Italy buries earthquake victims in Good Friday procession of the dead [
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(Peri Percossi/EPA)
Dozens of wooden caskets of earthquake victims are lined up in stricken L'Aquila
Richard Owen in L'Aquila“Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations and they will repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.” The words of the Prophet Isaiah, spoken by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope’s deputy, rolled across the more than 200 flower-covered coffins lined up on a police barracks square, over the debris of what was once L’Aquila, a jewel of medieval architecture, and on to the snow-capped mountains beyond.
The mass state funeral for the victims of Monday’s massive earthquake in Abruzzo was a mixture of private grief and the pomp of state, with Good Friday turning into a day of national mourning. Italy was represented by President Napolitano and Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, who has taken charge of the disaster operation over the past few days as rescue workers raced against time to find the last survivors amid continuing powerful aftershocks.
The focus, though, was on the coffins, and on the 1,600 relatives and friends of the victims in the 5,000-strong congregation that crowded into the barracks of the Finance Police on the outskirts of L’Aquila.
The most poignant sight was the small, white caskets placed on some of the adult coffins: the remains of children who lost their lives in the disaster. Some had soft toys such as teddy bears on top of them, held on by sticky tape. One had a plastic toy motorcycle with its rider, another a football shirt.
Nearly all the coffins, of adults and infants, carried photographs of the victims and their names on a white card. The last coffin, of a woman found in the ruins of L’Aquila overnight, was brought in just before the funeral Mass. The dead included Lorenzo Cini and Arianna Pacini, both 23, who had hoped to marry and were found in the ruins embracing each other in death.
The families paid their last respects before the service, bending to kiss the coffins. Some women collapsed sobbing. At the end of the Mass the waiting hearses took the coffins to cemeteries in L’Aquila and the surrounding towns and villages. The honour guard was provided by civil protection workers, firefighters, paramedics and police representing those who have carried out the rescue operation since the earthquake, in which 290 people died.
Some family members stood talking, redeyed with grief. Others stared into space with their memories. As pallbearers from the emergency services approached, Angela Zugaro clung to the coffin of her mother, Giuseppa, who died in Onna, one of the worst-affected villages. “She won’t let go,” said Umberto, her husband, a forestry worker. “She hasn’t stopped crying since it happened. She cries all day.” He said that he blamed the authorities for not predicting the earthquake. “We had had tremors for four months,” he said. “The house kept shaking.”
The lesson was read by a nun from a convent at Paganica whose mother superior died in the tragedy. Behind her on the wall of the barracks the sun glinted on the motto of the Finance Police, oddly apposite in the circumstances: Nec Recisa Recedit – “Not even when struck down will I stop”.
The service was conducted by Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, and the Archbishop of L’Aquila, Giuseppe Molinari, flanked by a hundred priests and bishops from Abruzzo and Molise.
Pope Benedict XVI had given special permission for the funeral to be held on Good Friday, when normally the only Masses held are in commemoration of the Crucifixion.
In a message read out at the Mass, the Pope said that in “these dramatic hours” of “human tragedy” he felt “spiritually present among you to share your distress”. He implored God to give the victims eternal rest, to enable the injured to recover swiftly, and to give courage to the survivors to “continue to hope”.
The pontiff said that he had followed the effects of this “devastating phenomenon” from the first tremors, which were felt in the Vatican, and praised the emergency services and ordinary people for reacting with “solidarity”, adding that the Vatican and the Church were also “playing their part”.
At the end of the Mass a local imam, speaking in Italian, read an Islamic prayer for the six Muslim dead, two of them Palestinian.
Mr Berlusconi, who during the Mass moved away from the VIP section to mingle with the local people, said that “the dead are the dead of the whole nation”, and thanked the inhabitants of Abruzzo for their fortitude and dignity in the face of tragedy. “Their behaviour is a lesson for all Italians,” he said. He offered to put up in his own homes some of the thousands of evacuees, but did not say which homes. His properties include his mansion near Milan and a luxury villa in Sardinia.
If the funerals marked the start of the healing process, then the people of Abruzzo, and especially L’Aquila, can begin the difficult process of rebuilding their towns – and their lives.
