4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
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In 1983, the disappearance of a teenage girl who was a citizen of Vatican City led to a scandal.
When Pope John Paul II made a public appeal to the people holding Emanuela Orlandi captive, the world took notice and her case was treated as a suspected kidnapping.
Forty years on, the reason she vanished is still unclear.
Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, speaks to Daniel Gordon about his life-long mission to find out what really happened to his sister.
(Photo: A protester holds a photo of Emanuela. Credit: Stefano Montesi/Corbis/Getty Images)
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0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Daniel Gordon and I'm taking you back to 1983. |
0:46.8 | It's the 3rd of July and at the end of his weekly address to the faithful from his balcony |
0:51.2 | in the Vatican, Pope John Paul II makes an appeal for the safe return |
0:56.4 | of Emmanuelo Orlandi, a teenage girl who'd recently disappeared in Rome. Let me express the compassion I feel for the Orlandi family who are in turmoil over the |
1:10.0 | disappearance of their 15-year-old daughter, |
1:15.0 | I share the agony and the fear of her parents, |
1:20.0 | but I haven't lost my hope and faith in the humanity of those who are responsible. It's the beginning of a huge scandal which will draw in some of the most powerful figures in the Catholic |
1:35.0 | Church, including the Pope himself. |
1:38.3 | To anyone listening that day, John Paul II's words appeared to be a plea for |
1:43.0 | Emanuela to be released. But the strange thing was that |
1:47.0 | whilst the Pope seemed to be fully aware that she'd been |
1:49.8 | kidnapped, nobody'd yet told her family, even though she'd been missing for nearly two weeks as |
1:56.8 | her older brother Pietro remembers. |
1:59.2 | We'd been thinking about all the terrible things that could have happened to her. |
2:06.0 | It was horrific. I wouldn't wish what we went through on anyone. |
2:10.0 | I'd been driving up and down on my motor bike, day and night, looking in every park in Rome. |
2:17.0 | Scared, I'd find her dad behind a bush somewhere. Then, when the Pope made |
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