“I wish to express solidarity with the Orlandi family, who are grieving for their 15-year-old daughter Emanuela, who has not returned home since Wednesday 22 June. I share the anxieties and anguished trepidation of the parents, not losing hope in the sense of humanity of whoever has responsibility in this case. I raise my prayers to the Lord that Emanuela may soon return unharmed to embrace her loved ones who await her with unspeakable agony”.
It was this, at the Angelus of July 3, 1983, the first time that the then Pope John Paul II, saint since 27 April 2014, spoke publicly on the story of the disappearance, still shrouded in mystery, of Emanuela Orlandi, a Vatican citizen, daughter of an employee of the Prefecture of the Papal Household who served as messenger in the papal antechamber, in the apostolic palace . Finished in recent days at the center of controversy around the Orlandi case, the Polish pope received the defense of the memory from Pope Francis, who spoke of “offensive and unfounded allegations” against Wojtyla.
After the first intervention, others eight times John Paul II publicly referred to the affair: a new mention was made at the Angelus on the following Sunday (July 10, 1983): “We are doing everything possible”, he said; then a third (17 July 1983), with an appeal after the delivery to ANSA of a recorded message from alleged “kidnappers” who had said they were holding the girl prisoner and had linked her fate to the release of Ali Agca, the Turkish terrorist who on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square, had made an attempt on the life of John Paul II. On July 20, 1983, the pope asked the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the general audience to recite an Ave Maria with him in Latin and to pray for the missing girl. The following day (July 21, 1983) the pope made another appeal to the “kidnappers” asking for the girl’s release, without compensation: it was the day indicated in the message from the alleged kidnappers as the deadline for the ultimatum for the release of Agca.
A further mention of the pope to Emanuela Orlandi was made on 24 July 1983, from the apostolic palace of Castel Gandolfo: an invitation to the faithful to pray for her; yet another, three days later (July 27), with a new invitation to prayer. And, again, on August 28, 1983, again from the papal summer residence. On Christmas Eve of that 1983, then, John Paul II went to the Orlandi house, in the Vatican, to visit her family.
Finally, on April 25, 1984, the pope launched a new appeal, the last public one, for news of the missing girl: “My thoughts – he said – go to people near and far: it goes first of all to the Orlandi family, whom I particularly remembered in the prayer together with their dear Emanuela, of whom nothing has been heard since. Emanuela’s parents do not lose hope of being able to embrace their daughter again. They look forward to having at least some sure news to alleviate their terrible anguish”.
Source: Ansa
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