Naples, Cardinal Battaglia: ‘There have been too many funerals for young people since I’ve been here’

Naples, 14 April (LaPresse) – ‘As a pastor, I cannot remain silent. Since I have been in Naples, there have been too many funerals for young people, for lads, for brothers killed by murderous bullets, by guns that should never have been fired, evoking scenes of a war one would not expect in such a beautiful land, in a city like ours.’ These were the words of Cardinal Don Mimmo Battaglia, Archbishop of Naples, in his homily at the funeral of Fabio Ascione, the 20-year-old killed at dawn on Tuesday 7 April by a gunshot fired accidentally in the Ponticelli district. The reading of the homily was punctuated by moments of emotion on the part of the archbishop, who spoke of the “too many eyes closed forever”, the “too many lives cut short”. Every time a story cut short, every time a dream shattered, every time a family destroyed. And today – he added – that face has a name: Fabio. A son of this land, a young man, a son. And when a young man dies, when he dies in such an absurd way, it is not just he who dies but a piece of the future dies, a possibility dies, something inside all of us dies”.