Vatican prosecutor confirms existence of file on missing ‘Vatican Girl’

ROME – Amid the ongoing saga of the quest to find the truth behind the disappearance of the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee in 1983, the Vatican’s Promoter of Justice has confirmed the existence of a dossier on the case.

Speaking at a book presentation in Rome last week, Vatican’s Promoter of Justice, Alessandro Diddi, confirmed the existence of a file on Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee who disappeared in 1983 at the age of 15, and whose case has gone on to become Italy’s most notorious unsolved cold case.

“The dossier that Pietro Orlandi is talking about exists. We found it, but its contents are confidential,” Diddi said, speaking at the presentation of a new book, “The Throne and the Altar,” by Vatican journalist Antonietta Calabro.

The dossier in question is the same one that Emanuela’s older brother, Pietro Orlandi, who has led the quest for the truth about his sister’s disappearance for the past 40 years, said was commissioned by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, former personal secretary to Pope Benedict XVI, in 2012, and entrusted to the head of the Vatican gendarmerie, Domenico Giani.

On Nov. 21, Giani testified before an Italian parliamentary commission investigating Orlandi’s disappearance, confirming that he put together a folder in 2012 at Gänswein’s request.

Giani, head of the Vatican gendarmes from 2006 to 2019, said that file was simply an “historical reconstruction” of the Orlandi case that didn’t contain any new information.

“The Holy See did not undertake any investigative activity,” he said, stressing that at the time of the disappearance, the case was handled by Italian authorities.

“I am not a witness to anything,” he told the commission.

The existence of the dossier was initially denied by Monsignor Sergio Pagano, prefect of the Vatican Archives, in an interview with the program, “The Tower of Babel,” on Italian television channel La7.

In the interview, Pagano said the only file that existed on the Orlandi case was from Eco della Stampa, an Italian media monitoring company, and consisted of a series of media clippings about the case.

Diddi’s statement confirms the existence of the dossier, however, in his remarks he insisted that it did not amount to an investigation, but rather, was a historical gathering of facts surrounding the case over the years.

Over the past four decades, the fate of Orlandi has become the Italian equivalent of the Kennedy assassination, generating an enormous volume of theories and conspiracy theories of all sorts.

Many of these have involved the Vatican, since Orlandi’s father was a minor official in the Prefecture of the Papal Household at the time of her disappearance and the family lived in a Vatican apartment.

Popular fascination with the case was revived by the 2022 Netflix documentary series “Vatican Girl,” which created enough momentum that three different new investigations have been launched: One by the Vatican’s Promoter of Justice, one by the Roman prosecutor’s office, and the parliamentary commission, which includes representatives of all political parties from both the Italian house and the senate.

Diddi in reference to the Orlandi case said that there are five leads to follow, “from the trafficking of white women to the lead linked to family problems.”

Various theories have been floated as to the motive behind Orlandi’s disappearance, including that she was kidnapped by the Italian mob to pressure the Vatican for money, that she was part of an internal clergy pedophile sex ring, that an uncle who had previously made advances to one of her sisters was responsible, and even that her case was linked to Mehmet Ali Ağca, the would-be assassin of St. John Paul II in 1981.

Diddi in his remarks said of the various leads that they “obviously cannot all be true. They exclude themselves.”

“We are trying to eliminate the unrealistic ones,” he said.

Referring to the Italian parliament’s inquiry, Diddi said there is “respect for borders: Italy is investigating, and we are not competing, we are collaborating.”

“I would like to work without having a personal opinion because personal ideas make you deviate from the facts. Each reconstruction has its own plausibility. I do not want to be convinced of any for now. We are talking about a terrible story about which many are speculating,” he said.

In response to Diddi’s confirmation of the dossier, Pietro Orlandi said, “Let’s pretend to believe that they found the dossier now and that it hadn’t already been in the Secretariat of State since 2012, but that’s fine.”

“The important thing is that they admitted to having it. Of course, we hope it has not been modified,” he said.

Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen