The vote was made by a show of hands.
“I am happy, I was waiting for this news with confidence,” Pietro Orlandi, brother of the then 15-year-old who disappeared while returning home from a flute lesson in Rome on June 22, 1983, told ANSA after the vote.
“This commission will be able to do so much, more than the Vatican enquiry can do,” he continued.
“I am convinced that we will get to the truth, it cannot be hidden forever. I thank the senators who voted for the Commission,” said Orlandi.
Emanuela was the fourth of five children of Ercole and Maria Orlandi.
Her father was either a worker at the Institute for the Works of Religion (also known as the Vatican Bank) or the papal household, depending on which reports are to be believed.
The family lived inside Vatican City where the children had free reign of the Vatican gardens, according to Pietro.
The girl’s disappearance sparked an intense media frenzy in Italy that has resulted in the case being called “Italy’s most famous unsolved mystery”.
Sightings of Orlandi in various places have been reported over the years, including inside Vatican City, but all have been unreliable.
Gregori was also 15 when she went missing that same year, a month before Orlandi.
The Vatican is conducting its own inquiry into the disappearance and Rome prosecutors also opened a new probe earlier this year.
ANSA
