Dead girl: Bishop, do not wish Elena's mother torment

   "All of us, as judges, are ready to always stone someone who has made a mistake. I read on a wall in the city a sentence asking for eternal rest for Elena and eternal torment for her mother. I don't think little Elena would agree with those words, like every child ".

These are the words pronounced by the archbishop of Catania, Monsignor Luigi Renna, at the end of the homily delivered in the Etna cathedral for the last farewell to Elena del Pozzo, the 5-year-old girl killed last June 13 in Mascalucia by her 23-year-old mother Martina Patti .

In front of the altar on the white coffin is a photo of Elena.

The child's maternal grandfather brought a balloon with a cartoon character.

    The archbishop, who opened the homily with a passage from the Gospel according to Mark, urged parents "not to teach the violence of words to their children, either on social networks or on our walls that are already dirty enough. Because a child is not capable of conceiving vendettas, electric chairs, media gallows and, if he learns these things, he learns them from us ".

    Citing the words of a Polish pedagogist, Janusz Korczak, who died in the Treblinka concentration camp with the orphaned children he had collected in the Warsaw ghetto, Monsignor Renna invited adults to stand "on tiptoes, to be at the height of the children When we don't focus on the little ones, we lose the yardstick to judge what is important.

    And here are disputed children, bartered in their dignity and their rights, held hostage by our inability to love.

Enough of this violence.

Children are 'pieces of heart', as they popularly say.

Hurting a child is the most terrible thing that can happen to a mother, a father, an adult.

Dear adults, keep the children out of your conflicts.

There are other paths to follow, much safer for everyone's joy, to see the smile return to the faces of the little ones: dialogue, forgiveness, the humility of those who want to make amends, knowing how to tiptoe out of the life of the child. other, with respect and meekness ".