From NBC:
ROME — The Vatican has agreed to open a pair of tombs in the heart of Vatican City to search for the remains of a teenage girl who went missing more than three decades ago, according to a spokesman for the Holy See.
Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican bank employee, was 15 when she disappeared after leaving a music lesson in Rome in 1983. Orlandi’s family indicated that her body was possibly buried in a “tiny cemetery inside Vatican State territory,” Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Tuesday, announcing the decision to open the graves.
From AOL:
Orlandi’s family indicated that her body was possibly buried in a “tiny cemetery inside Vatican State territory,” Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said on Tuesday, announcing the decision to open the graves.
The latest twist in a mystery that has long gripped Italy came a few months ago when the Orlandi family’s lawyer received an anonymous tip. “Last summer I received an envelope,” the lawyer, Laura Sgrò, told NBC News. “I opened it and there was a picture of the statue of an angel in the Teutonic Cemetery inside the Vatican. And a letter that simply said, ‘If you want to find Emanuela, search where the angel looks.'”
From the Daily Beast:
The tip about Emanuela came in the form of a brief letter sent to the Orlandi lawyer from inside the Vatican, accompanied by a photograph. It showed a stone angel at an unmarked tomb in the Teutonic Cemetery, which lies inside the Vatican walls. The cemetery is not accessible to the general public, but someone keeps a red votive candle lit at this tomb—only at this tomb— and there are always fresh flowers in a vase. The only thing engraved on it is a marble scroll the angel holds: Requiescat in Pace, it says. Rest in Peace.
“I wish so much that this whole story was a hoax. I really wish Emanuela was not here,” Orlandi told The Daily Beast. He has spent the last 35 years searching every false lead that might lead to the truth about what happened to his sister, and he is weary. “I do it for my mother, for my sisters, for my father who is dead. I do it for me, of course. Even if it means I am going to be met with the pain, with the doors slammed in the face, with disappointments.” If Emanuela’s body is buried inside the Holy See, it would give oxygen to one of the most sensational theories about her disappearance: that she was kept as a Vatican sex slave. The Teutonic Cemetery, where Germans with ties to the Holy See are buried, was a favorite spot of the retired Pope Benedict XVI, who gave mass at the adjoining chapel once a week before he was elected pope, so they hoped that he also might help shed light on the matter.
But then last Halloween, as it happens, [though in the end not hers], bones were found under the pavement of a Vatican-owned property in Rome during renovations.
From Catholic News Service:
Appar
ently, there was evidence that at least one of the tombs below the statue had been opened.
Alessandro Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican Press Office, said July 2 that the Vatican promoter of justice, Gian Piero Milano, and his assistant, Alessandro Diddi, ordered the opening of two tombs.
The decision was made in response to the request of Emanuela Orlandi’s family, he said, and their questioning “the possible concealment of her body in the small cemetery located within Vatican City State.”
From the Catholic News Service:
Emanuela Orlandi, a Vatican City resident and the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared in Rome June 22, 1983, when she was 15. The girl’s mother and brother still live inside the Vatican’s walls and have been advocating for her case to be investigated.
In March, the girl’s family had been sent a letter with a photo of an angel above a tomb in the Vatican’s Teutonic Cemetery, a medieval cemetery now reserved mainly for German-speaking priests and religious. The cemetery is adjacent to Saint Peter’s Basilica.
The letter said, “Look where the angel is pointing,” according to Laura Sgro, the family’s lawyer.
She filed a formal petition with the Vatican to investigate the matter and possibly open the tombs below the sculpture of the angel.
Apparently, there was evidence that at least one of the tombs below the statue had been opened.
Alessandro Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican Press Office, said July 2 that the Vatican promoter of justice, Gian Piero Milano, and his assistant, Alessandro Diddi, ordered the opening of two tombs.
The decision was made in response to the request of Emanuela Orlandi’s family, he said, and their questioning “the possible concealment of her body in the small cemetery located within Vatican City State.”
The tombs will be opened by police July 11 in the presence of the Orlandi family and family members of the people buried there, Gisotti said.
The decision comes after a court review of the long process of trying to determine what happened to Emanuela Orlandi but Gisotti said the Vatican court and police are looking only at the possibility that she was buried there.
Her disappearance in Rome is a matter that falls under the jurisdiction of Italian authorities.
Once opened, the remains in the tombs will be catalogued before tests are conducted for their DNA.