After yet another delicious meal with Maurizio and Antonietta, it was time to go. Next stop, Aquila. The original travel plan had always included a stop there to visit dad’s old friend Renzo, the same guy he did his Giro d’Italia with so many years ago. They’ve maintained regular if infrequent contact over the years but this encounter would prove to be the most difficult of all.
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| Departure and Arrival on Dad and Renzo's Giro d'Italia |
Our first challenge was to find him. Renzo, or don Renzo as he is known here, has been a Catholic priest for over fifty years. The church of Santa Maria Paganica in Aquila has been his parish, his home and his family for the last thirty five years. More accurately, I should say was his home. The earthquake that shook the city of Aquila to its very foundations in 2009 also brought don Renzo’s church to the ground. The largest in the area, it was reduced to ruins in mere seconds. The residence attached to the church survived, as did Renzo.
The phone numbers we had for him no longer worked, and we didn’t know where he lived. To complicate matters further nobody seemed to know how to get in touch with him. There were also rumours that he had experienced a series of medical setbacks including a stroke.
Sometimes when it all comes down, it comes down hard…really hard.
After many phone calls and half answered questions we had a phone number and an address. Dad called the number and was greeted by a shallow voice. At first don Renzo didn’t recognize the caller, but once dad began speaking in their native dialect recognition was swift. Dad made arrangements for a quick visit; Renzo was ill and the city was still in ruins, we didn’t want to impose.
We approached the city from the North side along the highway and from the outskirts you could see the damage begin to increase in severity. Houses with cracked walls, some tumbled to the ground, some still boarded up, and new construction every now and then; evidence of people putting a brutal event behind them and rebuilding. We found Renzo living on the third floor of what used to be an office building which had survived the quake because it had an anti-seismic construction. Mom suggested she and I wait a few minutes before going up so that dad and Renzo would have a few minutes to say hello. When we eventually joined them we were greeted by a ghost. Renzo was a white as a sheet, his voice shallow and shaking. However, his face still bore its characteristic roundness and his eyes brightened briefly when he saw us. Unfortunately, the darkness soon returned as he recounted for us some of what happened.
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| Old friends find happiness...briefly |
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| Speaking from the pulpit |
The quake had struck during the night and Renzo woke to find his church destroyed. Still in shock, he remembers being hit in the chest by a falling stone. What followed over the next few days was a recovery effort that only cemented the fact that everything was destroyed. Tonnes of stone had rained down destroying anything below. Renzo and a few others set up camp in the piazza to protect what was left, but in reality, there was nothing. Looters resorted to breaking into the church residence to steal an automatic polenta making machine…like I said, there was nothing.
Dad tried to shift the conversation to something more positive a number of times, but each time the discussion returned to the destruction. It’s impossible to ignore it when it surrounds you. Renzo appears to be a man alternately consumed by despair and hope. Despair over the loss of everything he knew and was secure in. That church was his home, his friends and his family all in one place. Hope in the possibility of rebuilding what is gone. Despite what he may say one the outside, on the inside I’m sure he knows that rebuilding is impossible, and certainly not within his lifetime. The government put up the money to stabilize what is left of the structure, but the diocese and the Vatican have been stonewalling when it comes to the topics of money and reconstruction.
Politics in the Catholic Church? I’m shocked, shocked!
Rezno began typing his expose of what’s been going on, his problems in dealing with his superiors…only it was taken by one of them after he caught wind of it. Renzo is old school; having typed the manuscript on a typewriter, it was his only copy. He’s tired and broken from all of this; who has the energy to write it all over again?
Censorship in the Catholic Church? I’m shocked, shocked!
And even if by some fortunate turn of events, dare I say “miracle”, the church would be reconstructed in short order…who would come? Aquila, and especially the hardest hit area around Santa Maria Paganica, is a ghost town. Renzo holds mass each Sunday in his apartment; the only two parishioners in attendance are two old women, one blind, and one deaf. The parishioners who once lived there have made their own tough choices and have moved on, leaving behind what was once familiar to rebuild in a new place. There’s little hope where one can’t find work.
Even the undertakers have moved away. An old woman called Renzo looking for help. It seems that her recently dead husband’s coffin has been laying out in the open for a week; there is nobody at the cemetery to entomb him.
And still, among the despair there will always be those who refuse to leave. Like the couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary who insisted on renewing their vows at Santa Maria Paganica. “But the church is in ruins, there’s nothing left” don Renzo told them. The couple didn’t care, they were insistent, and eventually they renewed their vows amid the rubble…and maybe even the corpses. Yes, corpses.
Hundreds of years ago, when members of the aristocracy died, the families sometimes insisted they be interred at the church so that they could avoid the common folk in the afterlife and be closer to God. When the walls of Santa Maria Paganica came crashing down, so too did the bodies of these fortunate souls. Problem…there were too many of them. Not all of the bodies were reflected in the church’s meticulous records. Normally this wouldn’t be cause for concern, but a cold case in Italy was recently solved when the body of a girl missing for twenty years turned up when a woman was cleaning a long since forgotten church attic. Let’s just say that with all that’s going on, Renzo is stressed that the carabinieri (police) may come asking questions for which he has no answers.
As for the suggestion that Renzo pack it in, leave this mess for the Vatican to handle and return to Northern Italy to retire: he politely declines, and I understand why. He left “home” fifty years ago. Everything is different; he is different. The friendships he once had, weakened. His family has mostly left for other parts. Even within his country, his arrival in Northern Italy would be the arrival of a stranger. In short, it’s unthinkable. Better to stay in Aquila amongst the constant despair and brief sweet glimpses of hope.
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| The guy in the middle... not real. |
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