At a press conference in Rome earlier this week, Natalina confirmed that her uncle had made unwanted verbal advances when they worked together in 1978 but said that this stopped quickly once she made it clear that she was not interested.
“I had only spoken about it with the confessor,” she said, noting that she had also told her boyfriend at the time.
In the Vatican statement published the day after the press conference, Bruni clarified that the confessional seal had not been broken in the Orlandi investigation.
“Regarding the reports involving a relative of Emanuela, it is noted that the correspondence in question expressly indicates that there was no violation of the sacramental seal of confession,” Bruni said on July 12.
“The Holy See shares the family’s desire to arrive at the truth about the actions and, to this end, hopes that all hypotheses of the investigation will be explored,” he said.
Emanuela Orlandi was the teenage daughter of Ercole Orlandi, an envoy of the Prefecture of the Pontifical House and a citizen of Vatican City State. Her disappearance on June 22, 1983, after leaving for a music lesson in Rome, has dominated headlines in Italy and been the subject of speculation for decades.
