Almost forty years after his disappearance, the Vatican reopens the Orlandi case .
The promoter of justice Alessandro Diddi will launch new investigations in relation to the disappearance of Emanuela, which took place in Rome in June 1983 when the girl was 15 years old . The opening of the file is linked to a series of requests presented in the past by Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela's brother.
The Vatican judiciary will first analyze the deeds and documents relating to the old investigations.
The proceedings of the Rome prosecutor's office on the disappearances of Orlandi and Mirella Gregori, also dating back to 1983, were closed in October 2015 at the request of the then chief prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone , now president of the Vatican court. Pietro Orlandi hopes that «a solution can be reached. The truth is there, it's somewhere it's and many people know it».
According to what the lawyer for the Orlandi family, Laura Sgrò, had said, in January of last year the Pope had written to her instructing her to contact the Promoter of Justice. And in fact the lawyer today confirms: "We have been waiting to be heard for a year".
Before Christmas, the bill for the setting up of a parliamentary inquiry commission also arrived.
THE REVELATIONS OF FATHER GEORG – The Orlandi case also in the latest revelations of Joseph Ratzinger's secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein . In the book "Nothing but the truth" (Piemme) Father Georg, in relation to a document which Pietro Orlandi is also speaking of in these hours, says: «This phantom dossier has never been disclosed solely because it does not exist» . However, he confirms that he met Pietro on December 9, 2011 and then explains why, in consultation with the Vatican press office at the time led by Father Federico Lombardi, he did not ask Pope Benedict XVI to make a speech on Emanuela Orlandi at the Angelus.
The question was studied by Monsignor Giampiero Gloder of the Secretariat of State and the conclusion was precisely that of avoiding a public intervention by Ratzinger . The German archbishop lets it be known that even the then head of the Gendarmerie, Domenico Giani, "consulted the documentation of the time and concluded that there had been no news kept hidden from the Italian judiciary and that in the meantime no further hypotheses had matured regarding to which the investigations in the Vatican can be deepened".
THE CASE - It was June 22, 1983 when Emanuela, daughter of a messenger of the prefecture of the pontifical household and citizen of the Vatican , disappeared without a trace. Orlandi, who would be over fifty today, disappeared around 7 pm after leaving a music school.
In May, another Roman girl, Mirella Gregori, the same age as Emanuela, had already disappeared, and the two cases were almost immediately linked. Ali Agca, the Pope's assassin, spoke about it in these terms, but no concrete elements have ever emerged to corroborate this lead. The alleged kidnapping also ends up intertwining with Agca's attack on Wojtyla on May 13, 1981.
Without elements, the first investigation was closed in July 1997. In June 2008, the Magliana gang returned to the case with the statements of Sabrina Minardi, partner of Enrico De Pedis, one of the leaders of the gang. According to Minardi, Emanuela Orlandi was killed after being held prisoner in the basement of a building near the San Camillo hospital. But concrete evidence does not emerge on this track either.
Nothing happened even after the analyzes carried out on the bones found in the crypt of Sant'Apollinare, in Rome, in which the boss Renatino De Pedis was buried, in derogation from all regulations. In 2016 the archiving of the investigation by the Rome prosecutor's office, confirmed by the Cassation. Then the complaint to the Vatican judiciary. In October 2018, the Vatican gave the go-ahead for DNA analysis on some bones found during work in the Vatican Nunciature headquarters in Via Po in Rome . But the investigations ascertain that there are no ties either with Emanuela Orlandi or with Mirella Gregori.
On 11 July 2019 a further inspection but this time in the Vatican, in two tombs of the Teutonic cemetery, those of the princesses Sofia of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Bartenstein and Carlotta Federica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. However, no human remains were found inside them ; however, in the adjacent building that houses the Teutonic College, a large quantity of human bones was identified, which were collected in twenty-six sacks and then examined by an expert. Further investigations finally excluded, also in this case, the presence of Emanuela's remains among the examined finds.
(Unioneonline/D)