Vatican will hold inquiry into fate of missing girl

A Vatican prosecutor has agreed to reopen the case of a schoolgirl whose disappearance has remained shrouded in mystery for almost 40 years, tarnishing the reputation of three popes.

Linked variously to Cold War politics, terrorism, mafia finance and clerical sexual abuse, the Emanuela Orlandi story has been a moral albatross around the neck of the Holy See.

Alessandro Diddi, the Vatican promoter of justice, ordered the Holy See’s first official inquiry into the fate of Emanuela, who was 15 when she vanished from the streets of Rome on June 22, 1983, after multiple requests from her family.

Diddi may also have been prompted by the fallout from a Netflix documentary series, Vatican Girl: the Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, first shown in October,