ROME — In Pope Francis’ wide-ranging memoir, out this week, the pontiff writes that thanks to a new Vatican inquest into Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance, “light will be shed on this story, and the truth will emerge.” 

 Emanuela Orlandi’s whereabouts have captivated Italy since she was last seen, at 15 years old, on June 22, 1983. In the four decades since, as judges, prosecutors, and journalists have linked her disappearance to, among other theories, two Turkish terrorist organizations (one invented, one real) the KGB, and the Banda della Magliana, one common thread has persisted: Vatican involvement. 

 Vatican citizens, Orlandi’s family have periodically accused the Church of direct responsibility for Emanuela’s disappearance. They have consistently accused first Saint Pope John Paul II’s Vatican, then late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s, of withholding, or obfuscating, information about her case. 

 They have been warmer towards Pope Francis. Laura Sgro, a lawyer for the Orlandis, praised the pontiff after he expressed his solidarity with the family on the 40^th disapperance of Emanuela’s disapperance last June. 

 “A taboo has fallen,” she said. “We are grateful to Pope Francis for this gesture.”

 Emanuela’s brother Pietro told Il Fatto Quotidiano that the excerpt from Francis’ memoir made him “happy.” 

 "These are not just words of sympathy and solidarity, but about the need to get to the truth,” he said. “It is now not only a family asking for the truth but the Pope himself.” 

 Roman and Vatican prosecutors both reopened investigations into the Orlandi case in 2023. Also last year, Italy’s government formed a bicameral parliamentary commission of inquiry — which Vatican Promotore di Giustizia Alessandro Diddi called in a hearing a “pernicious intrusion” in judicial authority — chaired by Fratelli d’Italia senator Andrea de Priamo. That commission began its work last week, on March 14. 

 Pietro Orlandi called the pope's words an “important” step for de Priamo’s commission to “move forward in the most positive way possible despite the fact that the Vatican did not like it until recently.”

 The excerpt is, Orlandi said, “a message” to the Vatican’s Diddi, as well as “to all those people who know and do not speak, an invitation to cooperate."

 Francis co-wrote his 300-page memoir Life: My Story in History with Vatican journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona. In Italy and 20 other countries, the book is out from HarperCollins March 19.