Original subtitles

[keyboard clacking]

[tense music]

[Andrea] By the end of 2013,

it became quite clear…

that Marco Accetti was really a fantasist

who didn't abduct Emanuela Orlandi.

[Andrea] What is left is the key testimony of the girlfriend of Renato De Pedis,

the head of the Banda della Magliana, Sabrina Minardi.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[Sabrina] I said to him, "What mess did you rope me into?"

And he said, "Sabri, it's all a game of power.

Don't you get that?"

What she claimed was that she assisted…

…Renato and the gang of the Banda della Magliana,

in the abduction of Emanuela.

And what he said is "a game of power,"

which presumably is a game

between the Vatican and some Mafia organization.

If what Sabrina Minardi says is true,

it means that in the summer of 1983

Emanuela was still alive.

[suspenseful music]

[journalist 1] You're looking at relatives and supporters of Emanuela Orlandi

marching in Rome today.

Emanuela vanished back in 1983.

[journalist 2] A Vatican employee's daughter,

abducted as a 15-year-old girl and never found.

[crowd] Emanuela!

[Pietro] Somehow, people began showing solidarity with us.

Because gradually, a kind of movement

grew around this story of Emanuela.

This story sounds to, uh, a lot of Americans, a lot like.

uh, a Dan Brown novel.

[Pietro] And we managed to make the Vatican understand

that they were not as untouchable as they had been just a few years prior

The fact that so many Italians remain profoundly convinced

that there is still a cover-up going on,

I, I think is an index of the difficulty the Vatican has had over the years

in persuading the outside world of its willingness to come clean.

[crowd] Emanuela! Emanuela!

[crowd cheering]

[Andrea] In 2013, Pope Francis was elected.

He has always been seen

as a big reformer, a person who wanted transparency into the Church.

[in Italian] Prayer in silence to…

[reporter 1 in English] Before giving his blessing, he asked for ours

and bowed in silence.

[reporter 2] He's announcing that he's going to do things differently.

[Pietro] About two weeks before the election of the new Pope,

he was holding mass in Sant'Anna,

which was actually Emanuela's parish in the Vatican.

So I, I made sure to go to this mass

with my mother and my sister Federica.

[footsteps]

The Orlandi family has been in the Vatican for a hundred years.

My family has served seven Popes.

We had very high hopes

that he would give us the possibility to speak about Emanuela.

But he immediately froze us in place,

because when my mother presented herself before him,

he only uttered four words,

[camera shutters clicking]

"Emanuela is in heaven."

EMANUELA IS IN HEAVEN

[suspenseful music]

I mean, it chilled my blood to hear the Pope say Emanuela was dead.

I remember saying to him,

"My hope is that she may still be alive,"

he took my hand and repeated,

"Emanuela is in heaven."

Period.

[keyboard clacking]

-[in Italian] What did the Pope say? -She is in heaven.

I said, "But there is no proof,

so for me, it's a duty to look for her alive."

And he repeated, "Emanuela is in Heaven."

[in English] We don't know if Emanuela is dead or alive,

because there's no evidence.

As a Head of State, saying in this moment that Emanuela is dead

means he knows something we don't.

[clock ticking]

[ticking continues]

[Maria] I am Maria Orlandi,

and I am Emanuela's mom,

who has been waiting for her for years.

I can't wait, if I, to be able to hug her now, or when I die.

We'll meet again.

The thought of her is always present, of Emanuela.

And she gives me strength and courage.

Unfortunately, you know nothing, and so, you're always praying to the Lord.

If you don't have prayer, then you have nothing in life.

[tense music]

[news anchor] The Vatican is reeling from its biggest scandal in decades

and what appears to be a personal betrayal of the Pope.

[Andrea] The Vatican had always been rocked by scandals,

but the biggest one

was a sort of an earthquake inside the Vatican, happened in 2016.

It's called the "Vatileaks,"

the hugest leak of secret documents on corruption and financial mismanagement

from the Vatican to the Italian journalists.

[reporter 3 in Italian] Leaks of secret news and top-secret documents

end up on the newspapers' front pages.

First, a letter from Monsignor Viganò criticizing budgetary…

[Andrea in English] And this was the springboard

for the latest twist in the case of Emanuela Orlandi.

-[man 1] Ready? -Yeah.

[man 2] Roll in.

[man 1] Fittipaldi Interview. First.

Okay, my name is Emiliano Fittipaldi, and I'm an investigative journalist

that has been investigating the Vatican for many years.

In 2016, I wrote a book,

a string of Vatican financial scandals

that would lead to the Vatileaks scandal.

[reporter 4] Two journalists and three others implicated

in the latest Vatican leaks scandal have gone on trial.

All defendants face up to eight years in prison

for allegedly disclosing and publishing confidential…

It was stressful because investigators within the Vatican

tried to create lies

about me and my work.

In the process, I discovered that they want the world

to know about next to nothing about what they do.

[reporter 5] Both journalists have books out

about alleged greed and graft at the Vatican,

and the resistance faced by Pope Francis

as he tries to clear it up.

[Fittipaldi] Something happened during the proceedings

that shocked me enormously, because I didn't know her.

A witness called to testify during the interrogations

by Vatican justice promoters, a priest,

a priest that was secretary

of a very important Prefecture, Economic Affairs.

He told me an incredible story

whose details nobody knew.

Two years prior, someone had got into this Vatican ministry.

They had come in using the keys, so they didn't leave any traces

-[keys jingle] -[blow-torch crackling]

[suspenseful music]

But then they used a blow-torch

to get into one of the 14 or 15 big safes

that were on the second or third floor…

[blow-torch crackling]

…and stole a series of documents,

confidential documents concerning "things from the past,"

that's what he said.

Relationships, political scandals,

financial investments, relations with the masons.

[blow-torch crackling]

[Fittipaldi] No one knew the story

and the details of the story of this incredible theft,

because the Vatican palace is in Italy,

but the jurisdiction is solely of the Vatican city-state,

so only the Vatican police had looked into it.

And even now, we don't know the conclusions of their investigations.

We do know with certainty, however,

that some documents were returned,

and when they opened this package,

they saw there were original documents…

and a secret dossier…

on Emanuela Orlandi.

[Andrea] For years the Vatican refused to give any kind of answer to Pietro,

um, saying that what happened to Emanuela

happened not on the Vatican soil

but on the Italian soil,

so they said, "We have nothing to do with that."

The Vatican had always denied the existence of internal documents,

the existence of internal investigations within the Holy See,

be it the archive of the Secretary of State,

or in any other archive.

[Andrea] It means that the documents were hidden from the investigation

in a safe for over 30 years.

When I understood that there was the possibility

of that documents on the biggest Vatican

and Italian mystery of the past 35 years existing…

I harassed my sources for months,

to look for the documents on Emanuela Orlandi,

priests, cardinals, officials.

There was one in particular, however,

that I was almost certain knew that story,

all of it or at least in part,

and I started calling him.

[line ringing]

[intense music]

[phone ringing]

The first time he told me that, basically, he knew nothing about this whole thing.

[line ringing]

[phone ringing]

The second time, he told me,

"Look, I'll tell you the truth. I only read this document.

I read it, but I can't give you anything

because I don't have anything in my possession."

The third time, it was the source who called me…

[cell phone chiming]

…to tell me, "Emiliano, let's meet in a bar in Rome," that's when I knew.

[bike engine starts]

[bike revving]

[Fittipaldi] And I went there on my motorbike.

[pensive music]

I got there five minutes before our appointment. I was nervous.

[blow-torch crackling]

[Fittipaldi] He arrived,

sat down, we ordered,

and he told me, "Emiliano, I have a gift for you."

That's what he said.

And so, he opened his, this sort of backpack he had brought with him,

and inside this backpack was this very folder.

[suspenseful music intensifies]

[Dan] …Paul II returned home today.

[water sloshing]

[car engine starts]

Five pages, probably photocopy, dated March 28th, 1998,

which looked like a cover letter

for a much weightier dossier of 197 pages, so it says.

The title on the top of the document, it says,

"This is a list of the expenses sustained…"

"…by the Vatican State for Activities Relating…"

"…to the citizen Emanuela Orlandi."

The discovery of these documents

changes completely the story of Emanuela

because they indicate that inside the Vatican

someone knew exactly what happened to her

for years after her disappearance.

The letter on Emanuela Orlandi was written

by Cardinal Lorenzo Antonetti,

who's, at the time, at the head of APSA,

the body that manages the whole of the Vatican's vast economic assets.

And on this first page, the author of the document, Antonetti,

explains that he will provide a list of expenses…

Expenses to support

"the domestic removal of the citizen Emanuela Orlandi."

-[clock ticking] -[heart thumping]

[Pietro] How many years did we spend, together,

because we lived in the Vatican for all these years, looking for Emanuela?

How many leads were followed?

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

And what if those documents were actually real?

The Vatican had always been aware of what had happened to Emanuela.

[mouse clicking]

[train clunking]

[Fittipaldi] The document provides sensational and surprising information,

such as the costs covered by the Vatican

for fees, food, accommodation,

medical expenses, travel.

Not in Italy…

but in London, England.

The other surprising element is that these investments by the Vatican

for Emanuela Orlandi do not last just one year,

but from 1983 to 1997.

That would mean that Emanuela lived

…far from her family and far from Italy…

for 14 years.

There's an item

on page two of this document,

which for me is one of the most important items in this document,

being the boarding and lodging expenses

at 176 Chapman Road in London. Eight million liras.

It wasn't easy figuring out what was at 176 Chapman Road.

-[keyboard clacking] -[mouse click]

I obviously immediately went on Google Maps, typed Chapman Road…

-[keyboard clacking] -[mouse click]

…and found out that three Chapman Roads existed in London,

but none went up to the number 176.

So, it was a mystery for many days.

-[keyboard clacking] -[mouse clicking]

[foreboding music]

[Fittipaldi] Then, after hours of persistence,

I discovered that it was probably a typo.

The road wasn't Chapman Road but it was Clapham Road.

At 176 Clapham Road,

there's actually a discovery I made, a youth hostel for girls,

only for girls,

owned by the Scalabrinani Fathers.

A religious Catholic congregation…

that has an extremely strong connection to the Vatican.

We went there to search for information,

to understand whether they had information on Emanuela Orlandi.

But it's clear that if Emanuela had been there,

she would have used another name,

or probably wouldn't even have been registered.

And of course, we found nothing.

[birds chirping]

[Natalina] In these five pages,

it was written that Emanuela had lived in London for 15 years.

It's painful to think about whether or not she suffered, it's painful…

It's painful to think anything.

In reality,

we really didn't know anything about her life.

-[tape player whirring] -[heart thumping]

[clock ticking]

[Pietro] If what was written there was true,

when Emanuela was handed back to a prelate by Minardi…

[tape player whirring]

…then, she was taken,

secretly, to another country, to England.

[plane whooshing]

[Pietro] Taken to what was probably a Catholic environment,

meaning Emanuela is closer to God,

and in some way, they clear their conscience of this.

It was shocking.

LONDON

LIST OF THE EXPENSES SUSTAINED BY THE VATICAN STATE

FOR ACTIVITIES RELATING TO THE CITIZEN EMANUELA ORLANDI

On the fifth page of this document,

there's, it's the final expense item.

Twenty-one million liras.

"General activity and transfer to the Vatican City State,

with relative handling of the final paperwork."

When I read that, I immediately imagined

that Emanuela had died, died in London,

and that, then, somebody had brought her body

once more to her home,

so the Vatican, where evidently, maybe, according to this document,

she was buried.

[Fittipaldi] Buried and hidden just a few meters from her home,

and from the family

that has been searching and waiting for her,

for 37 years.

21,000,000 LIRAS

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[Andrea] Maybe this means that when Pope Francis

met Pietro Orlandi, saying, "Emanuela is in heaven,"

he knew what happened to her.

But for me, there is a, a big question mark

on the authenticity of these documents.

[Pietro] If it were true,

it's even more monstrous if that's what happened.

Emanuela returns to the Vatican, is buried at the Vatican,

and you don't alert the mother?

This is so serious

that it makes me think

that it can't be true,

that it isn't possible,

because something of the sort is too grave, if it were to be true.

And, but if it is,

it would be the biggest scandal

in the contemporary history of the Church.

[Andrea] The Catholic religion is based on faith.

But the Vatican has a history of 2,000 years of silence…

and keeping secrets behind the walls of the Vatican State.

[foreboding music]

[Pietro] Every time we asked something,

their attitude was always exclusively defensive,

"We have nothing to do with this, we never did anything."

And if this matter of the five pages were true,

that, to me, is cruelty.

Just cruelty and indifference to the suffering of others.

-[vehicles revving] -[horn honks]

[Pietro] I needed a new lawyer,

a lawyer who knew the Vatican from the inside,

and knew how to move within the Vatican.

[secretary] How are you? Please, come in.

And I chose Laura Sgrò.

Pietro had followed me during Vatileaks.

It had been a process of enormous worldwide media impact,

regarding the dissemination of the Pope's confidential documents.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[journalist 3] Two journalists have been cleared by a Vatican court

of publishing leaked documents claiming…

[Laura] Pietro came to me, it was so strange.

I had followed Emanuela's case from the start,

as much as an eight-year-old girl could.

When I was eight, he was a younger man of 20 years

like my older brothers, and now he was a grown man,

an adult man that had spent his whole life up until that moment

looking for his sister.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[Laura] I had already made myself a mountain of enemies with Vatileaks,

really very many.

[indistinct chatter]

The challenge of starting to ask the Vatican for answers was truly immense.

It's a system that depends entirely on the absolute monarch,

which is the Holy Father.

So the first thing I did was study this huge file.

It took me six months to read all the papers.

[melancholy music]

And what struck me negatively…

was the Vatican's absolute lack of cooperation.

In some way, the Vatican had washed its hands of it, per se.

And in my opinion,

it was very happy to wash its hands of Emanuela's case.

They hid behind their regulations, behind their guarantees,

and wouldn't let anyone be questioned.

Then, in 2018, like every morning,

I passed by the mailbox on my way to the office.

And I found, among many other letters, a white envelope.

I opened the envelopes, and to my great surprise,

in a white envelope,

without header or address,

I found this letter.

There was only this sentence that read,

"If you want to find Emanuela, search for where the angel is watching."

And with this sheet

was a photo of a tomb with a statue of an angel.

[Laura] The final expenses of these famous five pages

were the costs of returning a probable corpse.

The Vatican only has two burial sites.

One is under the Church of Sant'Anna.

And the other is this cemetery, which is the Teutonic cemetery.

I called Pietro.

We went to the Teutonic cemetery.

We started going around these tombs.

[footsteps]

And we found the angel.

[tense music]

The family had gone practically everywhere,

everywhere to search for Emanuela.

And yet, that tip-off said she was buried

just a few hundred meters from their home.

[Laura] I decided to write to the State Secretary…

"I am telling you that Emanuela is buried in your own home,

now you have to answer."

Frankly, we did that,

certain that along with all our other questions

it would have completely been ignored.

And yet, after a couple months,

we learned from a statement released by the Holy See

that they had arranged to open not just a tomb, not only this tomb,

but also a tomb adjacent to the one indicated to us.

Finally, these tombs were being opened.

[eerie music]

[keyboard clacking]

[reporter 6] A mysterious tip-off has led investigators

to a cemetery inside the Vatican

to search for the remains of…

[journalist 7] The Vatican opened up two tombs

inside a tiny cemetery in the hopes of solving…

[journalist 8] …who lived with her family inside the Vatican

and vanished after a music lesson…

[Andrea] To dig a consecrated grave inside the Vatican

was an unprecedented act.

[journalist 6] By agreeing to open up these tombs,

the Vatican is finally admitting

that someone inside may have been involved.

Where else could the Vatican have buried Emanuela, if not its own home?

The safest place where no one would ever, ever have gone looking.

That could only be their home.

[stone clanging in distance]

-[camera shutters clicking] -[indistinct chatter]

[Pietro] Many say,

"At least, if you find the remains, this story will end."

I was anxious, to be honest.

[suspenseful music]

[Pietro] They break the top of that tomb…

and then they discover beneath that tomb a big room of three-by-three meters.

[whirring]

[indistinct chatter]

[in Italian] Please, the tombs are empty.

There are no graves, there are no bones,

they are completely empty.

[journalist 4 in English] There was nothing inside,

not the remains of Emanuela,

not even the remains of the two German princesses

that were said to be buried there.

Not finding Emanuela gave me a bit of relief, to be honest.

Even though that left everything up in the air.

But Emanuela didn't die, for me, that day either.

[Laura] I believe there are people inside the Vatican

that know what happened to Emanuela,

these people are still being blackmailed for this.

And cyclically information comes out,

which precisely represents them.

"Know that we know what happened to Emanuela."

Even the tombs were used,

in my opinion, for this exact reason.

And what happened after,

in my opinion, demonstrates this.

The result of the tomb opening

was that the spotlight went back to the case of Emanuela.

And boom, there was a new testimony,

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

A Trumpist, a Covid denier,

a very controversial high, important priest.

Viganò came to see me in my office, and told me a truly extraordinary story,

about things regarding the very evening Emanuela Orlandi went missing.

It was June 22nd, 1983.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[reporter 7 in Italian] Welcome back, friends.

African high pressure is affecting the Lazio region,

causing scorching days across the area.

In central Rome,

temperatures will reach 37 degrees Celsius with a humidity of…

Pope John Paul II was in Poland.

[Dan] Good evening, this is the CBS evening news.

Dan Rather reporting.

Pope John Paul II returned home today.

Richard Roth was there for the emotional start of this papal pilgrimage.

[Richard] I was on the Pope's plane, uh,

going from Rome to Warsaw in June 1983.

I think there were two things that motivated the Pope.

One was his personal experience growing up during the communist era in, in Poland…

…and the other was to spread the faith.

[Dan] John Paul described his first words spoken…

The church had been suppressed throughout the Soviet bloc.

People practicing Catholicism

were practicing in secret because it was illegal.

[man] Pax vobis, peace to you Poland,

my motherland, peace.

[Richard] There was intense speculation about

whether Vatican money had been sent

to the trade union movement Solidarity.

The visit was electrifying.

Poland was literally under martial law.

[Laura] Viganò was a young priest

who, at the time, was the secretary

of the acting State Secretariat.

[clock ticking]

At eight in the evening,

at the State Secretariat, the phone rang.

Viganò answered.

[phone ringing]

On the other end of the line was Father Panciroli,

who was the head of the Vatican Press Office at the time.

Father Panciroli told Viganò

that an anonymous call had arrived from a mysterious man

who had relayed a message,

wherein he claimed responsibility

for Emanuela Orlandi's kidnapping.

[Andrea] If this phone call really did happen,

it indicated that they were really the kidnappers,

because the disappearance was not yet reported

to the police until the next day.

-[bike engine starts] -[thunder clapping]

[bike revving]

And it also indicated that the Vatican knew

that she was abducted,

without saying anything to the family.

For the first couple of days,

the investigations led nowhere.

The family is invited to stay calm, to rest assured.

Nothing serious. But actually, no.

Emanuela had been kidnapped and the Vatican knows it that evening.

[phone ringing]

And above all,

the first telephone call is not made to the Orlandi family,

but to the Vatican Press Office.

So, Emanuela Orlandi was kidnapped

with the clear intention of immediately blackmailing the Vatican.

An intention the Vatican will continue to always hide.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

This is, uh, to be considered a powerful message to the Pope,

"Listen, we know that you used the money of the Mafia

to fund the Solidarność."

[crowd chanting] Solidarność.

[Ferruccio] "We have this Vatican girl in our hands,

so give us our money back."

[foreboding music]

This is the story,

that, however, does not explain the big question.

It would have been much more convenient, in this case,

if it was just a matter of money,

to kidnap a cardinal, an official, an important priest.

So why did they do it? Why kidnap that girl and not a cardinal?

The only explanation that comes to my mind and to that of others

is that she had a secret,

an important secret that concerned Vatican ecclesiastical leaders,

which could, in some way, create a huge scandal.

What is this huge secret, this huge piece of blackmail still standing,

for which Emanuela was kidnapped?

This is what I've always asked myself.

For what reason did the Vatican do this? What secret is it hiding?

Why was Emanuela Orlandi kidnapped? Why her, specifically?

[Andrea] As I told you…

"non importa quanto terrai un segreto nascosto,

perché prima o poi la verità verrà fuori."

[Andrea] "No matter how many efforts you make to keep a secret,

the truth will always come out."

[interviewer] Thank you for coming.

I know this is the first time you're sharing this story.

I imagine this is difficult for you.

Thank you for having the courage to do so.

Today, you are speaking incognito.

Why incognito?

[woman] Because,

I feel more serene that way,

I'm more serene.

Also because I can speak about her better.

I met Emanuela because we went to school together.

[pensive music]

We liked each other straight away,

so we immediately got on.

And we spent time together inside and outside of the school day.

Uh, a nice girl. A down-to-earth girl.

Mine, like Emanuela's, was a very reserved adolescence,

because our parents were very strict and very, very Catholic.

But anyway, we liked to go and partake in a little mischief,

go out secretly when Mom told us, "Don't go anywhere."

We would go a little further, maybe we left the Vatican…

we would wander around, maybe see some boy, you know.

Things that a girl does at that age, 13, 14, 15 years old.

[pensive music]

[rotary phone clatters]

[line ringing]

[woman] The last time that Emanuela and I saw each other

was on a day when Emanuela called me.

It was a week before this thing happened.

She says, "Look…

we have to meet because I have a secret to confess,

to tell you something I have to tell you."

We met outside the Vatican but close to her house.

I ventured to her, "Is there some boy?"

But I understood right away it wasn't the good secret I had imagined.

I could tell from her behavior, from how tense she was…

she was scared…

even ashamed, maybe.

And then Emanuela told me that

while she decided to go on one of her walks in the Vatican gardens…

[foreboding music]

…a person…

a person very close to the Pope…

had bothered her.

[interviewer] She used these words?

[woman] Yes.

[interviewer] What did she mean?

[woman] Uh… bothered.

Gosh, there wasn't a word, there wasn't…

to properly define this.

It was enough for me, I swear, just to look at her,

to understand what she meant.

[interviewer] Did you know it had something to do

with sexual advances?

[woman] Absolutely, yes.

The idea that something could have happened, in that case, to her,

is something that the Vatican would, obviously, do anything

to keep hidden.

Because nowadays we talk a lot about pedophilia,

but outside of the Vatican.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[Pietro] There has never been an accusation of pedophilia

within the Vatican,

so if there was any abuse happening within there,

it's because it involved senior members of the Church.

And this is even more serious.

[woman] And who was she supposed to turn to?

She told me thinking, maybe, that will free her of this thing.

I didn't do anything.

[exhales sharply]

It's that, I don't know, I couldn't tell you.

[sighs]

[tense music]

[woman] The feeling was exactly, you know, a little bit of shame.

But who were we supposed to tell about this?

Who would have believed us?

[suspenseful music]

[woman] Who would have believed such a thing?

Two girls who could just be…

making stuff up.

I-- I don't know.

But, really, the biggest thing was,

it was almost shame, shame in saying something like that.

[interviewer] But there was nobody?

Even if she was close to the rest of her family,

there was no one in the family with whom she would have confided about this?

No, I don't believe so. No, no, no, not, not like this.

I don't think she would have ever confided

something like this to her family.

Her father worked there, how could she?

And she lived there,

at the very least, they would have told her, "Go live somewhere else."

Because I don't think she would have said such a thing at home,

to her sisters, to me, to my father.

She would never have told us

that there was a Cardinal who had bothered her.

[suspenseful music]

[woman] I think it's important to say this,

because I didn't before.

And maybe if I had done this sooner,

something could have changed,

I don't know.

I'm sorry.

[sobbing]

[interviewer] Are you afraid someone from the Vatican retaliate?

Well, I…

I'm always afraid, because unfortunately…

[chuckles dryly]

…it's an ugly world,

a world where many things should not exist.

But they do.

[Pope in Italian] …a fifteen-year old,

who has not returned home since Wednesday the 22nd of June.

I share the anxieties and the anguished trepidation…

[Andrea in English] If you believe this theory…

[Pope in Italian] We will not lose hope in the sense of the humanity…

[Andrea in English] It is possible the Banda della Magliana knew

a sexual secret like this one.

And they saw Emanuela as the ultimate leverage

to blackmail the Vatican.

[tape player whirrs, clicks]

[Andrea] Or there's the theory that it's about financial scandals,

the Vatican bank, and the Mafia.

[tape player whirring]

[Pope in Italian] We will not lose hope in the sense of humanity…

[Andrea in English] Or maybe the Soviet Union

was behind the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi…

[Richard] Speaking in English, Agca said the Russians trained him.

[Andrea] In order to free Ali Agca and silence him forever.

[tape player whirring]

[Andrea] No matter which is the right theory,

there are grains of truth in each one.

[Andrea in English] And in all these cases,

all the roads lead to the Vatican.

[interviewer] Do you think the Vatican knows what happened to Emanuela?

Yes, absolutely.

I am absolutely certain

that the Vatican knows what happened to Emanuela Orlandi.

I think that the Vatican knows what happened to Emanuela.

Every lead has always had something to do with the Vatican.

I believe,

from the impressions I had at the time,

that within the Vatican, someone

had the information they could have given.

And they did not.

[clock ticking]

Absolutely yes,

inside the Vatican, many still know what happened to Emanuela Orlandi.

[Sabrina] Yes, certainly there are.

There must still be people in the Vatican today that know the truth.

[clock ticking]

There is no doubt in my mind

that the Vatican knows what happened to Emanuela,

they know very well and always have.

[woman] I think so. That's what I think.

[solemn music]

The cost-benefit analysis made by the Vatican

is between the truth about the fate of Emanuela,

used, uh, as a sacrificial lamb,

and the secret they cannot reveal because it's devastating for them.

So it's, you know, it's like the power of the Church against one life.

One innocent life.

And the power of the Church always wins.

[clock ticking]

[Laura] Time is the enemy of truth,

and friend to those who hide the truth.

Many of the people involved are dead,

and others are very old.

Therefore, the best thing to do

was let time take its course, let it pass.

There's no more time to waste.

[Pietro] The only thing I'm sure of,

is that in the Vatican, they know the truth.

They know what happened that day.

And now, I'm asking them to speak that truth,

because it's about time they did.

Too many years have gone by.

My mother is 92.

Do it for my mother. Do it for Emanuela.

If Emanuela is dead, may they tell us

so that my mother can at least bring a flower to her grave.

I only ask this,

that this story ends.

[melancholy piano music]

[Emanuela in Italian] National School Vittorio Emanuele II.

National School Vittorio Emanuele II.

I should be in the third year of high school next year.

I should be in the third year of high school next year.

[Pietro in English] My sister has been missing for 37 years now.

We will never stop looking for her.

[closing theme music]