Vatican Orlandi sit-in on 40th anniversary of disappearance

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 25 - A sit-in was staged at the Vatican Sunday for Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old Vatican citizen who went missing 40 years ago, and the Holy See allowed demonstrators to put up banners marking the 40th anniversary of her disappearance on June 22, 1983.
    Orlandi's brother Pietro told reporters: "I would be sorry of the pope didn't mention her name today" in his Sunday Angelus blessing.
    The Vatican said on the anniversary Thursday that a new investigation it has opened into Orlandi's case had uncovered some promising leads, adding that it was sharing the evidence with Rome prosecutors who are also investigating one of Italy's and the Vatican's most enduring mysteries.
    Orlandi, a resident of the Vatican City, disappeared while returning home from a flute lesson in Rome on 22 June 1983.
    The case sparked an intense media frenzy in Italy that has resulted in it being called "Italy's most famous unsolved mystery", and it inspired a hit Netflix four-part documentary called Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi last year.
    Last month Rome prosecutors said that they had opened a new probe into the case.
    "In recent months this office gathered all the evidence that could be found in relation to the Emanuela Orlandi case in the Vatican and Holy See structures, seeking testimony via conversions with people in charge of some offices at the time," said the Vatican's Office of the Promoter of Justice on the anniversary.
    "It proceeded to examine the material, confirming that some investigation leads are worthy of further investigation and transmitting all the relative documentation, in recent weeks, to the Rome prosecutor's office so that it can see it and proceed in the direction it considers appropriate".
    Emanuela was the fourth of five children of Ercole and Maria Orlandi.
    Her father was a Vatican employee and the family lived inside Vatican City.
    "40 years is a long time. The activity carried out by the Vatican is a first step," said Pietro Orlandi.
    "I hope that the documentation passed to the Rome prosecutor's office is significant and that the Vatican continues to cooperate actively with the prosecutor's office.
    "Lots of things need to be clarified. My sister deserves truth and justice".
    Pietro Orlandi recently caused controversy by linking the case to rumours that late Saint Pope John Paul II used to leave the Vatican looking for girls with Polish cardinals, a claim rubbished by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Pope Francis.
    Francis called the suggestions about the late Polish pope, who died in 2005 and became a saint in 2014, unfounded and offensive.
    The Orlandi family said via lawyer Laura Sgro' that they hope Pope Francis remembers Emanuela "with words of hope" during his Angelus address on Sunday.
    The family also called on Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni to intervene.
    "The Orlandi family believes the ideals of truth and justice do not have a political colour and do not belong to any party but to all men of good will," Sgro' told ANSA.
    "For this reason it appeals to Premier Giorgia Meloni, with the hope that she can contribute to the search for the truth about the disappearance of Emanuela and, at the same time, shed light on all the events that have scarred Italy over the last 40 years and remain in the dark". (ANSA).