Italian clergy bear a heavy cross to offer solace amid anguish
Priests are playing a crucial role in bringing comfort to a stricken population but many have died as a result
Andrea Vogt
Nick Squires
A ROSARY slung over his shoulder, a smile visible under he transparent respirator strapped to his face, Fr Cirillo Longo raised his fists over his head in a gesture of celebration as if he had just scored a goal. “See you on the other side, in paradise,” the 95-year-old said in his last phone call before he died in the Italian city of Bergamo last month, shortly after the picture was taken.
The photograph symbolises the high price being paid by clergy in Italy, where 120,000 people have been infected and more than 14,000 have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Priests have succumbed to the virus as they tend to the dying, trying to offer comfort in the absence of loved ones, who are not allowed to say a final farewell for fear of being infected.
Clergy have swiftly mastered unfamiliar technology, relaying the last words of dying patients via Whatsapp and other platforms to their relatives.
“They die alone,” said Aquilino Apassiti, 84, a priest from Bergamo who spent 25 years as a missionary in the jungles of Brazil and now works in a chapel attached to the city’s hospital. “In the Amazon, I dealt with leprosy and malaria, but I have never seen scenes as shocking as those of recent weeks,” he told La Stampa newspaper.
Families are left to grieve without the comfort of the funeral rites embedded in Catholic tradition for centuries. The pandemic in Italy has taken a terrible toll on medical staff, with more than 10,000 infected, and nearly 70 doctors losing their lives. But what has received less attention is the impact it has had on clergy, killing more than 90 priests, as well as dozens of missionaries, monks and nuns. Many worked in hospitals, prisons and care homes, and were particularly exposed.
“The deaths of doctors get our attention, but there are many priests who have fallen victim while working as well,” said Alessandro Rondoni, director of the office of communications at the Archdiocese of Bologna. Ethiopian bishop Angelo Moreschi, 67, became the first Catholic bishop to die of the virus last week. Moreschi, who had spent decades as a missionary in Gambela, Ethiopia, contracted the virus while in Italy for a medical treatment. He died at the Salesian seminary in Brescia.
The diocese of Bergamo has lost 25 priests, the diocese of Milan 11, and the diocese of Piacenza-bobbio six, including Don Paolo Camminati, 53, from the city of Piacenza on the border of Emiliaromagna and Lombardy.
“Camo”, as he was affectionately known around town, was especially popular among young people, church officials told The Daily Telegraph, having taught in several schools and spearheaded youth and community projects, including Alpine treks and social events that sometimes would end with him pulling out his guitar to sing a tune.
The virus has also raced through monasteries and convents across Italy. In the Saveriani care home for retired missionaries in Parma, the virus killed 12 men who had spent their careers battling the harsh conditions of Africa and South America. More than half of the 41 sisters in the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity in Turin caught the virus in mid-march, and five have since died, including the mother superior.
Pope Francis has tested negative, and has resisted efforts to get him to move from his Santa Marta residence in the Vatican to a safer location, despite the fact that several prelates living close by have tested positive. His solemn Orbi et Urbi (“To the city [of Rome] and to the World”) prayer for an end to the pandemic was delivered last week to a deserted, rain-swept St Peter’s Square. As the Pope venerated a crucifix that was once carried through Rome in 1522, when the city was praying for an end to the plague, the service was live-streamed to the Catholic Church’s 1.2billion faithful across the world.
As Easter approaches, the centuriesold message of the Catholic Church is the same, but the methods are changing. Priests are recording and livestreaming Masses. One parish priest who conducted his service to an empty church filled the pews with prints of selfies of his parishioners to give the proceedings an element of humanity.
Fr Giuseppe Corbari, from Robbiano, north of Milan, said he had been saddened to see the church devoid of faces, and so put out an appeal for people to send in photos. “I was very moved by the response,” he said. “These are terrible times, and we need to stay close to each other.
“I’m still celebrating Mass, but it is with greater joy now because all the faithful are in front of me.”
Other priests have come up with innovative real-world ways of connecting with their parishioners. Fr Camillo Lancio loaded a statue of the Virgin Mary on to a trolley and wheeled it around the village of Picciano, ministering to people who leant out their windows.
Instead of the palm fronds or olive branches that would traditionally feature in blessings across Italy on Palm Sunday, the faithful were being urged to snap off a twig of rosemary or basil from the garden. They can then have it blessed through their television sets, computers or phones during liturgies that will be live-streamed from behind the closed doors of churches and cathedrals.
Despite the grim death toll among clergy and the enforced separation between priests and their flocks, there has been a resurgence in religious faith as people under lockdown reassess their lifestyles and priorities.
“This virus hit Italy hard,” said Fr Gianluca Busi, a parish priest in Emiliaromagna. “But I think my church will be fuller after all this. Many of us are seeing a rebirth of spirituality as people reconsider the things that are most essential in their lives.”