THE Emanuela Orlandi did she fall prey to her uncle? Forty years after the disappearance of the teenage girl who lived in Vaticana case that is one of Italy’s best-known police mysteries, the investigation suggests it was a “family tragedy” – a theory however rejected by those close to her, who say it was an attempt at distraction.

15-year-old Emanuela, whose father worked at the Vatican, was last seen in central Rome on June 22, 1983, when she left the conservatory where she had gone for music lessons. Since then, countless theories have been put forward as to what happened to her. Some even involve the Italian secret services, the mafia, high-ranking Vatican officials or even the Freemasons.

According to information broadcast by the private TV channel La7, investigators are looking into another possibility, that of a family tragedy. The Vatican prosecutor recently sent his counterpart in Rome the letters that a high-ranking Vatican official exchanged with a priest in September 1983, three months after the girl disappeared. The then Secretary of State of the Vatican, Agostino Casaroli wrote to a priest, the spiritual leader of the Orlanti family. His goal: to confirm that Natalina, the missing woman’s older sister, was sexually abused by their now-deceased uncle, Mario Menegucci. The confessor admits that the young lady had revealed the facts to him. She had been forbidden to speak under threat of losing her job at Parliament, where her uncle, who ran the canteen, had hired her a few months earlier.

These facts were known to the prosecutors at the time, because Natalina Orlandi herself had confirmed them, according to the channel.

“There was no rape”

But today Natalina, her brother Pietro and their lawyer, Laura Sgro, under whose pressure the Vatican initially and the prosecutor’s office in Rome subsequently reopened the case, refute that theory.

“There was no rape. The events go back to 1978. My uncle made proposals” but things stopped there, after she avoided him, assured Natalina in a press conference she gave.

Pietro Orlanti recalled that his uncle’s alibi had been verified then: he was on vacation, far from Rome.

“The Vatican is trying to deflect any responsibility,” Pietro Orlanti added, calling for a parliamentary committee to be set up to look into the case. “Why does the Vatican not want parliamentary control? Because it would be much more difficult to control 40 people, with public hearings,” he added.

“It’s not the revelation of the century, we’re talking about things that were known to everyone,” emphasized Sgro.

According to the “most popular” theory, the 15-year-old was kidnapped by mobsters who wanted to pressure the Vatican to collect a loan. Others say the purpose of the kidnapping was to persuade authorities to release Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.

The case inspired a documentary series on the Netflix platform, “Vatican Girl.” In this series, a friend of Emanuela’s says that the 15-year-old had confided in her, a week before she disappeared, that she was sexually harassed in the Vatican gardens by an associate of Pope John Paul II.