Since 1983, the unsolved disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, a teenager whose family lived at the Vatican, has been the topic of rumors in Rome, and suspicions that Vatican officials have known more about the case than they have disclosed. Orlandi’s father was a Vatican employee.
An Italian television news program reported that Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, then the Holy See’s Secretary of State, wrote a letter in which he inquired about advances made by Orlandi’s uncle to Orlandi’s older sister. “The correspondence in question expressly indicates that there was no violation of the sacramental seal of confession,” Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, said in a statement.