criminality, of the mafia...
40 years have passed and now the Vatican opens a full investigation.
In 40 years they have not wanted to collaborate, on the contrary, they have allowed silence and omertà. For years we asked for a collaboration, but they always told us that they did not know or could do anything. And now yes, days after the funeral of Pope Ratzinger, they have decided to open the investigation. I take it as something positive.
Have you talked to Pope Francis?
I found out from the press. In 2013, a fortnight after his election, I saw him with my mother at mass, hoping it would be positive after Wojtyla and Ratzinger did nothing. She told us that Emanuela was in heaven, a delicate way of saying that she was dead. I thought she knew something more than us. I asked many times to be able to have a private meeting, but he raised the wall more than the others.
However, it is unthinkable that the Vatican wanted to open this investigation now without his permission.
That is sure. The prosecutor is a layman and he would never have taken this initiative personally. Only the Pope can do it. It is a monarchy and, in the end, it is he who decides everything.
In 2019 they already opened the tombs of the Teutonic cemetery inside the Vatican walls to follow a loose end. Was that the start of an opening?
It was not a full investigation. They had no choice because if they had rejected it, people would have thought they had something to hide. They did it knowing that there was nothing down there. The problem is that a room appeared under the two tombs, which created many doubts, completely empty, made of reinforced concrete, without doors or windows. They remarked that the Vatican had shown itself to be available despite the fact that an anonymous letter had indicated it, but it was not only that, but rather two non-anonymous people within the Vatican who warned me.
Are there new elements that allow us to think that this research will be successful?
There are a series of screenshots of a WhatsApp conversation between two people very close to Pope Francis on two reserved phones from the Holy See, messages from 2014. They talk about documents about Emanuela, about very serious things, about the need to pay those who called grave robbers or to make an inventory of everything found. It is as if, in substance, they had found something that contained things related to Emanuela, documents or evidence, in that place that I presume is this empty room in the cemetery, and that they would have been taken elsewhere.
The Netflix documentary brings something new: a friend of hers says that Emanuela confessed to her that a prelate had approached her with sexual intentions.
She said she was very upset because someone close to the Pope tried it in the Vatican gardens. The fact that he told her is credible because she was a friend from outside the Vatican. And that she was someone close to the Pope, she meant that Emanuela knew who she was.
The incredible thing about this case is that it has been linked to everything. Even with the exchange request for Ali Agca, arrested for attempting against John Paul II.
That lasted for years. Karol Wojtyla came to our house and clearly told us that it was a case of international terrorism. He told us who was our referent for us and we thought he was going to solve the situation. Until 1996 this track was followed, but then it was closed because there was not enough evidence. Some still believe in it. We keep in touch with Agca, and he maintains that she is alive and in a place controlled by the Vatican.
Another theory is that of the supposed debt owed to the Magliana gang, the Roman mafia.
It was not a debt with the Magliana, because it was money from the Sicilian mafia that through the Magliana they brought to the Vatican at Banco Ambrosiano – an institution that went bankrupt linked to the Holy See – and that would be something serious. John Paul II, even knowing that the money was stained with blood, used it for Poland.
In this puzzle, what does the heart tell you?
Although she was a Vatican citizen, Emanuela could not be the object of great blackmail, because she was only a teenager. She evidently was used to blackmail the Vatican. If Emanuela, in that attempt to get closer, was taken somewhere with someone important and they recorded what was happening, she had enormous blackmail in her hands. The more important the person, the greater the blackmail. A blackmail so great as to carry it forward for 40 years, something that the Vatican could never make public. I have no proof, but it must be something very big, because otherwise the Vatican would not have hidden it all these years.
Do you think that this time will be the definitive one to find out what happened to your sister?
Over the years there have been moments that seemed like the end, but this is the first time that two states have opened an investigation at the same time, because there is also the will in the Italian Parliament. Perhaps the time has come. I would like to go all the way, for Emanuela, for my mother, who is still alive... and to try to think about the most banal things in life.
