The church not only as a place of worship but as an identity heritage, the glue of a community. Yet, 12 years after the earthquake that hit L'Aquila, it happens that a town in the crater,
San Demetrio Ne 'Vestini
, still does not see a rebuilt church. It is not the only case in the Aquila, where in general a lot has been done and still too much is to be finished. But the peculiarity, in this village divided into "villas" (small neighborhoods) is that the 12 churches are still earthquake like in 2009. Among these there is one of 1200, in the villa of San Giovanni. Another of 1600, the Santissima Annunziata, which is in a state of serious decay, in the Villa of Cardabello.
A
dossier
drawn up by the engineer
Paolo Caporaletti
warns of a "risk of collapse of the dome". The architect of the Mibact Regional Secretariat
Augusto Ciciotti
, questioned by ANSA, on this point he is more reassuring: "There are some injuries but there is no risk of imminent collapse, clearly in a situation of static. On the other hand, the internal health and hygiene situation is concerned, due to the presence of guano and the risk of toxicity ". Since 2009 it seems impossible to enter even to clean up the thick layer of pigeon droppings - entered through broken windows and not closed promptly after the earthquake - which damages furnishings, statues and wooden choir and 1700s canvases. However, if other shocks should arrive - hypothesis not to be excluded in a seismic territory such as the Apennines - it is not possible to know how the structure would react. "The current state of the church is very worrying - the engineer Caporaletti writes in the report -. Inside,in addition to the guano that covers everything, there are cracks, lesions on the roof and water infiltrations. "Due to the danger of collapsing, the side streets that run alongside the religious building were closed.
The problems for the church arose with the 2009 earthquake: it was immediately declared unsafe but was not made safe and therefore furnishings, paintings, statues were not recovered. However, a statue of a child with a silver crown seems to have been stolen. With the church inaccessible, pigeon droppings were noticed very late. A first committee was therefore set up for this cause and then another for the recovery of all the churches in the municipality. The competent bodies (Curia, Superintendence and Municipality) were requested. Meetings have been organized with the Prefect, according to whom the only thing left to do is to speed up the process of reconstruction. For all the churches in the village,
after 12 years the situation is
at a standstill.
“We had not heard of such seriousness of the churches in San Demetrio - says architect Ciciotti -, after the earthquake it was not reported to us by the Curia and the Municipality, there was a lack of interest. Since we have taken the matter in hand we have never stopped. Unfortunately, we do not yet have the financial resources to intervene. At the moment we only have the share relating to the design for one of the churches, the Madonna dei Recommended. However, this process is also stalled: the technical mission structure believes that there are administrative-procedural imperfections in the documentation and therefore the question is not brought to the CIPE. Funding forms were sent for other churches on the list (the parish of San Demetrio and the church of San Giovanni).I asked the specialized department of the Fire Brigade but after the end of the emergency they could no longer intervene ", says the architect, assuring that as soon as the funds are available, the Annunziata church will at least be cleaned of guano and made safe. .
A situation defined as "embarrassing" by the mayor of San Demetrio himself,
Antonio Di Bartolomeo
. “We have made reports, even if the reconstruction of the churches is not the responsibility of the Municipality. We also participated in tables in the prefecture. But now the ball is in the hands of other entities. I wonder why at least the furnishings were not saved from guano ”. On this aspect, the engineer Caporaletti presented another report in which he proposes to secure the works, including paintings by the nineteenth-century painter Teofilo Patini, to be placed in a museum exhibition space in the village as soon as possible.
The times for the reconstruction of the churches in the town, where, moreover, there is still a long way to finish that of the houses, are very long.
Furthermore, the Superintendency no longer works in an emergency phase, therefore in fact in a situation of presumed "normality" that collides with a reconstruction that still seems infinite, amidst the shackles of the Italian bureaucratic machine.
(PHOTO FROM THE CARDABELLO-SAN DEMETRIO FACEBOOK GROUP)
