Following a Netflix documentary, the Vatican reopens investigation into the disappearance of a teenager.
The Vatican has resumed its inquiry into the 1983 disappearance of the 15-year-old employee’s daughter months after a Netflix documentary allegedly revealed new light on the matter and weeks after her family requested that the Italian Parliament take up the issue.
According to Vatican spokesman; Matteo Bruni, the prosecutor in the Vatican, Alessandro Diddi, created a dossier on the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi in part “as a result of demands made by the family in several locations.”
The development was initially reported by Italian news outlets Adnkronos, LaPresse, and Ansa, according to Laura Sgro, a lawyer representing the Orlandi family, who claimed to have no independent proof of it.
She claimed that the matter had received one more Vatican filing as of 2019.
Ms. Orlandi disappeared on June 22, 1983, shortly after leaving her family’s apartment in Vatican City to travel to Rome for a music lesson. Her father worked as a laity for the Holy See.
One of the Vatican’s long-standing mysteries, her disappearance has been connected to everything from the assassination plot against Pope John Paul II to a financial issue involving the Vatican bank to Rome’s criminal underworld over the years.
These scenarios were examined in the recent four-part Netflix documentary Vatican Girl, which also offered fresh information from a friend who claimed Ms. Orlandi had confided in her about a high-ranking Vatican cleric making attempts toward her a week before she vanished.
Ms. Sgro and Ms. Orlandi’s brother Pietro unveiled a fresh plan last month to set up a legislative commission of inquiry into the incident. The Vatican cannot consider the case closed when there are so many unanswered questions, according to Ms. Sgro and opposition politician Carlo Calenda. Three previous initiatives in the Italian Parliament have failed to gain traction.
The Vatican has reportedly changed its mind, gotten over its resistance, and will now review the case from the beginning, according to Pietro Orlandi, who was speaking to RaiNews24 on Monday. Pietro Orlandi called Mr. Diddi’s decision a “positive step.”
