Brother of ‘Vatican Girl’ has no confidence in Vatican investigation into her fate

ROME – After initially expressing hope that a Vatican investigation into his sister’s disappearance more than 40 years ago reflected “a desire on the part of Pope Francis for the truth,” the brother of Emanuela Orlandi, the celebrated “Vatican girl” whose fate remains modern Italy’s most notorious unsolved mystery, is now expressing “no confidence” in the investigation.

“I have no confidence in the Vatican investigation,” Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela’s older brother, said on August 24 at a meeting in Sicily to combat violence against women.

Orlandi said he is now pinning his hopes on two other parallel investigations into his sister’s case, one being conducted by Rome’s chief prosecutor and the other by a bipartisan panel of the Italian parliament.

“The hope of finding the truth is growing,” Orlandi said, despite his skepticism about the Vatican. “It’s important to talk about it in schools, because I see a sense of justice in young people that adults often don’t have.”

Orlandi also denied recent speculation in the Italian media about an alleged private meeting with Pope Francis, saying he only met the pope a few days after his election in April 2013, outside St. Anne’s Church in the Vatican.

“Despite many requests, I have never been given the opportunity” for a private conversation with the pope, Orlandi said.

The 1983 disappearance of Emanuel Orlandi, whose father was a minor official in the Prefecture of the Papal Household and whose family lived in a Vatican apartment near the Swiss Guard barracks, has over the years become a magnet for speculation and conspiracy theories. The case has been linked variously to the 1981 assassination attempt on St. John Paul II, the Vatican banking scandals of the 1980s, alleged Vatican-Mafia ties, and rumors of a pedophile ring operating within the Vatican.

The popularity of a 2022 Netflix documentary about the Orlandi affair, titled “Vatican Girl,” led to renewed pressure on both civil and church authorities to revisit the case, culminating in a January 2023 announcement by the Vatican’s top prosecutor, veteran Italian lawyer Alessandro Diddi, that his office would open an investigation.

Orlandi and the family’s lawyer, Laura Sgrò, welcomed the development at the time. In April 2023, Orlandi held an eight-hour meeting with Diddi during which, among other things, he handed over a dossier of information he had collected over the years, including a list of senior Vatican staff he had said should be interviewed.

“I am satisfied because I have finally been able to explain all the things that need to be investigated,” Orlandi said after that session. “Diddi assured me that he wants to find out the truth, without discounts for anyone.”

However, that optimism proved short-lived.

Just two months later, Diddi appeared before an Italian Senate committee to oppose the establishment of a parliamentary investigation, a move strongly advocated by Orlandi.

“I believe that at this point it would be a dangerous breach of the integrity of the investigations already underway to launch a third investigation that follows a different logic and methods to those of the judicial authorities,” Diddi told the Senate.

“Too much interest from public opinion could pollute the integrity of the work we do in collaboration with the Rome Public Prosecutor,” he said.

Those statements did not sit well with Orlandi, who urged parliament to affirm his independence in pursuing his own investigation. As more time passed without any indication of new findings from the Vatican, Orlandi became publicly critical.

“The pope has the power to bring forward whatever is out there, so it’s not just a matter of saying ‘open a file and investigate.’ If he wanted to, Pope Francis has the power to impose (disclosure), and I’m sure everyone would appreciate that,” Orlandi said in the fall of 2023.

In January of the following year, the month in which Orlandi organizes an annual sit-in to commemorate his sister’s birthday on January 14, he called Diddi’s investigation a “farce.”

His comments in Sicily therefore fit with the growing lack of trust between the Vatican under Pope Francis and the Orlandi family, although Pietro insists the family will persevere.

“We will never accept my sister’s disappearance,” he told the gathering in Sicily. “We will continue to fight to know the truth.”

During the parliamentary committee’s most recent hearing, former Roman prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo, who investigated Orlandi’s disappearance in the 1980s, suggested that the late Rome Mafia boss Enrico De Pedis, better known as “Renatino,” may have been involved for “a personal motive.”

Over the years, rumors have linked De Pedis to the case for other reasons, sometimes involving Pope John Paul II and the Vatican bank. Capaldo, however, dismissed such theories, suggesting that he merely facilitated the transfer of Emanuela from her original kidnappers to other unidentified parties.