The girl from the Vatican: the never-ending story of Emanuala Orlandi by the professional journalist from Torremaggiore Gianni Sarrocco

by Gianni Sarrocco – Deputy Director Emeritus of the newspaper Il Tempo

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The girl from the Vatican: the never-ending story of Emanuala Orlandi edited by the professional journalist from Torremaggiore Gianni Sarrocco

An endless story. On the contrary . Because the heartbreaking and tragic story of Emanuela and Mirella is unique. Maybe we are still not talking about it and sometimes talking too much 41 years after the death of the very young Orlandi and Gregori? Rivers of articles in the last eight decades or so, myriads of books written by experts but also by others driven only by the intention of making a statement. Never-ending judicial and journalistic investigations, witnesses who died or disappeared into thin air, misdirections, memories clouded by the passing of the years and as a last resort a parliamentary commission of inquiry to search for a truth that is increasingly distant and which, this being the case, we will probably never have it, at least in this lifetime.

What is increasingly palpable, however, is the unspeakable heartbreak of the families of the two girls. Not to mention the lacerating swing of hopes and disappointments that undermines the hearts and brains of those who still persist in looking for a certain, or presumably certain, horizon that can finally provide some peace. Our thoughts go to Pietro Orlandi, brother of the very young Vatican citizen, penultimate of five children, just 15 years old, who vanished into thin air on 22 June 1983 after leaving music school on a cursed early summer evening. Pietro, with a load of 41 years more on his shoulders, is always in the trenches. As still is Maria Antonietta Gregori, Mirella’s sister, also fifteen years old, who disappeared a few meters from her home in Piazzale di Porta Pia, right next to the historic monument to the Bersagliere, forty-six days before Emanuela. Two people, stubborn, who do not give up and who do not let themselves be influenced by false leads, disconcerting but hopeless revelations, unpublished and sensational stories, almost all clearly false, brought out by mythomaniacs or interested people.

A wicked treasure hunt that cyclically returns to the news. As if 41 years had not passed since the day in which the then young reporter of Il Tempo, in search of news with the photographer Rino Barillari, near Piazza delle Cinque Lune, in the Piazza Navona area, was attracted by a poster with the photo of a little girl with the writing in large letters. and Barillari doesn’t have to be told half a time. responds immediately after a series of clicks. Once in Piazza Colonna we discover that it is a Vatican town. A detail that makes us prick up our ears. With the chief reporter Angelino Frignani we go to the then director Gianni Letta and thus begins in Il Tempo the chronicle of a disturbing, dramatically interesting, in some ways lacerating, exhausting story, full of surprises and false scoops, a diary of the darkest mystery of the Italian history.

Having discarded the possibility of a voluntary removal, the affair begins to take a bad turn because they get us all a little soaked, thus making the investigators’ work very difficult. Not to mention ours because in the absence of certainties we risk telling the readers of Il Tempo everything and the opposite of everything. Including the almost immediate appearance of the secret services. We discover this by pure chance when trying to speak to the director of the music school Emanuela attends. At the entrance, together with Barillari, they make us sign the visitor register and at the top of the page we notice a name and surname with the writing next to it. A photo that Il Tempo never published.

How many characters in the chronicles of pain! Especially when we learn of the disappearance of another fifteen-year-old, Mirella Gregori, no relation to the Orlandis and the Vatican, yet immediately thrown into the black hole of the mystery of the daughter of Ercole Orlandi, clerk of the Prefecture of the Papal Household. It becomes the pairing of an Emanuela-Mirella intrigue even if even today there is doubt whether the two wicked facts are truly linked to each other but rather both put into the blender of a possible director.

How many criminally interested actors on the scenes of this ugly story that martyrs the girls’ families and also exhausts those who deal with the story for professional reasons. The most striking fact is the appearance of Alì Agca, the Turkish terrorist of the Gray Wolves who failed to murder Pope John Paul II (shooting in St. Peter’s Square on 13 May 1981). Blackmail begins to obtain the release of Agca and the release of the girls in return. An exhausting tug of war that leads to nothing concrete despite the presence of a lawyer, Gennaro Egidio, in charge of following developments on behalf of the Orlandi-Gregori families. Once the Agca meteor vanished, with the passing of the years the Magliana gang appears and sneaks in for criminal gain: trying to recover that river of money given to the IOR, the Vatican bank, for investment purposes but which ended up in the abyss of the bank’s accounts Ambrosiano by Roberto Calvi committed suicide in London.

Many paths have been followed in these 41 years but none that lead to a concrete result. And it is not even necessary to name the authors of the false scoops that only add pain to pain, disappointment to disappointment, anger to anger. But someone, however, comes close. It is the then investigating judge Ilario Martella according to whom the Orlandi kidnapping was organized by the Bulgarian and communist East German secret services (the Stasi) as Agca calls into question Bulgarian agents who usually do the dirty work on behalf of the parent company of Moscow. . But Judge Martella’s work suffers many misdirections that undermine his investigative investigation. Yet Pope Wojtyla already had clear ideas at Christmas 1983. During the visit to the Orlandi family he stated that Emanuela’s kidnapping was a crime. Pope John Paul II had to be removed because he threatened the very existence of the countries of the then Soviet bloc.

WHO IS GIANNI SARROCCO –

Born in Foggia on 13 December 1942 and lived in Torremaggiore until the age of 19, he obtained his classical high school diploma at the Nicola Fiani high school then housed in the Castello Ducale De Sangro. In 1961 he moved to Rome, where he still lives, for university studies in Political Sciences at the Sapienza University (master’s degree at the Italian Institute of Publicism, then attached to the faculty of Statistical Sciences). First journalistic experiences in Torremaggiore during my high school years (a local life periodical edited on mimeograph together with a group of willing people) and first correspondence from Foggia for the newspapers Il Roma and Il Tempo. In the capital he began to collaborate with the Neapolitan newspaper, first occasionally and then permanently in the editorial office in Piazza San Silvestro where the press room was located. In 1965 he was registered in the register of publicist journalists and in 1971 he was hired at the Giornale d’Italia, dealing mainly with crime news. Professional journalist in November 1972 and in 1976 he moved to Il Tempo called by the then director Gianni Letta. Crime reporter then editor at the Internal Service. Sent on the various fronts of organized crime and terrorism in Italy and abroad. In 1992 he moved to Milan for seven months to follow the events of Tangentopoli. Upon returning to Rome, he was promoted to manager of various services such as Rome news, Interior, Politics and Economy, then central chief editor and deputy director until 2007 when he left the Piazza Colonna newspaper. In 2009 called by the then Chief of Police Antonio Manganelli to work as an external relations consultant for the Public Security Department of the Ministry of the Interior (press review and monthly Polizia Moderna) until 2013. Only one experience as an essayist: in the 1980s a volume published by the Lazio Region on the plague of kidnappings which were then rapidly escalating throughout Italy.