Orlandi Vatican Trust Deficit
Title: Italy’s most notorious unsolved mystery illustrates Vatican’s trust deficit
Author: John L. Allen Jr.
Publisher: Crux
Date: 27MAY2020
ROME – Pietro Orlandi, the older brother of Emanuela Orlandi, whose still-unexplained disappearance at the age of 15 in 1983 has become the country’s most infamous unsolved mystery, is a bit like the John Walsh of Italy.
Like the host of “America’s Most Wanted,” Orlandi suffered tragedy and went on to become not only an advocate for others in his situation but a popular TV host. His weekly program Scomparsi (“The Disappeared”) on Italy’s Sky TV system documents some of the roughly 60,000 such cases in Italy, with 10,000 involving native Italians and the rest immigrants.
Where the analogy to Walsh breaks down, however, is whom each blames for his personal loss.
For Walsh, his frustrations largely were directed at a legal system he believed prioritized the rights of perpetrators over victims, and a police approach which he felt didn’t give sufficient attention to missing persons cases.
For Orlandi, his resentments are directed above all at one institution: The Vatican
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