In a special cemetery for people who die on journeys to Italy, 21 migrants who lost their lives in a shipwreck in June were buried this week. One of the victims was a child.
The bodies of 21 migrants, victims of the shipwreck that occurred on June 17 in the Ionian Sea, 120 miles off the Calabrian coast near Roccella, were buried this Wednesday, August 7. Among them were the bodies of a child and a pregnant woman.
The ceremony, which featured Christian and Islamic prayers, took place in Armo, in the space granted by the Municipality of Reggio Calabria to Caritas to establish the migrant cemetery.
The prayers at the graveside were attended by various figures, including Fortunato Morrone, the Archbishop of the Diocese of Reggio Calabria-Bova, and Hassan El Mazi, the Imam and head of the Islamic Cultural Center of Reggio Calabria.
Prefect Clara Vaccaro and Father Rigobert Elangui, the director of the Migrant Pastoral Office of the Diocese of Locri-Gerace were also present.
’A terrifying silence on shipwrecks in waters between Italy and Greece’
According to Elangui, “unlike the tragedies in Cutro and Lampedusa,” regarding the migrant tragedy at the border between Italian and Greek waters, “there is a terrifying institutional silence.”
“We must resist,” declared Bishop Morrone. “A resistance that is not passive but active and creative. We must ensure that this does not happen again. We do what we can do, and we do it with conscience. It is difficult, but our task is to be present where there is suffering.”
At the sidelines of the ceremony, Prefect Clara Vaccaro stated that “the government is doing what it must do and everything it can do. This is our situation, one we experience in this land, and we have thus shared the duty to provide a burial for these people who have either landed here or intended to land here but could not make it.”