Sit-in for Emanuela Orlandi: "We will continue to demand truth and justice"

While thousands of faithful gather in St. Peter's Square for the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Pietro Orlandi announces that on January 14, from 4.30 to 6.30 pm, in Largo Giovanni XXIII, Rome, there will be a sit-in for Emanuela Orlando. "We will never give up and we will continue to demand truth and justice until the end, we owe it to Emanuela and to all the victims of human cruelty", reads Orlandi's message, accompanied by a poster published on social media in which the Pope's faces are depicted John Paul II, Pope Francis and Benedict XVI and the sentence below: "Silence has made them accomplices". On the other side of the poster, a photo of Emanuela playing the flute.

Recently Ali Agca, the man who shot Pope Wojtyla, let it be known in a letter sent to Pietro Orlandi that behind the kidnapping of Emanuela and Mirella Gregori there would have been Wojtyla's desire to convert Russia and therefore - according to Agca - have the Bulgarian Secret Service and the KBG indicted. The other novelty concerns a "secret" conversation dating back to 2009, in which a former exponent of the Banda della Magliana accuses some high-ranking prelates by turning the spotlight back on Renatino De Pedis.

It is not the first time that the Banda della Magliana has entered this story with a straight leg. It was Sabrina Minardi, De Pedis' ex lover, who gave a detailed account of the kidnapping, involving Renatino himself. Emanuela - said Minardi - would have been taken by Renatino on the orders of Monsignor Marcinkus - president of the IOR from 1971 to 1989 -, killed and thrown into a cement mixer in Torvaianica. Minardi claimed to have accompanied Emanuela in his car and to have given her to a priest: «This little girl arrives: she was confused, she wasn't well, she cried and laughed. At the appointment there was someone who looked like a priest: he got out of a Mercedes with a Vatican City license plate and took the girl. If you've met her, she replied, you'd better forget her. Mind your own business".

Minardi reported to the investigators that the BMW was driven by a certain Sergio aged between 21 and 24 years, tall 1.90. Taller than Renatino and with a sporty physique, light hair, green eyes. “Very private. I always saw him, he was Renato's driver. He had a white Audi. I only saw the BMW at that juncture there. Sergio had taken her to the Gianicolo bar». Also according to what was declared by Minardi, Emanuela Orlandi was allegedly detained inside a house near Piazza San Giovanni di Dio, in which there was an underground. A house that was found, coming from the Trastevere station, going up from the Gianicolense ring road. With regard to the underground he declared that it was «immense and reached as far as the San Camillo hospital. I saw it, but then what did I care. Basically, I wasn't interested."

Who kidnapped Emanuela Orlandi? Because? Why was the boss of the Banda della Magliana Renatino De Pedis buried in the crypt of the basilica of Sant'Apollinare? Emanuela - we remember - attended a music school right in Piazza Sant'Apollinare. The relations between Enrico De Pedis, the upper echelons of the Vatican and of politics of those years have never been fully clarified, and even today they are shrouded in a thick curtain of mystery.

Angelo Barraco