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Vatican Reopens 40-Year-Old Cold Case of Teen Girl Who Vanished

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared outside an Opus Dei church in Rome in 1983.

In a shocking twist to a four-decade-old missing persons case, the Vatican’s judiciary arm said it would reopen the cold case of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15-year-old girl who disappeared in 1983. Orlandi, who was the recent focus of the Netflix series Vatican Girl, was the daughter of a Vatican employee and lived inside Vatican City when she went missing after a music lesson outside an Opus Dei church near Rome’s Piazza Navona. Over the years, dozens of conspiracy theories have all led back to the Vatican, including that she was taken as a sex slave for priests, or as ransom by mobsters who lost money in the Vatican Bank. The Vatican has even opened tombs searching for her remains. The family has petitioned for the case to be reopened for years, and it’s unclear if the Netflix series, which used the old missing person posters as advertisements in Rome, led to any new evidence. An Italian news agency reported that the Vatican would do a “360-degree job” and revisit all evidence to clarify what happened and “put an end to the most incredible inferences.”