Vatican opens up two graves in search for girl missing for decades
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Emanuela Orlandi was the daughter of a servant of then Pope John Paul II with Vatican citizenship, who vanished at the age of 15 in central Rome in 1983.
PHOTO: AFP
VATICAN CITY (AFP, DPA) - The mystery surrounding the disappearance of an Italian teenager 36 years ago deepened on Thursday (July 11) after two graves at the Vatican thought to possibly hold her remains were discovered to be empty.
The Vatican said in a statement that not only were Emanuela Orlandi's remains not found, the tombs did not even hold the remains of the two princessess supposed to be buried there in the Teutonic Cemetery in the tiny city state.
The graves inside the Vatican cemetery were dug up on Thursday as part of efforts to solve the decades-old case of a missing girl named Emanuela Orlandi.
She was the daughter of a servant of then Pope John Paul II with Vatican citizenship, who vanished at the age of 15 in central Rome in 1983.
The case is one of the biggest mysteries in recent Vatican history.
Officials are opening two 19th century graves at the Vatican's Teutonic Cemetery, after an anonymous letter to the Orlandi family lawyer suggested that the girl may be buried there.
The letter said to "look where the angel is pointing" - a presumed reference to an angel statue near a couple of graves containing the remains of German female aristocrats.
The forensic expert picked by the Vatican to oversee the procedure, Professor Giovanni Arcudi, said on Wednesday he may be able to give new insights on the mystery within hours of the exhumation.
He said he might be able to roughly estimate how old the bones inside the graves are, and whether they could belong to someone other than the people officially buried in them.
The remains will also be DNA tested to establish "definitively and categorically" if there is any connection with Emanuela. Results should take 20 to 60 days, Prof Arcudi said.
Emanuela's disappearance has been linked to a number of wild conspiracy theories.
It has been blamed in turn on anti-papal plots by foreign intelligence services; on the "Magliana Gang", an Italian crime syndicate; and on sexual predators within the clergy.
