A new development in the case of the “disappeared Vatican”

jump in Orlandi case : the investigation can move towards a family drama. It has been forty years since the judicial conundrum operated on the collective unconscious Italian. In France, the file is popular with news lovers or thanks The hidden VaticanThe documentary was posted on Netflix This fall. This series revolves around the testimonies of Emanuela Orlandi’s relatives, journalists and people who claim to have taken part in the kidnapping, and tells the different hypotheses that have been put forward to clarify the mystery.

On June 22, 1993, Emanuela Orlandi, 15, compatriot VaticanHe is last seen in the center of Rome, after a music lesson. Since then, the case has sparked endless speculation amidst conspiracy theories that implicate the intelligence services, and Mafiahigher Vatican authorities or Freemasonry.

exchange messages

Now all eyes are on the family path. According to private Italian TV channel La7, the Vatican prosecutor recently handed over to his Romanian counterpart letters exchanged between Foreign Minister Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican’s second-in-command, and a priest, a former spiritual advisor to the Orlandi family. , in September 1983.

Its purpose: to ensure that Natalina, the disappeared’s older sister, was sexually abused by their uncle, Mario Meneguzzi, now deceased. The confessor admits that the girl confessed the facts to him. She was forbidden to speak lest she lose her position in the House of Representatives as her uncle, who ran the bar, had employed her some time before. These facts were known to investigators at the time since they were confirmed by the direct testimony of Natalina Orlandi, according to La7.

Emanuela’s relatives accuse the Holy See

Italian media reported on Tuesday that Mario Meneguzzi, who was close to the internal security services at the time, answered some anonymous calls received by the Orlandi family and escaped from the shadows he was aware of without the investigators knowing how. Finally, the photomontage of the man seen with Emanuela Orlandi, June 22, 1983, the day he disappeared, is similar.

However, Emanuela’s brother Pietro and his sister Natalina and their lawyer, Laura Sigrow, who were reopened by the Vatican and then the Rome Prosecutor’s Office in 2023, do not believe this. They accuse the Holy See of wanting to “absolve” itself of its supposed responsibility in this case. They should hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in Rome.

FR with AFP