Buried by the Vatican

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A courier drops the envelope on your desk.

No return address.

You carefully tear it open, slide the documents out.

You're holding photocopies, and that alone tells you everything.

Your heart quickens.

Your breath catches.

You just received a link.

You hold the papers and scan the first page.

And there it is.

The Vatican seal, marked confidential.

And then you notice the name of the girl.

You read slower.

Tuition, housing, medical care, all paid out, all tied to a London address.

The implication is devastating.

She was alive.

The Vatican knew.

If even a fraction of what these papers suggest is true, someone very powerful has been lying all these years.

You set the papers down and sit back in your chair, giving yourself a moment to think.

You were raised in the church.

You still pray.

You also believe in truth.

And as a reporter, your job is to dig, to hold the mortal accountable.

And now, after all this time, someone wants you to see what they've been trying to hide.

Dinner is always at the same time.

It's the evening of June 22nd, 1983, already well past 8.

Normally, every member of the Orlandi family would be here around the table by now.

But tonight, for some reason, they aren't.

Pietro Orlandi is a young man in his 20s.

He's the oldest of five children.

From where he's seated at the kitchen table, he watches the front door as if willing it to open.

At any moment, he expects his two kid sisters to step through it.

Once they do, the tension in the air will dissipate and the family will carry on with dinner as usual.

The ticking of Pietro's watch is audible in the room, which is uncharacteristically silent.

The girls are late, unheard of in the Orlandi household.

Pietro turns his attention to his mother and father.

He can see that both of them are concerned, and they're trying not to show it.

They're giving themselves away, though, with their usual nervous tics.

Pietro's mother is pacing the floor, fidgeting with her hands entirely too much.

His father, seated in his chair at the head of the table, is sitting a little too stiffly.

His eyebrows are furrowed lower on his forehead than they usually are.

Pietro clears his throat and breaks the silence.

He assures his mother that his sisters must have just lost track of time.

The sun's still up, after all.

It's summer.

It's all very easy to do.

His mother gives a curt nod.

It's clear that she wants to believe his words.

Pietro wants to believe his own words, too.

But now the silence is returning to the room.

And it's clear that all of them are thinking it.

The girls should be home by now.

Then, all of a sudden, the door swings open.

It's Pietro's youngest sister, and she's alone.

The energy in the room shifts in an instant.

Simultaneously, there's relief that the youngest Orlandi has returned.

Yet there's further unease that the middle child, Emmanuela, isn't with her.

Pietro leans forward in his chair to listen through the commotion.

His little sister is explaining how she waited at the spot where she and Emanuela agreed to meet.

She waited half an hour and then went to look for her at the music school.

Yet she wasn't there.

Pietro dives into his own mind now and finds himself scrambling to recall every detail he can, any detail he can, about his interactions with Emanuela earlier that afternoon.

She had been holed up in her room practicing her flute.

Pietro recalls that around 4 o'clock, she had asked him for a ride to her music school.

The school was close enough to walk, walk, but she was running late.

Pietro had sighed, impatient.

He had declined, inventing a vague excuse on the fly.

The truth was, though, that he didn't feel like giving her a ride.

It was miserably hot, and he knew that she could manage fine on her own.

He had hardly even looked up as Emmanuela stormed out of the house, alone.

Pietro asks the room, did anyone hear from Emanuela after she left for her lesson?

Had she called home after class, as she sometimes did?

Another of Pietro's sisters, Federica, replies yes.

Emanuela had called after class around 7 p.m.

She had said that something strange had happened.

A man had approached her and wanted to hire her to sell beauty products.

He said that she could make good money.

He was pushy.

and she was overall uncertain about the offer.

Federica had told Emanuela to stay away from the guy, not to say yes, that they could all talk it over at dinner.

And so, in response, she said okay and hung up.

Pietro's mind races.

His eyes shift from face to face.

His mother, pale and trembling.

His father, jaw-clenching, cheeks flushed, a deep red.

Guilt settles into Pietro's chest.

heavy and cold like a stone.

Pietro gets up and goes over to the window.

The air is cooling.

The streets are quieting.

The spires of St.

Peter's Basilica loom like sentinels, watching.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Not here, not now.

This was Vatican City, their neighborhood, their sanctuary.

They were citizens of the smallest country on Earth, a tiny sovereign enclave within the city of Rome.

At night, The gates to St.

Peter's Square are locked tight.

Those inside were sealed in, cloistered from the world outside, protected beneath the gaze of God and the guard of men.

Pietro has always been told that Vatican City is one of the safest places in the world.

But now that reality is beginning to crack.

At 9 p.m., the bells of the basilica toll.

A low ancient moan that seems to shake something loose inside them.

It's clear, commanding.

It's their call to action.

Pietro turns away from the window, pulse pounding.

His father is already in motion, pacing the room like a man possessed.

He splits the family up and gives them their assignment.

Canvas the city and find Emanuela.

Pietro nods sharply.

He grabs his keys and bolts down the stairs, two at a time, and kicks his motorcycle to life.

For hours, the Orlandis search side streets, courtyards, church steps.

They They call her name and their throats grow hoarse.

By midnight, they're hollowed out, exhausted and desperate, and so they go to the police.

Pietro now stands with his family members in a sterile white room.

Fluorescent lights hum overhead, and behind a desk, a man who looks up too slowly.

They tell the officer that Emanuela had not come home, that she had last been seen near her school.

He tells them to come back tomorrow, that they shouldn't worry.

Kids, they go missing all the time, especially during summer, or sometimes they get in fights with their parents, their siblings.

They run off for a while, typical stuff.

The Orlandis want to trust the officer, but they know Emmanuela.

She's responsible, studious, considerate.

First thing in the morning, the family files their missing person's report.

And this time, the police finally listen.

Pietro does everything he can think of.

He prints flyers, talks to journalists, tells everyone who will listen, a Vatican girl has gone missing.

And then the Orlandis do something that few others could.

They turn not to the police, not to the Italian state.

They turn to the Holy See.

the Vatican government, straight to the Pope himself.

Pietro's father was an integral part of running the Vatican household and has been for his entire life.

His whole family, going back generations, has done the same.

The Orlandis believe truly that Vatican City is a place where prayers are answered, where help

can actually arrive.

Yet, as the days continue to unfold, Pietro begins to realize that this just isn't true.

The evening of June 25th, Emanuela is three days gone.

Her face is everywhere now.

On flyers, in the papers, on the news.

Around 6 p.m., Pietro hears the phone ring.

He hurries to answer it, yet his father gets there first.

Pietro watches his face closely as he feels the call.

His voice is low, his cadence restraining panic.

He hangs up and pauses before looking at Pietro.

He explains that the caller was a teenage boy, claiming that he had met a girl in a Roman piazza a few days earlier.

She was selling beauty products.

She had a flute, and she looked exactly like the girl in the papers.

Then another call comes.

This time it's a man who runs a bar just outside Vatican City.

He says a girl came in and asked if she could leave brochures on the counter.

She had a flute case, dark hair, and thick glasses, just like Emanuela's.

The Orlandis can't sit still.

They print more flyers.

They paper the walls of Rome, the metro, coffee shops, street corners.

Pietro distributes them himself, face to face with strangers, willing them to remember something, anything at all.

At night, he doesn't sleep.

He barely eats.

Every time the phone rings, there's a new voice on the other end.

Another location where Emanuela was supposedly seen.

Pietro tries to track the threads, map out where each story overlaps, but he can't find his grip.

And then in July, one voice comes through the chaos.

The Pope himself.

His Sunday address.

Pietro watches it unfold on TV.

Pope John Paul II, dressed in white, stands in a window high above the crowd at St.

Peter Square.

His voice, solemn and unwavering, echoes over the crowd.

And then he does it.

He mentions Emmanuela by name.

Pietro stares at the screen, stunned.

It's the first time the Vatican has mentioned her disappearance.

But something about the tone unsettles him.

The Pope is not asking for people to help find a missing girl.

Rather, he's appealing to someone.

It's a direct address, a plea.

He's asking for her release, for her to be returned home, for someone to let her go.

Pietro blinks.

He's incredibly confused.

The Italian police are saying that she's a runaway.

So why would the Pope have cause to think differently?

What truly does this man know?

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Outside, pilgrims fan themselves with guide bunks.

Tourists shuffle past fountains.

But up here, in the inner chambers of the Vatican, the air never moves.

Everything is still.

Cardinal Agostino Casaroli sits alone in his office, waiting for the phone to ring.

His door is closed.

The shutters are drawn.

It's early evening, mid-July, several weeks since Emmanuela Orlandi went missing.

In the heart of the Catholic Church, Something is unfolding beyond the eyes of the public.

There's a man calling himself the American, and he claims to have the missing missing girl.

He says that she's alive and that he wants something, someone, in exchange for her.

Mehmet Ali Akga is in Italian jail for attempting to kill the Pope and the American is demanding that he be freed.

The cardinal flips through his notes again.

It's been about a week since the American made himself known to the press.

He told them he had left proof of life in a trash bin.

Inside, authorities found Emmanuela's school ID and a handwritten note, and all were confirmed to be hers.

But that wasn't enough.

The American wanted more attention.

Not just from the Orlandes, not just the press, but from the Vatican.

And not just anyone at the Vatican, but from Cassaroli himself.

The American demanded a direct phone to the Cardinal.

As far as Casaroli was concerned, the church could have been left out of this.

They had no jurisdiction over Ali Agga's release.

That was up to the Italian police.

Why were they being dragged into this?

And this direct line?

Well,

it would be a complete violation of Vatican Protocol.

Unheard of.

But Casaroli agrees, and the police install one while also tapping the wires.

And now, like an unwelcome guest, The first ring arrives.

Casaroli picks up and listens.

The voice is calm, cold.

He repeats the demand.

Ali Agga must be freed, and Casaroli will make it happen.

In return, the girl will live.

The American makes it sound transactional, simple even.

But Casaroli knows, nothing about this is simple.

A week later came something harder to ignore.

Casaroli is at his desk again, holding a cassette in his hand.

It had arrived that morning, inside a plain envelope, left near the square.

Just a single tape.

No one knows who delivered it.

The Vatican police turned it over to security, and security had turned it over to him.

Always, it ends up with him.

The keeper of secrets, handler of crises, the secretary of state of the Holy See.

He puts the tape into a cassette layer.

He exhales and presses play.

The static is immediate.

And then a voice.

It's a girl.

Soft, frightened, terrifying.

Her breath skimps and catches.

And then another voice.

Male, distorted.

He recognizes it from the phone calls.

He repeats the demand.

A prisoner exchange.

Casaroli's jaw tightens.

He informs the Holy See of the cassette, and behind closed doors, the meetings begin.

Cardinals sit in high-backed chairs, monsignors flank them.

There are arguments, tempers flaring, doubt, panic.

A girl's life is at stake.

Release Ahi Agga, some say.

Others respond that he tried to murder the Pope and that he's dangerous.

That the Vatican cannot cave to terrorists.

Others think about the girl, though.

the Vatican girl.

Casaroli sits quietly, listening.

It's not just that a Vatican citizen is missing.

It's that someone, maybe more than one, are reaching inside the church's walls, touching them, testing them, a fortress encroached upon.

On July 17th, another tape surfaces, this time outside the offices of an Italian news agency.

It's an identical voice, identical demands.

And on the other side, something else.

Screams, muffled and tortured.

But the Italian police say that it's not Emmanuela at all and that it's just a hoax.

For Casaroli and his associates, meetings continue to stretch into the night.

The question remains, do we convince Italian authorities to release the prisoner?

The Vatican has influence, but not control.

Negotiating Ali Agga's release would set a dangerous precedent.

It would mean publicly acknowledging that the church can be extorted.

The pressure is mounting.

Casaroli sits at his desk long after the others have gone.

He worries about the girl, worries about what he doesn't know.

He stares at the crucifix on the far wall and feels the weight of the collar around his neck.

He's been present for so many of the Vatican dealings over his career.

the accusations, the associations, the scandal, the secrets.

He's a careful man, known for his meticulous caution and strategic silence.

But lately, his conscience has only grown heavier.

The demands of loyalty to the church and the moral burden he privately carries have begun to wear.

In some ways, he knew this came with the territory, with the power.

with mortal men entrusted with the souls of others.

How that kind of authority could make one feel strangely almost godlike.

He feels the loneliness of his position, that of a man carrying the weight of a global institution.

The tape clicks to a stop.

The deadline is tomorrow.

Tonight, the cardinal is restless again.

He walks the corridors of the apostolic palace.

Past icons and crucifixes, past tapestries and velvet curtains.

He passes a statue of the Virgin Mary, her eyes cast downward.

Something in her gaze unnerves him.

He looks away.

It's been months since the call started coming in, since the tapes appeared, since the Vatican chose inaction.

They did not release Ali Agga.

They did not respond to the Americans' threats.

And yet, nothing happened.

No more proof of life.

No proof of death.

Just silence.

Casaroli doesn't know if they they made the right choice or if they just called a bluff and lost.

He's almost back to his office when a voice calls out, soft, urgent, it's one of his aides.

A young man hurries over to him, holding out a folder.

Casaroli takes in without a word and back in his quarters, he closes the door behind him and slides into his chair.

It's thin.

only a few pages.

But as he begins to read, his stomach sinks.

It's a wiretap.

Dated October 12th.

The document is a transcript of a wiretapped phone call that Casaroli was never meant to know about.

The conversation from October 12th has nothing to do with Emmanuela or Lande.

He listens in and is surprised to hear mention of another missing girl entirely.

Mirella Gregori, 15 years old, Rome.

Disappeared 40 days before Emanuela did.

It had been on the news, but Casaroli had barely thought about her.

She had barely registered at all because his mind had been wholly preoccupied.

But Morella's disappearance has his full attention now because the transcript in his hands is a conversation between two Vatican insiders.

One, the deputy chief of the Vatican's own security force, and the other, a powerful Monsignor.

The transcript is plain.

The deputy chief and the Monsignor are talking rather casually about some very serious accusations.

The two men chat about how Marilla's mother claimed that she recognized the deputy chief, since she saw him with her daughter shortly before she vanished.

A Roman judge had questions.

The men agree.

It's all very inconvenient.

The deputy chief tells the Monsignor not to speak, not to suggest.

that the church knows anything about this missing girl business, not to bother with the Roman police.

The Vatican is doing their own investigation here.

Say nothing.

Casaroli stares at the transcript.

His hands start to tremble.

What in the world were they talking about?

Again, he reads in.

This wasn't just about discretion.

This was obstruction on the Vatican's part.

Maybe this all had to do with the whispers.

The drawer.

A locked file.

In his mind, it suddenly comes into focus.

It grows in size.

Where is it?

Who has it?

What's in it?

A few weeks later, the Italian press receives another letter.

Another threat.

A terrorist group claims to have custody of both girls, Emmanuela and Mirella.

At his desk, Casaroli reads the letter over and over.

It's riddled with details only someone close to the girls would know.

Descriptions down to the number of moles on Emmanuela's back.

Intimate, real.

He believes them.

He rises and walks his familiar halls.

But now they feel colder.

The gaze of the saints sharper.

The Vatican is being drawn into something dark.

Two girls gone missing, and now, direct acknowledgement from the inside that the church might just be involved, that the cases might somehow be related.

That they were all guilty.

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Decades later, it's 2005.

Pietro stands at the bar of a narrow cafe.

The walls are yellowed with thyme and cigarette smoke.

Outside, the traffic hisses along slick cobblestones.

The rain has just stopped, and rum smells like wet stone and car exhaust.

He's lost count of the hours.

Days and years spin year.

The barista slides him a tiny porcelain cup.

The espresso inside is hot enough to scald his tongue.

He drinks it anyway.

The sting keeps him alert, keeps him grounded.

A man near the doorway looks at him twice, then once more.

He's been recognized as the brother of the girl who vanished.

Pietro nods.

He doesn't smile.

He never wanted to be recognized, not for this.

But it happens more often now.

On the bus, at the market, even here at the cafe.

People People know his face.

Sometimes they want to thank him.

Sometimes they just want to say something.

He thinks back to Christmas Eve, 1983, the year his sister disappeared, when the Pope visited his family's apartment.

The case had been open for months, but had already grown cold.

He remembers the smell of pine needles and wax.

How quiet the room became when John Paul II stepped through the door.

The Pope told him that this was a case of international terrorism, said the church was doing everything it could.

He also said Pietro was offered a job at the Vatican Bank.

Back then, it felt like an olive branch.

But now, looking back, it felt like manipulation.

Because three days later, the same Pope visited Ali Agga in prison and offered his forgiveness.

And that was that.

Ali Agga wasn't released, and Iman Willa did not surface.

The street outside is starting to buzz again.

Vespas cough to life.

Anon lifts her skirts to avoid a puddle.

The city keeps moving.

It always has.

But Pietro hasn't.

In the months after Imanuela's disappearance, the investigation has reached a fever pitch.

And then, With no evidence to be found, the case closed.

Another investigation had sparked a few years later when someone found a skull, but that led nowhere to.

He remembers all the letters the Italian judges sent to the Vatican over the years, asking to speak with cardinals, to see documents, to listen to the tapes.

Every request denied.

The Vatican never budged, said it had nothing to show, nothing to add, that they were sorry.

In the early 2000s, the rumors continued to churn.

Dark conspiracies wrapped up in all the deadly sins.

He followed each one like a threat through fog.

He listened for quiet whispers from loose lips.

And then, just a few months ago, another anonymous caller to a missing person show.

A conspiratorial voice on television saying that they know where her body could be.

But that, like other tips, was just a dead end.

He pulls his jacket tighter around his chest and steps outside.

The clowns are still low.

Rome is beautiful like this, just after rain, just before night.

He walks slowly, past shuttered bookstores and laundry strung high above the alleyways.

Every few blocks, someone meets his eyes a little too long.

He's tired, always tired, but he can't rest until she comes home.

Rome, 2012.

A small lamp cuts a pool of light across the desk.

Public prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo has been sitting here for hours.

A prosecutor's suit jacket hangs on the back of his chair, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows.

The clock on the wall counts deeper into the night.

But Capaldo isn't watching the time.

He's reading the memo again, slow and deliberate.

The Ymanuela Orlandi case has been reopened and it's fallen to him.

He exhales a low sigh that carries the weight of decades.

He knows the name Emmanuela Orlande.

Everyone in Italy does.

He remembers the newspaper headlines.

Sensational, speculative, scandalous.

The whole fiasco still bothers him after all these years.

Two girls went missing.

And only one man has ever claimed to know why.

The American.

But who was he, really?

Capaldo sketches out three possibilities.

He holds them up and turns them over in his mind.

The first, the American was a run-of-the-mill terrorist.

He knows that in 1981, Mehmet Ali Aga shot the Pope.

In 1983, he demanded his release in exchange for a Vatican girl.

A political kidnapping.

Pretty straightforward.

An eye for an eye.

Maybe the American was Ali Agga's associate.

But there are cracks.

Ali Agga belonged to a far-right terror network.

Yes, but he acted alone.

Never had endorsement for this attempt from the group.

Capaldo thinks it through.

Maybe he was still valuable to their ranks.

If so, of course they'd want him free.

Maybe they thought the Pope had enough sway to help.

So they've snatched a Vatican citizen to train.

He knows that when the Vatican didn't budge, the American disappeared.

Maybe it was too much effort after all.

Capaldo slides more papers around his desk.

His eyes narrow in on a different folder.

He's got another likely suspect list, the mafia.

He knows they've got reach, and not just across Rome, but into the Vatican's shadow economy.

If they had a grudge, if money was lost, if they wanted leverage of any kind, A kidnapping should do it.

Blackmail.

He follows the threat to his third suspect, the Vatican itself.

It's the one Capaldo doesn't want to believe.

He circles the name of a mafia insider in his notes.

Her past is fractured by addiction, but her tip doesn't feel delusional.

It reads as disturbingly clear.

She said that Emmanuela was kidnapped by the mafia, ordered by a Vatican insider.

A disgraced archbishop, to be exact.

There was a villa, an apartment, hers.

Said a girl was kept kept there, drunk and disoriented.

She had remembered driving her under orders.

Said they had to drop her off to a priest, and that the handoff happened at a Vatican gas station.

Capaldo was skeptical until he went to the apartment himself.

The villa existed, and so too did the basement.

A cold, damp grotto beneath the house.

Inhospitable.

Uninhabitable.

Steel bars don't bolt in to the walls.

A faint smell of mildew clings to the air, like something sealed up for far too long.

But this many years later, there was no DNA to be found.

No fingerprints, no proof, no life at all.

He tries not to jump to conclusions, but someone, somewhere, seems to know that he's getting close.

And then, as if on cue, His phone rings.

It's the Vatican, and they're calling for a meeting.

It seems that they need need his help to do some housekeeping.

It had come to the public's attention that there's a mafia boss buried in a Vatican crypt.

It's a really bad look.

And not only that, but an anonymous caller to a popular missing person show had suggested that Yamanwilla might be buried there with him, too.

They know that Capaldo, with the right spin and his personal blessing, can make this all go away.

And so they offer him a deal.

If Capaldo can help the church remove the body with no media and no questions, they can offer what they call the full truth about Emmanuela.

Copaldo is floored, an admission.

For the first time, the Vatican admits that it knows something, that it always has.

That those rumors about their investigation, their files, are true.

They have always been true.

At his desk, he wonders to himself, has this been an inside job all along?

He counter-offers.

He's willing to help them, but he wants all of their information on Emanuela and he wants her dead or alive.

Unbelievably, they accept, but they have one last condition.

He must absolve the Vatican of everything.

Capaldo pauses.

His career has always been defined by integrity.

He knows what this is.

It's a backroom offer.

A confession disguised as diplomacy.

A deal with the devil, per se.

Yet still, he agrees.

And then comes the waiting.

Sunrise, sunset.

Time warms.

Days begin to bleed.

He checks his phone and checks again.

Nothing.

If they were going to make good on their promise, they would have by now.

But they're gone.

Silent.

As if the conversation never happened at all.

He lets the silence stretch for a few more days.

And then he decides, enough is enough.

He goes public.

Capaldo calls a press conference.

No spin, no evasions.

He tells the world exactly what happened.

That the Vatican reached out, that they offered him something.

That they admitted finally and plainly, that they have information, that they always have.

That behind closed doors, they told him a truth they've spent decades denying.

Almost immediately after, the call comes.

No explanation, no apology.

They tell him that he's off the case, and just like that, reassigned.

Replaced by someone who discredits everything he's just said.

Someone who calls it misremembered.

A misunderstanding.

A misquote.

Someone who never saw the villa, never smelt the damp, and never heard the Vatican's offer.

They tell him it's going to be a special day, a new pope, a new beginning.

Pietro stands just inside the church gates with his mother.

Her hand clutches his.

Tight, almost painful, but he doesn't let go.

When Pope Francis passes, They step forward.

Pietro gives his name, tells the Pope that he's Emanuela's brother.

Yet, of course, the Pope already knows this.

He looks at them, quiet and unreadable.

His gaze drops for a moment, then lifts again, steady and direct.

And then he says it, Emmanuela is in heaven.

Pietro's spine stiffens.

A chill crawls up the back of his neck.

His mother doesn't say a word.

He blinks, unsure.

There must be a mistake.

A mishearing.

Pietro shakes his head, says that they still have hope, that she might still be alive.

The Pope pauses, looks at them both, and then repeats it, Emmanuela is in heaven.

Following this, he turns and walks away, just like that.

It's March 2013, 30 years since she disappeared.

30 years of silence, of closed doors and quiet refusals.

And now, a a whisper.

But not of comfort, not of resolution, just a phrase.

Delivered like fact, dropped like a bomb.

And Pietro stands there, reeling, convinced of what he's known all along and has for years.

That they continue to hide the truth and that they've been slipping.

The crowd is already waiting when Pietro arrives.

It's April 2023.

Cold, but that doesn't stop the clicks of the cameras or the excited hum rippling through the square.

Some people chant his name, others just hold up their phones.

He ducks his head, not out of shame, but because he's tired.

Tired of being recognized not for who he is, but who he lost.

He steps through the Vatican gates, not as a citizen, not as a pilgrim, but as a witness.

In his hands, binders, folders, screenshots, and recordings.

Evidence.

Paper proof of a decade-long silence.

The guard waves him through.

He walks the hallways like someone who knows the buildings all too well.

Knows how easily a body can disappear here.

How files vanish, how stories are rewritten.

The hearing room is quiet, cold in a different way.

He sets down the documents and begins.

He speaks plainly, carefully, and fiercely, like a man who's been rehearsing for 39 years.

He talks about the Vatican's back alley deals with the mafia, the legendary and very public bank collapse, how money changed hands, how some people didn't get what they were owned, the leaked documents smuggled out of the Pope's residence.

Records suggesting that the Vatican had paid for Emmanuela's education and medical care in London, that they took her her there and kept her there, alive.

The church called them forgeries, but the journalist who opened the envelope wasn't so sure.

When fall arrives, the Italian parliament approves a four-year commission to reinvestigate the case.

It's the first time Pietro feels it.

That flicker, momentum, hope.

After all this time, things are finally moving.

In November of 2024, the Vatican prosecutor stands before the press.

The world is watching.

He says it calmly like it's nothing.

Yes, there's a file on Emanuela Orlandi, but it's confidential and it will not be released.

Pietro hears the words and feels them like a blow to the chest.

All of these years of grief, of pushing, of digging, and now this.

Confirmation that the answers are there.

That night, he walks walks the alleyways of Vatican City.

He passes the places he used to play, the courtyards he once thought were holy, and he thinks about the drawer, hidden behind polished wood and papal seal.

So close, yet so far out of reach.

He's not the same man he was when this started.

He's older now, weathered, less naive.

but he's also sharper and more relentless.

For decades, they told him to let it go.

That grief should soften with age.

That faith means trusting what couldn't be seen.

But Pietro has come to believe something else.

That love means asking the questions that no one wants answered.

That faith, real faith, looks like persistence in the face of the unthinkable.

The Vatican, the city, the government, The Catholic Church was built to endure.

Marble and myth, ceremony in silence.

It was never designed for transparency, only blind faith.

For four years, that silence has swallowed the story of a missing girl, a teenager who left for music class and never came back.

In her place, a web of contradictions, strange calls, ransom tapes, anonymous tips.

Rumors of mafia and papal prayers.

Clues that collided rather than converged.

And so the truth waits.

Not buried, not forgotten, just hidden.

Behind dark wood and quiet knots, behind allegiances to God, and quiet handshakes between powerful men.

What happened to Emanuela or Lande?

Maybe we're closer than we've ever been, or maybe not.

But someone has always known.

The drawer is still locked, and someone inside holds the key.

Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.

Executive produced by me, Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Lovitt.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

This episode was written by Robin Miniter.

Copy editing by Luke Baratz.

Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.

Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media.

Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood.

Fact-Checking by Abigail Shumway.

Production Supervision by Jeremy Bohm and Cole Ocasio.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

Artwork by Jessica Kloxton-Kiner and Robin Thane.

Theme song by Ross Bugden.

Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexbone.

I love you all, and good night.

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