A new lead to follow is added to the cold case of Emanuela Orlandi , the girl who disappeared in Rome in 1983.

And today, after 40 years, the name of her uncle Mario Meneguzzi appears , now deceased and husband of Lucia Orlandi, the young woman's paternal aunt. According to what was revealed by a report on Tg La7, a few months after the disappearance of the girl, the then Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli would have contacted - on a confidential basis, with a message by diplomatic mail - a South American priest sent to Colombia by Giovanni Paolo II. In the past, the man had been a spiritual adviser and confessor of the Orlandis.

The letter asks if the religious was aware of Meneguzzi's harassment of Emanuela's older sister , Natalina. A question to which the religious answered in the affirmative. According to what the man confessed, the young woman had confided in him that she was afraid. In fact, she had been ordered to keep silent on the matter, on pain of losing her job in the Chamber of Deputies where Meneguzzi, who ran the bar, had had her hired some time before.

The letters have now come to the attention of the promoter of justice and the prosecutors of Rome. For now there are no certainties, but suspicions are growing on the deceased uncle. Among the reasons also the similarity of his face with the identikit - traced on the evening of the disappearance - of the man with whom Emanuela would have been spotted. According to the service, the investigator would therefore have taken over all the papers of the first investigation and is comparing the statements of Emanuela's sister (who mentioned the abuses in a report) to understand why the trail was not investigated at the time " familiar"

(Unioneonline/vf)