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Known as the “Orlandi case” and, thanks to a recent television series, the case of the “Vatican Girl“, it is the saga of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee who disappeared in Rome nearly 40 years ago.
Since her father worked in the Prefecture of the Papal Household, she and her family actually lived in Vatican City, making her one of the few minors to have the nationality of the smallest state in the world.
When Vatican Girl disappeared on June 22, 1983, following a lesson – at her music school in Rome, her family initially thought she had run away.
But then it appeared she’d been kidnapped, and a vast investigation was quickly launched. Just a few days after she went missing, John Paul II even appealed publicly for her kidnappers to release her.
Although Emanuela Orlandi was never found, her fate has been the subject of many hypotheses over the past forty years and has become one of the recurring stories in the Italian press.
According to some theories, a Rome-based crime organization called the Banda della Magliana was kidnapped as ransom to recover money it had loaned to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, former president of the so-called Vatican bank (IOR).
The loan was apparently used to finance Poland’s anti-communist trade union Solidarnosc, but it was never repaid.
Another theory alleges Orlandi was kidnapped in order to obtain the release of Mehmet Ali Agça, the Turk who tried to assassinate John Paul II in 1981.
The Grey Wolves, an ultranationalist Turkish organization, has long been accused of kidnapping the young woman without this ever being proven.
Ali Agça was released in 2010 and in an open letter published in 2019 he alleged that Emanuela Orlandi was still alive and that it was necessary to search for traces of her in the CIA archives.
What has the investigation revealed in recent years?
In recent years, her body has been sought in several places: the Teutonic Cemetery inside Vatican City, where an anonymous letter provoked exhumations in 2019; the Villa Girogina, in Rome, where bones were found in 2018; the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare near Piazza Navona where, in 2012, the police reopened the tomb of a mafia boss who was buried in the crypt where they hopes of finding the remains of the young woman.
But there was no trace of Emanuela Orlandi in any of these places.
Clues for the location of Orlandi or her mortal remains have also been sought in England, where some say that she was sent by her captors to a boarding school in the suburbs of London.
Searches have also led to Liechtenstein, France and Switzerland – but all in vain.
Why has her case resurfaced now?
To everyone’s surprise, the Vatican announced this past January that its civil justice system was reopening investigations into Emanuela Orlandi’s mysterious disappearance.
This took place a few weeks after Netflix aired a documentary on her case called “Vatican Girl”.
Then on April 11, Orlandi’s older brother Pietro, who has been fighting for years to find out the truth concerning Emanuel, met for nearly eight hours with Alessandro Diddi, the Vatican’s promoter of justice (chief prosecutor).
The elder Orldandi said he provided the prosecutor with new evidence.
But Pietro Orlandi’s comments in an Italian television program broadcast on the La7 television network later that evening provoked an uproar in the Vatican.
He said he had proof that John Paul II would sneak out of the Vatican at night to abuse young girls.
“I am told that Wojtyla (John Paul II’s family name) used to go out at night with two Polish priests, and it was certainly not to bless houses,” Orlandi said.
He produced an audio recording in which a man with close mafia ties claims to have been in charge of eliminating young girls who prelates of the Roman Curia had sexually exploited.
“Pope John Paul II used to bring these (girls) to the Vatican; it was an intolerable situation. At some point, the Secretary of State intervened to get rid of them and he turned to people in the prison system,” Pietor Orlandi claimed.
The Vatican’s response to insinuations against John Paul II
The remarks caused a huge shock in the Vatican. And the response from Church officials came in waves. Polish Cardinal Stanislas Dziwisz, John Paul’s longtime personal secretary, issued a statement on April 13 denouncing the “virulent accusations”.
He said they boiled down to “false accusations from beginning to end, unrealistic, laughable, bordering on comedy if they were not tragic, even criminal themselves”.
“I can testify, without fear of denial, that from the very beginning, the Holy Father took charge of the case,” the 84-year-old cardinal added.
The next day Vatican News – the main media arm of the Dicastery for Communications – denounced what it called a “media massacre” that “wounds the hearts of millions of believers and non-believers”.
“No one deserves to be slandered in this way, without even an ounce of proof,” wrote Andrea Tornielli, the dicastery’s editorial director.
“Any proof? No proof. Any evidence? Even less,” Andrea Tornielli insisted.
“Testimonies that are at least second or third-hand? No shadow of a doubt. Only anonymous slanderous accusations,” the Italian journalist wrote.
Vatican prosecutors also criticized Orlandi’s lawyer for not turning over the names of certain sources, objecting to his claims of attorney-client privilege.
Finally, Pope Francis spoke out this past Sunday while addressing crowds in St. Peter’s Square after praying the noontime Regina Caeli.
“Certain of interpreting the feelings of the faithful throughout the world, I direct a grateful thought to the memory of Saint John Paul II, the object of offensive and unfounded inferences these past few days,” Francis said.
Following the uproar over his initial remarks, Pietor Orlandi has since said that he never accused John Paul II of anything. Instead, he claims he was only conveying information that had come his way.
“It is certainly not for me to say whether this person has spoken the truth or not,” he wrote on April 15.
“We have never accused Wojtyla of anything, as some would have you believe. Our only intention is to have justice for my sister Emanuela and to reach the truth, whatever it may be.”
- Loup Besmond de Senneville has been a journalist with La Croix since 2011 and a permanent correspondent at the Vatican since 2020.
- First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
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