Pope Francis this Sunday remembered Emanuela Orlandi, the young woman who lived in the Vatican and who disappeared 40 years ago, and expressed her “closeness” to the family, in a case considered one of the great unsolved mysteries in Italy.
“These days mark the 40th anniversary of Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance. I would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm my closeness to her family, especially her mother, and to assure her of my prayers,” the pope said to the end of the Sunday Angelus prayer, adding, “I offer my remembrance to all the families who bear the pain of a lost loved one”.
Among the thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square were some relatives of the missing girl, such as brother Pietro Orlandi, who had expressed hope that the Pope would speak about Emanuela and organized a demonstration that ended in the Vatican.
“I hope that the Pope can say some words of hope so that we can find out the truth, and I honestly have no doubt that they will come, because he was the one who opened this investigation, which means that there is a willingness on his role in clarifying things,” he said in statements quoted by EFE, noting the pope’s “very positive” gesture to boost the investigation into the young woman’s disappearance on June 22, 1983.
Last Thursday, exactly 40 years after the disappearance, Vatican justice revealed that it had found “some lines of investigation that deserve to be explored” when it announced that it had handed over to the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office all the documentation it had gathered in the case in recent months.
Vatican City prosecutor Alessandro Didi reopened the investigation in late 2022, a few months before Rome’s public prosecutor’s office also launched a new investigation last May, after two previous failed investigations.
Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of an official of the Holy See and living within the walls of the Vatican, disappeared at the age of 15, when she left home to attend music lessons in Rome, becoming one of the great mysteries of the Italian history.
The pope also appealed to the faithful not to be “afraid” of not achieving the goals “imposed” by society and underlined that “throwing your life away” is the greatest fear.
“We must not waste the greatest asset we have: life. That alone should frighten us. We must go against the grain, even if it costs us, freeing ourselves from the conditioning of ordinary thinking, to be separated by those who ‘follow the wave.'” the pope said.
The pope recalled that nowadays a person can be ridiculed or discriminated against if he does not follow certain fashionable “models” that focus on second-class realities, such as “things instead of people, services instead of relationships”.
As examples, the pope cited parents who live to work and need time for their children, priests and nuns who are devoted to service without spending time on Jesus or the obligations and requests of young people that alienate them from other people.
Source: DN
