Pietro Orlandi appeals to Pope Leo XIV to help in the search for Emanuela

 VATICAN CITY – Emanuela and Pietro Orlandi experienced an idyllic world growing up within the confines of Vatican City but it all turned dark after Emanuela’s disappearance at age 15 on June 22, 1983. Now Pietro is appealing to the latest Pope Leo XIV to help  finally uncover what happened to her, he said on Hoara Borselli’s podcast Another Planet. 

 “My family have lived there since the 1920s, when my grandfather started taking care of the horses. We were naive people because we lived in this fairy tale, nothing bad could happen to us in there. When Emanuela disappeared, we fell into a nightmare. Like all families who live this situation, we carried on with an apparent serenity. We felt abandoned, betrayed, they turned their backs on my family and as my father said before dying: I was betrayed by those I served. At her funeral, no one came.” 

 The feeling of betrayal is the resounding sentiment in the Orlandi family. Emanuela's father, Ercole Orlandi was born in the Vatican and worked as a papal messenger for Pope John Paul II and all five of his children lived there and were said to have had free run of the Vatican gardens – a seemingly idyllic childhood. Yet these priests and pontiffs that Ercole and his family had served their whole lives, who watch his children grow up, gave up in the search for his missing daughter all too quickly, a move which turned him into a Vaticanist – someone who believes that the church itself was involved in her disappearance – explained Pietro in the podcast. 

 “They were the first to talk about kidnapping, it was written in the bulletin of the Pope's first appeal during the Angelus in July 1983. They already knew something more than we did at the time," said Pietro on his suspicion that the church was involved. He continued to explain how the in his opinion the church covered up Emanuela’s story by making it about the cold war “despite knowing the truth” themselves. 

  “The common theory became that the same people who had made an attempt on the Pope’s life two years earlier - the Soviet Union which acted through Bulgaria - had failed in and had kidnapped a Vatican citizen to blackmail the Pope. Thus, John Paul II became the victim. After telling us that it was a case of international terrorism, on Christmas Day of that same year, he never said another word about Emanuela.” 

 Pietro spoke about the abuse he has received and how he never accepted a penny of compensation for talking about his sister – he simply wants to keep it in the public mind so that he is able to see his sister again before he dies. He has travelled throughout Europe following leads, searching for her in monasteries that can only be reached on foot, all in the search for his sister.  

 Pietro spoke about his hope for the new pope, the former Cardinal Prevost saying, “it is hard to think about the fourth Pope, I would never have thought on June 22 that I would have had to wait for four popes to know the truth. From Leo XIV I expect what I expected from those who preceded him and who did not do it. I expect him to have more courage and given that his pontificate has been based on the value of justice. With respect to this story, I think Wojtyla was misleading and Pope Francis was not very courageous”. 

 In 2019 Pope Francis allowed a search within the walls of the Vatican for evidence related to the disappearance of Orlandi but it was to no avail. He later stated clearly, however, that it was “preposterous” to think that Pope John Paul had anything to do with the case himself. 

 Pietro lamented saying that “My greatest fear is to reach the end of my life without knowing what happened to Emanuela. I realize that 42 years have passed when I look at myself in the mirror. I wonder if Emanuela could recognize me with white hair, when she disappeared I had it as black as pitch. I dyed it black until a few years ago to stop time and because she would have been able to recognize me if she came back”.  Pietro claims that “there is someone in the Vatican who has the evidence in his hands” and his hope there is that the new pontiff will work with investigators so that Pietro and his family may finally know what happened to their sister Emanuela. 

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