Pope Francis on Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the disappearance of an Italian teenager, the daughter of a former Vatican employee, offering his closeness and prayers to her family and all those with a loved one who is missing.
Pope Francis on Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the disappearance of an Italian teenager, the daughter of a former Vatican employee, offering his closeness and prayers to her family and all those with a loved one who is missing.
On the 40th anniversary of the disappearance of the “Vatican Girl,” whose fate over the decades since has become the Italian equivalent of the Kennedy assassination, a Vatican prosecutor has promised to continue a new investigation while remaining “close to the pain” of the girl’s family.
An Argentine journalist who recently met with Pope Francis has said the pope plans to return to his native country next year, and that the pontiff again came to the defense of his predecessor, St. John Paul II, in light of recent allegations from a former Italian mobster.
Pope Francis on April 16 criticized what he said were groundless and offensive accusations against his predecessor, St. John Paul II, after the brother of a missing Italian teen aired an audiotape with the allegations on national television.
St. John Paul II’s longtime aide denied the “vile insinuations” that the former pope was maliciously involved in the case of Emanuela Orlandi, a Vatican schoolgirl whose 1983 disappearance is the focus of an ongoing Vatican investigation.
The Vatican’s chief prosecutor said Pope Francis has given him free rein to investigate the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican resident.
Nearly 40 years after the disappearance of 15-year-old Italian girl Emanuela Orlandi, the Vatican’s tribunal has reopened the case, which received a fresh wave of attention after being featured in a Netflix documentary last year.
The Holy See Press Office said that the results of a morphological analysis of bones and bone fragments found at an ossuary in a Vatican cemetery concluded that none belonged to Emanuela Orlandi, a young Italian woman who has been missing for more than 30 years.
Christianity, of course, is founded on the discovery of an empty tomb. Perhaps it’s only fitting, therefore, that Christ’s vicar on earth now has his own “empty tomb” ferment on his hands.
The Vatican opened on July 11 two graves in the Teutonic Cemetery next to St. Peter’s Basilica in hopes of finding the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican bank employee who has been missing since 1983, and found that Orlandi’s remains weren’t there.