Pope Francis on Sunday marked the fortieth anniversary of the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican worker whose disappearance stays considered one of Italy’s most enduring mysteries and just lately was the topic of a Netflix sequence.
In remarks after his Angelus prayer and blessing, Francis expressed his “closeness to the family, above all, the mother,” assuring them — in addition to “all families who carry the grief the disappearance of a loved one” — of his prayers.
His remarks could have been transient, however they had been phrases that Emanuela’s household had lengthy waited for.
“It’s a very positive thing,” stated Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela’s older brother. He had come to St. Peter’s Square with tons of of supporters hoping that the pope would say one thing, something, “words of hope,” he stated.
The Orlandi household — first her mother and father after which her 4 siblings — has been tireless in its seek for Emanuela. Family members have lobbied judicial and parliamentary authorities to analyze, gone on numerous tv applications to plead for ideas and pursued even probably the most outlandish of claims.
The case has enthralled Italians for 4 many years, and curiosity rose globally after Netflix broadcast a four-part documentary sequence in October known as “Vatican Girl.”
“After Netflix, I began getting messages of solidarity from around the world,” Mr. Orlandi stated on Sunday morning at a sit-in earlier than the pope spoke.
Many individuals, he added, advised him that that they had written the Vatican to precise their dismay at its failure to help the Orlandi household in its seek for solutions. The household has repeatedly accused the Vatican of reticence in admitting what it is aware of concerning the case.
That modified this yr, when Alessandro Diddi, the chief Vatican prosecutor, stated he would look into Emanuela’s disappearance. And on Thursday, Mr. Diddi stated in a press release that an preliminary evaluation of the proof gathered to this point, in addition to interviews with individuals who labored within the Vatican 40 years in the past, had uncovered leads “worthy of further investigation.”
Mr. Diddi stated that he had handed over his findings to Rome’s prosecutor’s workplace “to proceed in the direction it deems most appropriate,” and that he would proceed to pursue the case.
This yr, the prosecutor’s workplace in Rome additionally opened a brand new investigation. Two earlier investigations didn’t shed any gentle on the case. “One was archived in 1997 and the other in 2016,” stated Laura Sgro, the Orlandi household lawyer.
Emanuela disappeared on June 22, 1983, off a road in Rome after leaving a music lesson. It would hardly have made news had it not been for a telephone name made to her household a couple of days later by a person who stated her launch was contingent on the discharge of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in May 1981.
That was solely the primary twist in what has change into an ever-thickening plot that has led investigators to pursue myriad hypotheses involving a forged of suspicious characters and occasions, together with the Sicilian mafia; the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, a financial institution with ties to Vatican monetary establishments whose chairman was discovered hanging underneath a London bridge; a pedophile group contained in the Vatican; and a infamous Rome felony gang.
Over the years, the hunt for Emanuel, or her stays, has led to searches overseas and in Italy, in a constructing within the Vatican’s Embassy to Italy, in a cemetery inside Vatican City and in a crypt in a Roman church the place a tomb belonging to a neighborhood crime boss was exhumed.
“The road that leads to the truth is a complex, difficult road, made up of complicated moments,” Ms. Sgro stated on Sunday after the pope’s blessing. “I believe that the pope this morning gave an indication to overcome these complications and go forward together to find Emanuela.”
This yr, the Italian Parliament moved to create a fee to evaluation what is understood concerning the disappearance of Emanuela, in addition to the disappearance of Mirella Gregori, one other teenager who went lacking in 1983. The 40-member fee would have a broader scope than a judiciary investigation and will evaluation previous leads. “Forty people asking different questions,” Mr. Orlandi stated on Sunday.
The fee was authorized unanimously within the decrease home in March, however has hit a roadblock within the Senate after Mr. Orlandi was accused, wrongly, of desirous to tarnish the reminiscence of St. John Paul II.
“The search for truth is something important, an ideal that Parliament should aspire to,” Ms. Sgro stated final week throughout a presentation in Rome on a ebook that she wrote on the case.
On Sunday, some supporters got here to St. Peter’s bearing banners studying, “Truth and Justice for Emanuela,” whereas others held up images of {the teenager} taken from a poster that had been plastered all through Rome after her disappearance. The {photograph} of the smiling lady, carrying a headscarf, is an iconic picture in Italy.
Not everybody was pleased with Pope Francis’s transient remarks, and a few supporters of the Orlandi household started chanting, “Truth, truth,” whereas the pontiff was nonetheless talking.
It is “scandalous,” stated Cristina Bonomo, a nursery trainer who stated that it was not sufficient for the pope to “be close to the family — it’s too little.”
The Vatican “can no longer hide the truth on Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori,” she stated.
“Many years have passed,” Ms. Bonomo stated. “They have to find the courage, the dignity and the strength” to say what actually occurred.
It is what the Orlandi household continues to battle for.
“Don’t give up, Pietro,” somebody known as out from the gang.
“Never,” he replied.
Source: www.nytimes.com