Sun or rain doesn’t matter. Every morning, Maria and Gerardo De Maria have breakfast, get ready and then go to the cemetery. For 11 years the day has started like this, with a visit to Pasquale. «It’s a pain that never ends, for me it’s always that day». In Mary there is the desperation of all mothers who have lost a child. It is carved into the wrinkles of a still beautiful face, in sad eyes, calm words pronounced almost with difficulty, in the hand that delicately searches for the pendant that frames the face of a handsome dark boy, with a disarming smile.
«Pasquale fell ill a few months after celebrating his 18th birthday, he left us after two years. He wanted to study medicine, he wasn’t even able to enroll.” The tumor appeared as a small growth, “it looked like a pimple”. It was realized after a year, too late, that it was a malignant epithelioma of small cells. «He died in his sleep, on February 15, 2015».
Pasquale’s death was not due to a tragic twist of fate. It is the fruit of corruption and malfeasance, of collusion and silence. «In thirty years, at least 150 people have died in our diocese, including children and young people. Not to mention the adults and the sick”says Don Antonio Di Donna, the bishop of Acerra, who defines himself as “a pastor converted by the suffering of the people”. The Church has become the first interlocutor of families. Alongside the Gospel and the documents of the Second Vatican Council, on the bishop’s desk there are books and reports that talk about pollution and environmental disasters. “We have to respond with numbers, I call it operation truth.”
WHERE THE EARTH SCREAMS
In Acerra you understand the heart of Laudato si’: «The cry of the earth and the poor are identical, there is no environmental crisis that is not also linked to a social crisis and a health crisis. Earth, poor and sick always go together”. For this reason, on May 23, when Leo
In addition to the bishops of the 12 dioceses of Campania involved – in the area between Acerra, Caserta, Nola, Aversa, for 90 municipalities that cover an area of approximately 11 thousand square kilometers – there will also be some pastors from Northern and Central Italy in the cathedral. Because, as Di Donna never tires of repeating, “in Italy there are many Lands of Fires”. A geographical map from the Ministry of the Environment indicates 51 “Sin” (highly polluted sites of national interest), between the North, Center and South. The 78 Italian dioceses affected by the “Sin” have gone online because “we can get out of the drama together”.
In Acerra the nightmare began 30-40 years ago, when Campania became the dustbin of Italy, where «the industrialists of the North, to save money, chose to dispose of toxic waste by relying on eco-mafias. With the collusion of corrupt politicians and farmers who were dazzled by the immediate profit to bury the barrels”, says Di Donna. «We handed over the best land in Acerra to heavy industry, then came the drama of pollution».
THE “WASTE BIN” OF ITALY
The Church was provoked by its faithful: «The people turned to the institutions, to the politicians and, at the beginning, they were not listened to. So he asked the Church for help”, says the bishop, who is the president of the Campania Episcopal Conference. Dozens of committees, environmental doctors and NGOs, associations and organizations that work together have been created. «We believe in the causal link: that is, that there is a direct relationship between environmental pollution and the onset of tumor pathologies. Many deny it”, says Di Donna. «But the Higher Institute of Health, which for four years carried out monitoring commissioned by the Prosecutor’s Office of Northern Naples on children who died of cancer, scientifically recognizes that at least for the 38 municipalities investigated there is a causal link between the very high rate of infant mortality, pollution and tumor diseases».
In Acerra it is a question of operating on several fronts: reclaiming and securing polluted land; cure the other great plague of the territory, dioxin pollution caused by illegal toxic garbage fires; reduce the currently very high costs of legal waste disposal; and preventing the construction of a new incinerator, next to the existing one, where the garbage from the metropolitan area of Naples is conveyed, are some of the requests that the local Church makes to politicians.
«We ask that Acerra be considered a “saturated zone”, we have already given it», says Di Donna. He speaks while Gerardo De Maria nods. He too is a victim of the Land of Fires: in 2018 he had to undergo a double lung transplant. «The doctor who examined me the first time asked me if I had ever worked in a mine, so much dust had devastated my lungs». Gerardo was a butcher in the historic family shop, Maria helped him. They closed it in 2018. The cause of his illness is the same that killed Pasquale and hundreds of others.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE
If the De Maria couple have decided to bear their testimony, it is precisely because «something must be done. There are many parents who suffer, many sick children”, says Maria. The photo of her younger son is always with her. Around your neck, in your bag. And in the house, in every room. Pasquale Piccolo, together with Giuseppe, his older brother; at the seaside, on horseback, in a karate kimono, the sport he loved. “I kept all the belts, but the black one is with him.” Some photos portray happy family moments, 25 years of marriage, birthday parties. Colors and smiles of yesterday. Today even beautiful things – the birth of grandchildren, Giuseppe’s marriage – are marked by the wound of loss: «There are no more celebrations, there is no longer full joy. I feel guilty, we do everything we can to move forward, sometimes we have to pretend, put on a mask.”
The son’s room remained as it was, with the toy cars, the guitar, the clothes in the wardrobe, the karate certificates and the high school diploma. A cot has been added for the grandchildren who live nearby. They are the sign of a life that goes forward. Ginevra is 3 and a half years old, her little brother is a year older. His name is Pasquale, like the uncle he never met. And which, from the thousand photos on the walls, gives everyone a timeless smile.
