VATICAN CITY – Pietro Orlandi, the brother of the Vatican school girl Emanuela Orlandi who went missing in 1983 at age 15, has said he is satisfied after he spent over eight hours in the Vatican on Tuesday in conversations with the Vatican’s promoter of Justice, Alessandro Diddi, about an alleged Vatican cover up over his sister’s disappearance. 

 “I am serene,” Orlandi said upon leaving the Vatican on Tuesday afternoon. “We spoke of many things,” he continued, “of the famous Capaldo negotiation, of Emanuela’s transfer to London, of paedophilia within the Vatican.”

 “Finally, after 40 years, I was able to vent my feelings. They listened to me and accepted everything I had to say, stressing that they hope for maximum cooperation with the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office and other Italian institutions in the ongoing investigation.”

 "All my statements were recorded. I mentioned the names of the people, who in my opinion, should be interrogated about their involvement in my sister’s disappearance,” Orlandi continued. “Even high prelates like Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who was always at our house, and other excellent people. For three years I have been asking to be heard. This is an important moment because it must lead to something, after my declarations there must be answers. If there are responsibilities, even at the top, I will not back down.”

 Orlandi also appeared on the Di Martedì programme on Tuesday evening. Speaking to journalist Giovanni Floris, Orlandi said that he is convinced that Pope Francis, as well as the previous two popes, "knew what happened to his sister." 

 In the course of the broadcast Orlandi even went as far as to suggest that Pope John Paul II may have personally been involved in the abduction of Emanuela. An audio, that Orlandi is said to have handed over to Vatican authorities, is played on the show in which a man close to the Magliana gang speaks. 

 "Pope John Paul II used to bring those to the Vatican, it was an untenable situation. And so the Secretary of State intervened at a certain point and decided to get them out of the way. And he turned to people in the prison environment,” the man said. 

 Orlandi, speaking to Floris, responded to what was just played in saying, “They tell me that Pope John Paul II sometimes went out in the evening with two Polish Monsignors and they certainly did not go out to bless houses…”

cw