Emanuela Orlandi was a Vatican teenager who mysteriously disappeared while returning home from music school in Rome on 22 June 1983. The case received worldwide attention due to the public appeal of Pope John Paul II for her release after an unnamed terrorist organisation claimed to be holding the girl in exchange for the liberation of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish terrorist who two years before attempted to assassinate the Pope. However, the subsequent investigation discovered that the allegation of international terrorism was a misdirection, and the real motive of the disappearance remains unknown.

Mehmet Ali Ağca is a Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979 and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison.