Opposition lawmakers in Italy are looking for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into three cold cases which have consumed the Italian public’s imagination for many years, including the 1983 disappearance of a 15-year-old that was highlighted within the Netflix documentary, “Vatican Girl.”
The aim of the inquest, said Sen. Carlo Calenda, can be to pressure the Vatican to finally turn over all the things it knows about Emanuela Orlandi’s disappearance to Italian law enforcement authorities, saying its longstanding official claim of ignorance was “hardly credible.”
“We’re an excellent secular nation that treats the Vatican with respect, but this case definitely can’t be considered closed in this fashion,” Calenda said Tuesday at a news conference announcing the proposed commission.
Orlandi vanished June 22, 1983 after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a lay worker of the Holy See.
The Italian media and a quest by her brother, Pietro Orlandi, to search out answers have kept her disappearance alive as an everlasting Vatican mystery.
The Italian media and a quest by her brother, Pietro Orlandi, to search out answers have kept her disappearance alive as an everlasting Vatican mystery. Through the years, it has been linked to all the things from the plot to kill St. John Paul II and a financial scandal involving the Vatican bank to Rome’s criminal underworld. The recent four-part Netflix documentary explored those scenarios.
The concept should be voted on on the committee level. There was no indication how the center-right, which enjoys a cushty majority in each houses, would vote.
Parliamentary inquests have been used up to now to dig deeply into unresolved Mafia crimes and terrorist attacks, and could be activated to conduct investigations “on matters of public interest,” in accordance with the Italian Structure.
Such inquiries usually are not meant to switch police investigations, but participating members of the Italian Parliament have the identical powers and limitations as law enforcement. Their final reports can provide sufficient latest evidence, in addition to political and institutional backing, to justify reopening archived cases.
That’s the hope of Pietro Orlandi, who has for 40 years sought to compel the Vatican to inform all that it knows about his sister’s disappearance. He believes the Holy See is hiding information within the case because it would implicate high-ranking churchmen.
“We must restore a principle that the Italian state has great respect for the Vatican and its role as a sovereign state for its spiritual teaching but is under no circumstances submissive to the Vatican state.”
The Vatican in 2019 bowed to the family’s request and opened a tomb in a Vatican City cemetery after a tip got here in suggesting the girl’s stays were there, however the dig turned up nothing.
Calenda, of the opposition Motion party, acknowledged a parliamentary inquest has no subpoena power to compel Vatican authorities to cooperate or turn over files, for the reason that Vatican is a sovereign city-state. But he said parliament should nevertheless force the difficulty since Italy has been “submissive” to the Vatican through the varied contours of the Orlandi investigation.
“We must restore a principle that the Italian state has great respect for the Vatican and its role as a sovereign state for its spiritual teaching but is under no circumstances submissive to the Vatican state,” Calenda said. Italy, he said, “is a secular republic that is predicated on popular sovereignty and interacts on equal footing with the Vatican state.”
The last word aim, in accordance with Orlandi family attorney Laura Sgro, can be for Italian prosecutors to formally request the Vatican’s files with the backing of an Italian parliamentary commission of inquiry behind them. Three such requests were sent within the early years of the investigation but got here back with little pertinent information, she said.
Sgro acknowledged there have been 4 previous proposals for parliamentary commissions of inquiry to look into the Orlandi disappearance, but none of them got off the bottom. She was hopeful, given the recent seating of a latest legislature and the Catholic Church now not holding the identical political sway, the concept will get off the bottom this time around.
“The disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi is a black hole within the history of this country,” Sgro said. Difficult lawmakers to approve the commission, she warned that anyone blocking it might need to “Tell us why on this country, after 40 years, a family cannot have justice.”
