The secretive Vatican dossier in the Orlandi case exists

"Five hypotheses - all could be false, but not all true, because they are mutually exclusive." Recently, the usually taciturn Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi spoke about his investigations into one of Italy's most spectacular criminal cases - the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi.

For over 40 years, the unsolved fate of the then 15-year-old Vatican citizen has stirred up controversy. All investigations have so far come to nothing. However, new clues or witnesses regularly emerge, always accompanied by Italy's noisy media. In addition, Orlandi's brother Pietro has been seeking clarification with regular interviews and talk show appearances.

Criticism of the state investigation committee

In March of this year, Italy's parliament set up a committee of enquiry. Diddi criticised its hearings as a "spectacle" that was not conducive to reconstructing the events. The public prosecutor himself began a new investigation into the Orlandi case in 2023 on behalf of Pope Francis. And he spoke about this at a book presentation in Rome.

Diddi confirmed for the first time the previously highly controversial existence of a Vatican dossier on the missing girl. "The dossier exists and we have found it." It is the document that Pietro Orlandi spoke about before the state committee.

It is possible that this is the "Orlandi report" that Paolo Gabriele, Benedict XVI's valet de chambre at the time, claims to have seen on the desk of his private secretary Georg Gänswein. Gabriele was convicted of stealing the Pope's confidential documents as part of the Vatileaks scandal and later pardoned. The former valet de chambre, who died in 2020, had told Pietro Orlandi about the dossier in question, but - unlike many other papers - had not copied it.

Gänswein denies this. A dossier containing the whole truth about the course of events and perpetrators never existed, he writes in his book in 2023. "I never compiled anything in connection with the Orlandi case, so this 'phantom dossier' was not published because it simply doesn't exist."

Diddi did not want to comment on the authorship and content of the report. According to the public prosecutor, this would only fuel the various "nebulous theories" that occasionally appear in the press. But he hopes that one day he will be able to make the work that has been done available to the public - including the "famous dossier", from which everyone can then draw their own conclusions.

Speculation about the disappearance of the "Vatican girl"

On 22 June 1983, Emanuela Orlandi, the then 15-year-old daughter of one of Pope John Paul II's court servants, did not return home from her music lessons. In the decades that followed, countless rumours and conspiracy theories grew up around her disappearance. One of them claimed that the girl had been abducted in order to force the release of the Turk Mehmet Ali Agca. The latter had carried out an assassination attempt on John Paul II in St Peter's Square in May 1981. There was also speculation about blackmail of the Vatican Bank by a Roman mafia organisation or Vatican sex and drug parties, of which Emanuela could have been a victim. The rumour that Emanuela lived in seclusion in a convent also persisted. None of this could ever be proven.

Diddi confirms five alternative leads from recent years: human trafficking, problems within the Orlandi family, evidence of possible abuse in the Vatican, as well as the hypotheses surrounding Ali Agca and the Vatican Bank.

The aim is to understand which hypotheses can be eliminated and which cannot. Diddi did not talk about further findings or a possible end to the investigation: "Pope Francis has always asked me to maintain sobriety and confidentiality, and that is my main task, even at the cost of having to accept criticism to which I cannot respond."