The Vatican will release evidence that could provide new leads into the 1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, four decades since the daughter of an employee mysteriously vanished.
On Thursday, the Vatican will hand over the evidence to the Rome city prosecutor, who will investigate the disappearance case of the daughter of a prominent Vatican employee. Orlandi was known to have lived within the walls of the holy city and vanished while on her way home from a music lesson in central Rome in 1983.
The 1983 Disappearance of a 15-Year-Old Vatican Girl
Over the years following the incident, the Vatican faced scrutiny over handling the missing person case. In January, authorities announced they had opened a new investigation into Orlandi's disappearance.
The Vatican released a statement on Thursday saying that the office of Alessandro Diddi, the promoter of justice, has already collected all the evidence available in the various institutions of the city and the Holy See. As per CNN, this came as he was also seeking evidence through conversations with the people in charge of certain officers at the time of the incident.
Diddi added that through the Vatican press office, he was able to find some investigatory leads that could merit further investigation of the disappearance case. His office, therefore, will send relevant evidence regarding the matter to the Prosecutor of Rome, who will review the documents and proceed with whatever he deems appropriate.
It needed to be made clear what the documents Diddi talked about referred to, whether they were new or old from the archives. The development on Thursday marks the first time the Vatican publicly released documents to Italian authorities regarding a case.
Furthermore, the statement suggests that the Vatican's investigation into the matter was now complete. Diddi still pledged that he would continue his activities in this direction in the coming months while remaining aware of the suffering that any person feels for the disappearance of a relative.
Moving Forward With the Investigation
In the decades since Orlandi's disappearance, Rome was captivated by the case, and focus on it was reinvigorated last year after Netflix released a four-part documentary titled "Vatican Girl." It revealed that a high-ranking Vatican cleric faced accusations of making sexual advances toward the teenager only a week before she disappeared, according to the New York Post.
The missing girl's father worked as an usher for the papacy when the incident occurred. Orlandi's brother, Pietro, further pushed the allegations in April by playing an audio tape on national television by an alleged gangster who said girls were brought into the Vatican to be molested. That particular source added that the pope, John Paull II, knew the situation at the time.
Giuseppe Pignatone, the previous chief prosecutor of Rome who was the one that archived the Orlandi case within the Italian legal system, is now the chief judge of the Vatican's criminal tribunal. For the last four decades, Pietro fought to find out what happened to his sister and is now planning a sit-in protest on Sunday near the Vatican, said CBS News.
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