The parish priest who officiated
at a Rome mafia boss's Godfather-style funeral on Thursday said
Friday he would do so again if asked.
It also emerged Friday that the horse-drawn hearse used for
Vittorio Casamonica was the same as that used for legendary
comic Totò in 1967.
The row over Thursday's rumbled on all day Friday with
calls for politicians and officials to quit over the affair,
which has grabbed headlines worldwide, further denting the image
of the Italian capital after a string of scandals.
The pilot of the helicopter that dropped rose petals
Casamonica's horse-drawn hearse is set to have his license
revoked.
But the parish priest of Rome's Don Bosco church said he
would repeat the ceremony - at which Nino Rota's famed Godfather
theme was played - if asked.
Italian Civil Aviation Authority ENAC said it will suspend
the license of the pilot.
"ENAC did not authorize the flight over the city of Rome,"
the agency said.
The private pilot took off from Terzigno heliport near
Naples, then asked Rome traffic control for authorization to
enter local airspace.
However he deviated from the authorized route and dropped
to below an altitude of 1,000 feet (approximately 330 meters),
both of which are forbidden, ENAC said.
Throwing things out of the craft while airborne is also
banned, it said.
Meanwhile father Giancarlo Manieri told reporters he
would do it again if asked because even a clan boss deserves
Christian charity.
"Would I redo Vittorio Casamonica's funeral? Probably yes,
I do my job," Father Giancarlo Manieri told Sky TV.
"It wasn't up to me to block the funeral...an exponent of a
clan is in any case inside the Church", he said.
Father Manieri continued to hit back at critics, saying "I
am not a cop".
"Many people have reproached me for not having prevented
the funeral of a boss...but if he was such an outlaw why was he
at large?"
"Did they wait till he died hoping that he would be
'arrested' by the parish priest?"
"My duty is to dispense mercy, as Pope Francis teaches me.
And that is what I do".
"I believe I only did my duty. I am a priest, not a cop".
Father Manieri denied the Don Bosco parish received a
significant sum of money from relatives, revealing on Friday it
was given just 50 euros as payment.
He said: "To respond to certain allegations about money:
they (the relatives) said 'how much do we owe?' and they were
told 'you can offer something if you'd like'.
"That offer was 50 euros; 50 not 50,000."
A representative of Rome's Vicariate said they would have
suggested a "more discreet" funeral had they known it was going
to turn into such a "show".
"I strongly contest this way of exploiting death...this
type of spectacular funeral," the bishop for eastern Rome,
Msgr Giuseppe Marciante, told Vatican Radio.
"None of us knew (about it)," he went on.
"Certainly, if we had known that there was this spectacle
behind this funeral we would have suggested the funeral should
be held in a more discreet way," Msgr Marciante said.
Father Manieri, for his part, pointed out that a decision
to deny a funeral to right-to-die activist Piergiorgio Welby at
the same church in 2006 had been taken by the Vicariate.
"In that case the Pope's Vicar intervened, assuming
responsibility and ordering the parish priest not to celebrate
the funeral," said Manieri.
"Welby, if I'm not mistaken, was no longer considered a
Catholic," he added.
As for Casamonica's funeral, Manieri said: "Nobody told me
anything. Praying for a dead person, whoever he is, is not
forbidden".
Father Manieri added: "For Welby too, besides, the
Salesians prayed a lot and the church stayed open all day".
Manieri was responding to widespread criticism including
from crusading anti-mafia journalist Roberto Saviano.
"On December 24, 2006, Rome's Don Bosco church refused to
hold the funeral of Piergiorgio Welby, because he had decided to
end his own suffering," Saviano wrote on Facebook.
"The same church yesterday welcomed the funeral of clan
boss Vittorio Casamonica, whose coffin was accompanied by a band
playing The Godfather theme."
His post garnered 30,000 'likes' and has been shared 12,000
times.
Welby was an Italian poet and painter who battled to
establish his right to die, leading to a debate about euthanasia
in Italy.
The row was also fuelled by suggestions that Rome traffic
cops had been dispatched to stop traffic from disturbing the
funeral.
Rome traffic cops denied this, saying they only intervened
after the event to reroute vehicles and ease the "chaos".
As the controversy was fuelled all day, Interior Minister
Angelino Alfano and Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino faced calls to
quit over the affair, as did Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli and
the city's police chief.
Casamonica's nephew Luciano wrote to Alfano claiming that
the clan was not a mafia organisation.
"If I take a Rolls-Royce to a funeral it doesn't mean it's
the mafia. We Casamonicas have always had big parties, since we
came to Rome. Mr Alfano we aren't mafiosi, we aren't bad
people," he wrote.
The boss's nephew added that the late boss was "in our
parlance, our culture he (was) a king, our king of Rome," as
posters around the church had proclaimed.
"They say he was a boss. My uncle was very well-known
because he bought and sold cars," said Luciano Casamonica, whose
clan are popularly known as 'the gypsies'.
But the clan asked for Pope Francis's forgiveness for
using the theme from The Godfather.
"We can ask forgiveness from the pope and the Vatican only
perhaps for having put on a song that was not OK," Vittorio
Casamonica's relatives told the online version of the Corriere
della Sera newspaper.
The funeral flap comes in the wake of a major probe into a
new Rome mafia that has led to almost 60 indictments.
Many pundits have said it was a disgrace that a lavish
mafia funeral was allowed in the Italian capital when such
events have for years been banned in the mafia's southern
heartlands.
But Marino tweeted, after the violent reactions: "Mafia in
Rome: now (we're) less alone in this battle".
In all, the affair gleaned more than 30,000 indignant
tweets.
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