ROME – As I’ve observed before, the “Vatican girl” case, referring to the 1983 disappearance of a 15-year-old girl in Rome whose father was a minor Vatican employee and whose family lived in a Vatican apartment, is the Italian version of the Kennedy assassination, meaning the country’s most notorious unresolved mystery.
Both have become magnets for crackpots, conspiracy theorists and hucksters, whose every purported revelation is given a predictably vast media echo. Whole industries have grown up, driving a steady stream of book sales, TV and movie ratings, social media traffic, and speaking fees.
