The mystery of Emanuela Orlandi, the Italian woman disappeared 35 years ago

L & # 39; Italian Emanuela Orlandi was only 15 years old when she disappeared 36 years agoHe had gone to his weekly music clbad in an area of ​​Rome near the Vatican walls and had never returned home. Since then, Italy has been submerged by innumerable stories and clues that one and the other have given hope to the Orlandi family to find its location, but have always been ended in a fiasco. For the media and the Italian public opinion, the Orlandi case was one of its favorite mysteries.

Following the last song received on Emanuela, an anonymous letter, this Thursday, July 11, is the date indicated for that The Vatican exhumes the tombs of German Princess Sophie von Hohenlohe dated 1836 and Queen Carlota Federica of Denmark – died in 1840 – located in the Teutonic cemetery, where was 2000 years ago the circus of Nero and the place of martyrdom of many Christians of the time.

A debt to the mafia?

Emanuela was last seen on June 22, 1983When I was 15, and since then, no one has been able to reconstruct what happened and confirm whether he is still alive or dead. One of the most established theories in the Orlandi case is that the Church had incurred such a large debt from the Roman mafia of "La Magliana" that it could not pay and that the criminals had kidnapped the teenager to get their money. This makes sense when it comes to the daughter of a Vatican official close to Pope John Paul II.

In 2012, they found unidentified skeletal remains near the tomb of Enrico De Pedis, the clan leader, who donated a huge sum to bury in the crypt of the Basilica of San Apolinar, right next to the music school. De Pedis's girlfriend, Sabrina Minardi, argued before a judge that The mafioso had killed him at the behest of former Vatican Bank president Paul Marcinkus, who wanted to "give a warning to someone". The Italian police exhumed the tomb of the mafia murdered in 1990, but the investigation yielded negative results.

In early 2019, the Orlandi family received an anonymous letter including a photo of a grave in the Teutonic graveyard with the phrase "look where the angel says".

Pino Nazio in his book The secret of Emanuela Orlandi, according to which the girl would have died soon after her abduction. He even refers to a death so atrocious that it would be impossible to find his body now. Another hypothesis is that the child would have been the victim of a macabre episode of pederasty involving VIPs of the Vatican clergy. Another book, The impostorsAccording to journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, the Holy See hid it in a convent in London.

Years later, journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi published a document obtained in a Vatican safe suggested that the Holy See was involved in the disappearance, that she was still alive. The Vatican called it "fake and ridiculous". A tomb was also unearthed in the Roman basilica of San Apolinar, after the wife of a player of the Lazio football team in Rome claimed that the remains of the girl were there. The investigations were also unsuccessful.

In a city-state as hermetic and mysterious as the Vatican, conspiracy theories have been on the agenda for centuries. John Paul II nearly died after being attacked in the heart of St. Peter's Square by a Turk named Ali Agca, to whom the pope forgave after his visit to prison.

It is precisely the terrorist who tried to kill the Polish pontiff who offered another trail shortly after the disappearance of Orlandi. An anonymous phone call, from a man who identified himself as "the American", He claimed to have custody of the girl and offered an exchange with Ali Agca. John Paul II himself appealed from the balcony of the Apostolic Palace, in front of a lively square in San Pedro, to allow Emanuela to be released, but she had nothing.

The name of the teenager was linked to an infinity of theories involving the CIA, the KGB, the Sicilian mafia, the Bulgarian agents and even the attempted badbadination of John Paul II in 1981 by the Turkish Ali Agca.

Search among the dead

The last episode of this mystery was announced by Gianfranco Girotti, former regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary. It is "the decision to open the two tombs" of the Teutonic Cemetery, located in the Vatican precinct and only 200 meters from the house. in which lived the Orlandi family. According to Girotti, the exhumation of two bodies will serve to "end this story with fable tinctures".

In this letter, the sentence appears "look where the angel says", referring to the statue of an angel (holding a sheet with the words in Latin "Requiescat in pace") in the cemetery. Below, an inscription dedicated to Prince Gustaf von Hohenlohe, named in 1857 Archbishop by Pope Pius IX. To facilitate the puzzle, the sender of the letter had attached a corresponding photo to this place.

The Orlandi family has never abandoned the search, even hoping to find it alive at some point. Pietro, Emanuela's brother, has been the spokesperson for the family for many years. His father, Ercole, died after several interventions in the heart and never lost the hope of finding his daughter again. While his mother, Maria, says that he has suffered too much to be at the forefront of research.

The Vatican opens its graves to unravel the mystery of a missing girl in 1983

From various television programs, Pietro accused the Holy See of not having enough involved to help solve the mystery of Emanuela and even insinuated complicity in his silence. Now, he thanks the Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, and the Commander of the Vatican Gendarmerie, Domenico Giani. "I do not know what will happen, but before we exclude certain things, it is necessary to clarify them and we are happy to be heard," he told La Stampa.

The process to see if the bones found in the Teutonic cemetery match Emanuela will take between 20 and 30 days. The professor of forensics of the University of Tor Vergata, Giovanni Arcudi, who will conduct the DNA study, explained that the bones would be examined "to determine their clbadification and dating, as well as for all other diagnoses that can be made in forensic anthropology, in order to establish age, bad, size, etc. "

After this first examination, we could "rule out the hypothesis that the bone remains belong to people other than the two who were buried there," he added. But in case other human remains than those of Princess Sophie and Queen Charlotte are found, "the time of the operation would be extended and could be useful dental identification, the state of the teeth, from which it can be traced until the age".

Then, the DNA test will be performed "to establish a certainty and exclude definitively and categorically that in the two graves is a remnant attributable to the poor Emanuela". "For DNA tests, 20 days, 30 days may be necessary, or even 60 days, because it may be necessary to repeat the test," said the doctor.

S.D.