(Crux. Crux Staff).
Pietro Orlandi, the brother of a 15-year-old girl whose 1983 disappearance remains the most notorious unsolved Vatican mystery of the 20th century, has called a new Vatican investigation of the case announced in January 2023 a “farce.” “I had great enthusiasm for this investigation,” Orlandi said June 4. “Unfortunately, I’ve come to understand that for me, sincerely, that investigation is a farce. They’re not doing anything.” “I asked people close to Pope Francis to ask the pope, who requested this investigation, if he’s aware of what the people to whom he entrusted it are doing, because it’s the exact opposite of what they should be doing,” he said. Orlandi’s comments came during a June 4 public event in Milan, where he appeared during a discussion of Italy’s femicide crisis along with Father Patrizio Coppola, a well-known Italian priest known as “Father Joystick” for having founded a video game development academy for at-risk youth.
The discussion was moderated by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who was once indicted by a Vatican tribunal for his role in the “Vatileaks” affair. The fate of Emanuela Orlandi, who vanished after a music lesson in the heart of Rome in June 1983, long has been associated with the Vatican because her father was a minor official in the Prefecture of the Papal Household under Pope John Paul II and the family lived in an apartment on Vatican grounds. The case returned to prominence in part thanks to the success of a 2022 Netflix miniseries titled “Vatican Girl.”