«Transforming the wounds of our land into slits of new grace». This is the warning launched by Don Pietro Groccia during the homily for the funeral of Silvana Sibarelli, the 64-year-old woman killed last Friday in Lattughelle, a hamlet of Cassano allo Ionio, in a mafia ambush in which her companion, Damiano Pepe, indicated to a local ‘Ndrangheta boss, was injured. Hundreds of people gathered around the woman’s family, filling not only the church of “Jesus Good Shepherd” in Sibari, but also the large square in front.
During the celebration, the parish priest identified conversion as the true hermeneutic key to eradicating the plagues and criminal dynamics that hinder development and hope from the Calabrian territory. “I am no one to condemn or excommunicate – recalled Don Groccia -, but I was sent by my bishop to announce the Gospel of the resurrection”.
In recalling the incisive action of great pastors in the history of the Calabrian Church, from the “Spring of Locri” of Monsignor Ciliberti to the testimony of Monsignor Agostino in the Crotone area, up to the citation of Monsignor Bregantini, Don Groccia hoped that “blood should not call for blood” and that this “yet another abominable crime could mark the end to every form of violence”.
Upon leaving the church, the coffin was greeted by long applause, the flight of dozens of white balloons and the shooting of several “batteries” of fireworks.