Italian Catholic and Jewish leaders on Tuesday condemned the use of a swastika flag at the funeral of Alessia Augello, 44, a member of the far-right Força Nova party.
The episode took place on Monday (10), at the entrance to the parish of Saint Lucia, in a central neighborhood of Rome. Some of the 20 or so people who attended the ceremony still made salutes associated with Nazism and fascism, while around the activist’s coffin they shouted the word “gift” with their right arm outstretched.
Although the case took place at the door of the church, the priest who celebrated the funeral rite said he had not heard of anything. “What happened outside the church at the end of the celebration happened without any authorization from the pastor or the pastor celebrating, both of whom were unaware of what was happening,” said in a note Alessandro Zenobbi and Paolo Emilio, parish priests who celebrate Masses there.
In the text, the religious still expressed “deep sadness and disappointment for what happened, distancing us from every word, gesture and symbol used outside the church, attributable to extremist ideologies far from the message of the gospel of Christ”.
Also in a statement, the diocese of Rome called the Nazi flag “a horrendous symbol” and said the episode was an offensive example of “ideological exploitation” of a religious service. The diocese is technically headed by Pope Francis, but he delegates the day-to-day management of the institution to his vicar, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis.
The Jewish community of Rome, for its part, expressed outrage and declared that “it is unacceptable that a flag with a swastika can still be displayed in public today, especially in a city that saw the deportation of its Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. fascists”.
After a raid on Rome’s Jewish quarter on October 16, 1943, more than a thousand Jews were deported, most to the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Only 16 returned.
The community also reinforced that the episode became even more outrageous for having taken place in front of a church.
Shortly after the case came to light, Italian police said they would investigate the incident as a possible hate crime. This Tuesday, the institution said that dozens of far-right militants who participated in the act had already been identified and that the investigation was trying to find out who the organizers were.
After the conclusions, the case will be sent to the Public Ministry, which, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, could happen in the next few hours.
On Facebook, Alessia Augello’s aunt published a text repudiating the event. “We totally dissociated ourselves from events that took place outside the church that we were not aware of. […] Not even Alessia herself would have [os] appreciated,” he wrote.
Still on the internet, worshipers were surprised and outraged, wondering why no one intervened, as the ceremony took place in a busy place in the Italian capital. “Enough! Funerals and commemorations cannot become excuses for apologies and propaganda [neonazistas]”, wrote on Twitter Andrea Casu, deputy for the center-left Democratic Party.
The congressman pointed out that the episode took place on the day his acronym asked the government to implement the motion to dissolve neo-fascist organizations in the country, including Força Nova. The party was created in the late 1990s but has been gaining traction amid the recent wave of extremism in Europe. Next to the acronym CasaPound, the group is the main neo-fascist organization active in Italy.
In October, he was one of the organizers of violent protests against the government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who at the time announced new restrictions to stop the spread of Covid-19.
At the time, 38 security agents were injured after protesters broke through barriers to reach the prime minister’s office and stormed the headquarters of Italy’s largest union. The police even arrested 12 people, including party leaders. Days later, tens of thousands of people gathered in Rome to ask the government to take action against neo-fascist groups involved in the protests.
“A country that forgets its memories cannot have a future,” said Maurizio Landini, secretary general of the Italian General Confederation of Labour.
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