ROME (ITALY)
Crux
July 14, 2019
John L. Allen Jr.
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.
This one, however, almost certainly isn’t a prelude to resurrection, but rather to yet another of what the Italians call a giallo, meaning a mystery story that acts as a magnet for speculation and conspiracy theories.
This Thursday, technicians opened a tomb in a German cemetery on Vatican grounds known as the Campo Teutonico in an effort to locate the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl and daughter of a Vatican employee when she disappeared in 1983, whose fate has been the most enduring giallo in Italian life over the last 35 years. The opening occurred in the presence of members of Orlandi’s family and legal team, the head of the Vatican Gendarmes, and descendants of the supposed occupants of the tombs.
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