ROME
Vatican Insider
A torchlight procession is to be held in memory of Vatican teen Emanuela Orlandi who went missing 30 years ago, in an attempt to shed light on her disappearance
GIACOMO GALEAZZI
VATICAN CITY
A procession to break the long silence and cast light on the “coincidences” that remain unexplained. It will begin in St. Apollinare Square and end in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. The itinerary chosen for the procession that will take place on 22 June to commemorate the mysterious disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi – the daughter of a Vatican employee – thirty years ago, is a symbolic one. It traces the route the missing girl used to take to get home, a route she never took again, a route Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi wants to take once more to shed light on the truth, in his search for justice. “We are asking Pope Francis to join us in our moment of prayer in St. Peter’s Square and to hand the tape recordings of the negotiations that went on between the Holy See and the kidnappers, over to the courts,” Pietro Orlandi told Vatican Insider.
Orlandi wants answers to one aspect of the case in particular. Marco Fassoni Accetti was the key witness in the disappearance, who helped find the flute Emanuela allegedly had with her at the time. Accetti’s confessor at the San Giuseppe De Merode College in Rome was Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, currently the Vice Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church and secretary of Agostino Casaroli (Vatican Secretary of State) at the time of my sister’s disappearance, used to take the calls on a phone line coded 158,” Pietro Orlandi said. On 17 July 1983, a tape was found containing a recording of the Vatican and the kidnappers negotiating a swap: the girl, in exchange for Wojtyla’s attacker, Ali Ağca and the setting up of a direct phone line to the Vatican Secretary of State, Casaroli. A girl could be heard moaning in the background, pleading for help and saying she did not feel well.
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