INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Bones were discovered in a building in the leafy grounds of the Holy See's embassy to Italy
details on the discovery of human remains in one of its properties.The bones were uncovered on Monday by builders refurbishing a building
owned by the Vatican in Rome, the Holy See said, in a potential breakthrough for police investigating one of Italy's darkest mysteries.Since
the grisly find, Italian media have been rife with speculation that they could shed light on the fate of one or possibly two teenagers who
went missing in the 1980s."We will ask Rome prosecutors and the Holy See how the bones were found and why their discovery has been linked to
the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi or Mirella Gregori," the Orlandi's family lawyer, Laura Sgro, told the media.The statement released by
the Holy See on Tuesday "provides hardly any information," she said.Sgro was speaking on behalf of the family, which she said would not
comment until DNA tests had been performed.The remains were discovered in a building in the leafy grounds of the Holy See's embassy to
Italy.The property had been left to the Vatican in 1949 by a Jewish businessman who belonged to the Fascist party before the introduction of
racial laws in Italy, and later converted to Catholicism, according to Italian media.Builders found a near-complete skeleton in one spot and
fragments of bones in another, the Repubblica daily said.The Vatican's statement on Tuesday made no reference to either Orlandi or
Vatican's police, and was last seen on June 22, 1983 when leaving a music class.Theories have circulated that the then 15-year-old was
kidnapped by an organised crime gang to put pressure on Vatican officials to recover a loan.Another claim was that she was taken to force
the release from prison of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who attempted to assassinate Pope Jean Paul II in 1981.Orlandi's brother Pietro has
been leading a decades-long campaign to find out what happened to her and has accused the Vatican of silence and even complicity in the
case.In 2017, conspiracy specialists were driven into a frenzy by a leaked -- but apparently falsified -- document, purportedly written by a
cardinal and pointing to a Vatican cover-up.It referred to an expenses report of what the Vatican spent on kidnapping Orlandi and sending
her to live abroad in secret.The Vatican has said on several occasions that it has cooperated with Italian police in the case.Gregori, then
16, disappeared exactly 40 days before Orlandi.Her mother says she answered the intercom at the family apartment before telling her parents
it was a school friend and she was going out to speak to him
She never returned."In my heart, I hope the bones are Mirella's, so we can put an end to this affair and I can have somewhere to go and cry
and take my sister flowers," Maria Antonietta Gregori told La Repubblica daily.Investigators have not ruled out that the cases could be
forensic experts exhuming the tomb of a notorious local crime boss at a Vatican church uncovered some 400 boxes of bones.Enrico De Pedis,
head of the Magliana gang, was suspected of involvement in her kidnapping and some speculated the youngster may be buried alongside him --
She would now be 50 years old.The first investigation into Orlandi's disappearance was closed in 1997.In 2007, De Pedis' lover told
investigators he had kidnapped and killed the girl on the order of the head of the Vatican bank.The claim -- that she saw the girl's body
buried in a sack under cement -- sparked a fresh enquiry that led nowhere.Police shut the probe again in 2016, after which Pietro Orlando
called on the Vatican to open its own investigation."Truth and justice are sacrosanct
We will never give up," he told the media on the last anniversary of her disappearance.
