Family has asked for tomb in grounds to be opened in search for Emanuela Orlandi

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Vatican has launched an internal investigation into the disappearance of a teenage girl in 1983, in what could be a breakthrough for police investigating one of the country’s darkest mysteries.

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican police officer, was 15 when she was last seen leaving a music class on 22 June 1983.

On Wednesday, the Orlandi family’s lawyer said the Vatican had authorised a new investigation.

“The time has finally come to reach the truth and give justice to this girl after decades of silence,’’ Laura Sgrò told the Guardian.

The Vatican said last month that it was considering opening a tomb within its grounds after Sgrò received an anonymous tip-off telling her to look inside the marble-topped grave.

Sgrò was told to “look where the angel is pointing”, prompting her to ask for the opening of the tomb, which lies close to a statue of an angel holding a sheet bearing the words “Rest in peace”.

The lawyer said the family had requested an investigation of the tomb after Pope Francis announced the opening of Vatican archives on Pope Pius XII, the controversial wartime pontiff accused of failing to condemn the Holocaust.

“Seeing as the pope decided to open the Vatican archives for the pontificate of Pius XII in 2020, we made an appeal to the pontiff,” Sgrò said.

The Vatican tribunal’s promoter of justice, Gian Piero Milano, confirmed to the Ansa press agency that an investigation had been launched

Emanuela’s brother Pietro has led a decades-long campaign to find out what happened to her. “After 35 years without cooperation, the start of an investigation is an important breakthrough,” he told Ansa.

The case has been the subject of intense speculation, with rumours that the teenager was kidnapped by an organised crime gang to put pressure on Vatican officials to repay a loan, or that she was abducted to force the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish man who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.

Vatican remains not those of two girls who disappeared in 1983 Read more

In October, the spotlight returned to the disappearance of Emanuela, and a second girl, Mirella Gregori, when fragments of human bone were found at the diplomatic office of the Holy See in Rome.

Mirella disappeared a few weeks before Emanuela after telling her mother that she had a date.

During restoration work at the building, workers reportedly found an almost complete skeleton in one area and bone fragments in another.

Initial reports suggested that tests on the remains had shown they were those of a woman. However, three months later, investigators closed the case, saying the remains belonged to a man who died of natural causes between AD90 and AD230.