A light on the balcony or window in all the houses of the Italians in memory of the earthquake in L'Aquila in which 309 people died, for an unprecedented and unique commemoration in its painful deployment where the discipline and composure of the L'Aquila will make room for the dictates of the strict restrictive measures related to the Coronavirus emergency: on the night between 5 and 6 April - which coincide this year with Palm Sunday and the beginning of Easter week just like eleven years ago - there will be no torchlight procession that last year it registered 15 thousand participants, but a ceremony with three authorities, which on mandate from the Committees of the families of the victims, will represent the sentiment of the population affected by the tragedy of 2009. There will be the State, represented by the prefect, Cinzia Torraco, the Municipality of L'Aquila with the mayor Pierluigi Biondi, and the first citizen of a seismic crater town, Francesco Di Paolo di Barisciano.
"This April 6 - Biondi explains - is a united city and territory, an ideal reunion. For this I thank the president of the Anci Decaro for having accepted our invitation to keep a light on in all the houses in memory of that tragedy, which unites like today: the body of L'Aquila is the body of the entire nation ".
According to the former mayor Massimo Cialente, ten years between the rubble and the reconstruction, "life took away the second Easter in 11 years: for us from L'Aquila it is another strong blow to the psyche, but paradoxically we have already gone through it, we we know what it means to be closed in tents or hotels for days in solitude or in silence. The only real thing is that with this isolation it will be more difficult for us to work out a collective mourning ".
"Now, as then - is the reflection of another 'veteran' of the earthquake, the former president of the Bar Association of L'Aquila, Carlo Peretti - you feel the mixed feeling about the integrity of the future for us, for our children. A profound tear that reopens, lacerated, at the sight of so much suffering. Now, as then, the courage and the spirit that support us despite the crying ".
The cardinal of L'Aquila, Giuseppe Petrocchi, in emphasizing that "the coronavirus alert will not be able to silence the memory of the disastrous earthquake of 2009" entrusts a thought to those who are suffering from the pandemic: "the city will entrust its voice to the 309 bell chimes that will remember the victims of the earthquake during the night. These sounds, professions and solemn, intend to embrace with their echo the pain of all the families who have lost their loved ones, often in harrowing circumstances, due to the deadly contagion".