ROME (Reuters) – Italian Catholic and Jewish leaders on Tuesday condemned as outrageous an episode by which right-wing extremists put a flag with a swastika on a coffin outside a church after a spiritual funeral and gave Nazi salutes.
Rome’s Catholic archdiocese stated in a press release that monks on the parish of St. Lucy in a central Rome neighbourhood, together with the one who presided on the funeral ceremony, had no thought of what would occur outside the church on Monday.
Pictures on the web confirmed the coffin bearing the physique of Alessia Augello, a former member of the right-wing extremist group Forza Nuova, lined by the flag.
The diocese assertion known as the flag “a horrendous image that can not be reconciled with Christianity” and stated the episode was an offensive instance of “ideological exploitation” of a spiritual service.
Police stated they have been investigating the incident as a potential hate crime.
Rome’s Jewish neighborhood expressed outrage that such occasions might nonetheless occur greater than 70 many years after the top of World War Two and the autumn of Italy’s fascist dictatorship.
“It is unacceptable {that a} flag with a swastika can nonetheless be proven in public at the moment, particularly in a metropolis that noticed the deportation of its Jews by the Nazis and their fascist collaborators,” the assertion stated.
After a raid on Rome’s Jewish neighbourhood on Oct. 16, 1943, greater than 1,000 of the capital’s Jews have been deported, most to the Auschwitz loss of life camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Only 16 returned.
The Jewish neighborhood assertion on Tuesday stated the funeral incident was “much more outrageous as a result of it came about in entrance of a church.”
An analogous incident came about outside one other Rome church in March of final 12 months.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
