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    She disappeared at 15. A cryptic tip-off in the Vatican could hold the key to her case Rome (CNN)On a sweltering summer's evening in 1983, a 15-year-old girl packed her flute and walked out of her family home inside the vast walls of Vatican City. Emanuela Orlandi had made this journey, from her apartment to a music lesson in central Rome, countless times before. The daughter of a prominent Vatican employee, her father Ercole worked as a clerk in the pontiff's household, Emanuela would take the bus outside the holy city to classes at Sant'Apollinare basilica. Her older brother Pietro remembers theirs as a charmed childhood: the Vatican's spectacular gardens were their playground, and Pope John Paul II would stop by and talk to the youngsters having fun on the manicured lawn. "We thought we were in the safest place in the world," he said, explaining that the city was more like a village, inhabited by a closely-knit group of around six families. But on this particular day, June 22, Emanuela never returned home from her music lesson. What followed is a mystery that has gripped Italians for more than three decades, inspiring conspiracy theories involving everyone from mobsters to international terrorists and the highest echelons of the Vatican. Pietro Orlandi, today in his 60s and with a shock of white hair, has relentlessly pursued each lead in a 36-year campaign to reveal what happened to his beloved sister. Now he hopes to find the answer in a small graveyard, just a few hundred meters from where their mother Maria still lives, inside the city walls. Look where the angel is pointing On Thursday the Vatican began an operation exhuming two tombs inside the Teutonic Cemetery, a pretty courtyard adjacent to the grand Saint Peter's Basilica, which is reserved for the burials of German-speaking Catholics. Like so much of the Vatican and its institutions, the graveyard is largely hidden from the public, tucked in behind high walls and glimpsed only through ornate metal gates. In summer last year, the Orlandi family received the latest in a long list of anonymous tipoffs: A photo of an angel sculpture, and an instruction to "look where the angel is pointing." The message led the family to two tombs inside the Teutonic Cemetery. After campaigning from the Orlandis, the Vatican announced earlier this month it would exhume the contents of those tombs. "Until I don't find Emanuela's body, for me it's a duty to look for her alive," Orlandi told CNN, ahead of the exhumation. If his sister's remains are there, it is "at least part of the truth," he added. "Then I would like to know the reasons why." "Even if nothing was to be found, it cannot be the end of the story," he said. The operation is a complex one, involving Vatican security forces, construction workers and machinery, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said last week. Any bones found during the search would have to undergo laborious DNA analysis, which could take weeks, he added. Turning point in investigation Over the years, the wider investigation into Emanuela's disappearance has been handled by Italian authorities. But the Vatican has said it will handle those parts of the probe that concern its territory -- such as Thursday's exhumations. The search at the Teutonic Cemetery signals an important turning point in the Vatican's investigation, Orlandi said: "The Vatican has never collaborated with the investigators, with us family members." "They have always denied the possibility that there may be responsibilities within the Vatican, have always said that they gave everything they had and hid nothing." CNN reached out to the Vatican for comment but had not received an answer at the time of publication. Shortly after Pope Francis assumed the papacy in 2013, Orlandi said he briefly met the new pontiff, who told him: "Emanuela is in heaven." His words "froze my blood," said Pietro, "to hear a Pope say Emanuela is dead." But he also hoped for the first time there was a "will to collaborate and get to the truth." Orlandi said he had since made numerous requests to meet with the pontiff and get a further explanation, but that his attempts came to nothing. Fiorenza Sarzanini, a journalist with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, who has followed the case closely for decades, had a different take on the Vatican's apparent change of heart. "I fear that the Vatican has decided to open the tombs because they know that there is nothing inside," she said. "And this will definitively put an end to the claims of the Orlandi family. "To satisfy this request by the family -- and in such a public way, with a press release from the Vatican press office -- serves to deflect the suspicious that the Vatican State secretary knows more about the case." All roads lead to the Vatican Over the years there have been countless theories about what happened to Emanuela, none of which has ever been proven. One witness reported seeing a girl who fitted her description getting into a dark green BMW near the music school on the evening she disappeared. The lead was never corroborated. In the days after Emanuela disappeared, her parents received anonymous phone calls from someone promising her safe return if the Vatican released Mehmet Ali Agca -- a Turkish national who had shot Pope John Paul II in an assassination attempt two years earlier. Again, this lead came to nothing. Then in 2012 authorities searched the tomb of mobster Enrico "Renatino" De Pedis, who was buried in Sant'Apollinare basilica -- near to where Emanuela was last seen -- after a tip-off suggested it held a clue to her disappearance. No evidence was found, but questions remain. "The most incredible thing is that the Vatican has never explained why the mobster, Renatino De Pedis, was buried inside the church of Sant'Apollinare ... an important church in the center of Rome, " said Sanzanini. Of all the different investigations, there is one "common thread," said Orlandi: "The Vatican." "Every type of clue has always led to the Vatican," he said. But "they have always asked the Italian authorities to investigate because according to them (the abduction) happened on Italian soil." Despite years of fighting for the truth, the Vatican still has a unique place in Orlandi's heart. "For me it has always been, and perhaps still is, part of my family." This story has been updated to correct the date the family received the tipoff about the Vatican tombs. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/11/europe/vatican-missing-girl-emanuela-orlandi-intl/index.html
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  9. VogueMusic
    You nailed it. They absolutely are sociopaths (some even psychopaths). When you study a bit into what each entails, and the little differences between them (Sociopaths are made, Psychopaths are born), and you look at the core of the extreme right-wing/Trumpian/inflame 'the libs' side of the sociopolitical spectrum, there is a lot of sociopathy, at the very least. To derive such pleasure from manipulating and inflaming for their own gain, and to do so by sinking to the lowest levels, and showing absolutely no shred of remorse or empathy... Trump is that exactly, and he's validated it in these types of people.
  10. YannBouch
    How superior humans think they are.... stupid
  11. Jazzy Jan
    Definitely sociopaths. To enjoy hurting or killing other living souls is evil and barbaric.
  12. side_streets started following Voguerista
  13. Voguerista started following side_streets
  14. jamesshot
    I'll never understand how someone could derive pleasure from killing anything much less creatures like giraffes, lions, elephants. I cannot wrap my brain around it. And I'm glad I can't. I don't want to know how someone could feel pleasure from something so cruel and unnecessary. There was a quote from some woman who killed an exotic animal and she said as she aimed at it, she smiled knowing the amount of liberals who would be upset. What kind of person thinks this way? A sociopath. I do think a sizable amount of these people are sociopaths.
  15. Mlvc1990 Mlvc1990 joined the community
  16. Saint Madge
    no words
  17. Showdown started following Royal T
  18. Voguerista started following Nonoka
  19. Paul Wade

    Hey Jan. How are you? Hope you and your family are all ok. I just wanted to say thanks for your messages and kind words. Much appreciated. Xxx

  20. Gaudet
    May someone, something, whatever make those two cunts suffer big time then take a picture of them - karma.
  21. Nightshade
    I think if the economy tanks, Trump's done for. However, with election security clearly not being addressed, who knows? I am not getting my hopes up again for a Democratic win. I can tell you if Trump wins in 2020, it's going to be a complete meltdown on the liberal side. The likes of which we have never seen. The Supreme Court will also be gone for our lifetime (if it isn't already) unless something radical changes and we add more justices or some of the conservative ones leave unexpectedly. I predict a great social rebellion in the mid 2020's if Trump is rewarded with another term.
  22. animalinstinct animalinstinct changed their profile photo
  23. Ciccone's Cheeks
    So...he's totally winning again, right? lol. Even if the economy plummets, major war, videos of him dropping the N word while molesting puppies and children. He ain't losing that 35-40% crusty crazed CULT. I mean WHO the F do the Dems have? Biden has been dreadful and barely coherent. 120 people running...still!! WHY don't they get the fuq out already esp. the ones who could be running for *Senate in their swings states and likely win! Beto is over. Like..forever. Biggest rise/fall and letdown maybe ever. Should've chilled for a year and run for Senate again and prob. would've easily won! Every other week one gets a media induced sugar high then plummets etc...Trump barely needs to say a word. Harris and Warren would get decimated (way worse than Hillary). So...at this point hoping there's someone we haven't seen/heard much from yet that emerges then surges late in the year (like Clinton in '91)?
  24. LSD
  25. CzarnaWisnia
    He must have some dirt on her. She can't leave. Or it's the money and leisure life.
  26. Nikki
    you know what.. I think the minute she divorces him and in the most subtle ways says something negative about him, she'll be hailed as a fighter and the American media will basically tell us to respect her and see her as some sort of warrior. we'll hear about her anti bullying campaign and they'll act as if she was trapped.. you'll see.
  27. Gaudet
    YES! Thank you @Jazzy Jan she is absolutely a coward and a disgrace just like her own supporters.
  28. CzarnaWisnia
    Although Marianne Williamson may appear kooky, and she probably has no chance at winning the primaries, I'm really glad she's running. She's one of a kind and is very intelligent.
  29. Nikki
  30. acko
    Or for not having a Farm.
  31. Nikki
    this is just as insane as a few Americans in the early 00s suing McDonalds for making them fat
  32. lasky
  33. Jazzy Jan
    I love this thread
  34. acko
    Yes but won't somebody please think of the Waffles
  35. Raider of the lost Ark
    I have a hard time to understand what personal damage he has suffered that is worth 74.000? False advertising is one thing and certainly not okay, although I would like to believe that Belgian Chocolate is more a type of chocolate, not neccessarily the place where it is produced. Do people sue about French Fries, French Toast, Blackwood Cherry Cake. And if this is really about false advertising then this is case for Costumer Rights Groups. On the other hand, when it comes to chocolate in the U.S. they need to sue left and right for even calling most of what is produced there as chocolate.
  36. nightcutter
    I'm impressed by the practice of balancing stones, he put some thought into that. Dirty sod though.
  37. horn
    Will they sue the supermarket for selling Brussels sprouts that are not grown in Brussels?
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