The bishops of Basilicata with Pope Francis during the ad limina visit. Ligorio is the first to the right of the Pontiff
«We presented to the Holy Father the peculiarities of a small region in the South, with an area the size of half of Tuscany and a population the size of a couple of neighborhoods in Rome: just over 500 thousand inhabitants spread across 131 municipalities, 80% of which does not exceed three thousand inhabitants. A region afflicted by a decline in birth rates and a massive flight of young people: every year two thousand young people under the age of 35 leave Basilicata, as many as a thousand of them graduates.” It is a photograph without discounts that proposed by Archbishop Salvatore Ligorio, apostolic administrator of Potenza-Muro Lucano-Marsico Nuovo and president of the Episcopal Conference of Basilicata, on the occasion of the ad limina visit made to Rome last week, during which the Lucanian prelates met Pope Francis.
A “photograph” of a region from which the young generations are leaving but which presents, as you keep repeating, an “important paradox”. Which?
It goes away despite the richness of the subsoil. Because Basilicata ensures 80% of all the oil that Italy produces.
Nevertheless…
Yet, the orographic configuration, the lack of connections, the size of the municipalities and the limited job opportunities also make the work of evangelization difficult.
And what did the Holy Father ask of you bishops?
To bear witness to Christian hope, announcing the Risen One, to encourage young people to cultivate dreams and build a future different from the present, nourishing signs of hope. The Holy Father invited the bishops of Lucania to take care of and support the faith especially of the least, the poorest, and to fight the culture of waste.
Basilicata has just renewed the Regional Council: has local politics, in recent years, anything to blame? And what challenges must be urgently addressed and addressed for the next five years?
It’s not up to me to assign blame and responsibility. I am concerned, however, by the fact that many, in the elections of 21 and 22 April, deserted the polls, a sign of a disaffection that has its roots in the social conditions in which the region finds itself. On the occasion of Easter I addressed a warm invitation to voters to participate in the electoral competition, asking political forces to talk, during the electoral campaign, about people’s real problems and indicate concrete solutions. Unfortunately we have settled more on sides than on contents. There was more talk about tactics than strategies or development hypotheses. Instead, the region needs long-term programs that indicate a direction of travel to create job opportunities worthy of the name. And it needs to close with what in the Easter message I called “the evil plant of clientelism and recommendation” which mortifies the best intelligences forced to emigrate.
Is depopulation still the priority?
It is the most serious problem. Already today the average age of Lucanians, says Svimez, is 47 years, one of the highest in Italy. And the “dust towns”, as our small municipalities are defined, are at risk of disappearing. Without a reversal of trend for which a regional policy is not enough but a national policy that looks at the country from the South is needed, it will be difficult to resist for long. And differentiated autonomy – as the CEI also states – does not seem to go in this direction. I hope for a unity of purpose among all the southern regions on this issue at least.
She, from Grottaglie in Puglia, has spent a lifetime for Basilicata: since 1998 she has led the Churches of Tricarico and Matera-Irsina; and, since 2015, that of Potenza, of which he is now apostolic administrator, and which in a few days will have its new pastor, Davide Carbonaro: why, over the years, has it become more difficult to announce the Gospel?
The real difficulty arises precisely from the overall conditions of poverty in the region and from the climate of resignation that is felt above all in the small municipalities that become smaller every day. This also poses a problem of the presence of the clergy in each community not so much due to the number of priests available but above all due to the condition of solitude in which a priest ends up finding himself, despite his commitment to community animation. Added to this is a practice of popular religiosity not without spurious elements which often constitute an identification factor linked to religious and cultural models of acquiescence and submission, to the logic of “it has always been done this way” often disapproved by Pope Francis, obscuring even more so the horizon of the future congenital to the Christian faith.
Does the difficulty of transmitting the faith cause a crisis in vocations?
However, the percentage of seminarians compared to the overall population of the region is good. The Lucanian ecclesiastical region is still able to ensure the presence of a priest in all the small towns but there is no doubt that here too there has been a notable drop in vocations.
From the cultural and tourist boom of Matera to the oil resources of the Val d’Agri; from the quality agriculture of Metaponto to the automotive district of Melfi: what is the true future of this region?
The future is yet to be written. The region is rich in oil, as well as water, wind and sun based on alternative energies but we still cannot clearly see a development project that speaks to the entire country. Stellantis in Melfi is among the largest production sites in the South but the prospect of the electric car is alarming employees because a significant reduction in workforce is expected. And the oil from the Val d’Agri and the Sauro valley, which has not brought the promised wealth, has the energy transition and decarbonisation on its horizon by 2050. Here too, it is not clear how to prepare for the future. The cultural and tourist boom of Matera after the experience of European Capital of Culture 2019 is, however, encouraging. It is hoped that a trend of strong growth will also occur for Potenza, named “youth capital 2024”. A choice that is a gamble, as it was in its time for Matera.
