Vatican reopens probe into teenager’s disappearance after Netflix documentary

The Vatican has reopened the investigation into the 1983 disappearance of the 15-year-old daughter of an employee – months after a Netflix documentary purported to shed new light on the case and weeks after her family asked the Italian Parliament to take up the cause.

The Vatican prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, opened a file on Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance, based in part “on the requests made by the family in various places”, said Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni.

A lawyer for the Orlandi family, Laura Sgro, said she had no independent confirmation of the development, which was first reported by Italian agencies Adnkronos, LaPresse and Ansa.

She said her last Vatican filing on the case came in 2019.

Her disappearance has been one of the Vatican’s enduring mysteries and over the years has been linked to everything from the plot to kill St John Paul II and a financial scandal involving the Vatican bank to Rome’s criminal underworld.

The recent four-part Netflix documentary Vatican Girl explored those scenarios and also provided new evidence from a friend who said Ms Orlandi had told her a week before she disappeared that a high-ranking Vatican cleric had made sexual advances toward her.

Last month, Ms Sgro and Ms Orlandi’s brother Pietro announced a new initiative to convene a parliamentary commission of inquest into the case.

Three previous initiatives in the Italian Parliament have failed to get off the ground, but Ms Sgro and opposition politician Carlo Calenda argued the Vatican could not consider the case closed when there are so many unanswered questions.

Speaking to RaiNews24 on Monday, Pietro Orlandi called Mr Diddi’s decision a “positive step” that the Vatican has apparently changed its mind, gotten over its resistance and now will go over the case from the start.