A silent crowd welcomed the coffin of Cristopher Thomas Luciani, the sixteen-year-old killed last Sunday with 25 stab wounds, by two peers, in the park of via Raffaello Sanzio in Pescara, for a drug debt, in the historic center of Rosciano (Pe), in Piazza XXIV Maggio. The white coffin is covered with light flowers.
Drugs “are the new leprosy that is gripping young people. We must not distance ourselves from those who experience hardship, but respond by taking to the streets, touching this reality and touching it with our commitment. I appeal, therefore, to those who already do so much, who they have responsibilities of administration, control and government: we must stop the merchants of death”, Monsignor Tommaso Valentinetti, metropolitan archbishop of Pescara-Penne, said in his homily in Rosciano (Pe).
In Rosciano and Pescara today there is a day of mourning. “This land where Christopher died is a land that does not belong to us, cannot belong to us. During my priestly life, 7 children died in the earthquake of San Giuliano di Puglia, but this too is now very difficult. examined one’s conscience… Who carries the responsibility for such a violent act, for such an early death, 17 years old… a little less? Who carried out the actions that he shouldn’t have done, of course, but I think it’s time to reflect on collective responsibility. If these things happen, if kids become uncontrollable, it’s a responsibility that we all have to take on, not point fingers at each other of a person or a reality… You don’t abandon kids… it can’t be like this. Institutions, family schools, the Church, everyone must have a jolt of responsibility. These things are not justifiable, they are not understandable of so many boys here; so many flowers brought, even today, to the place where Christopher died, it means that there can be a jolt of humanity and a jolt of truth, a jolt that must make the weapons fall from violent hands, which must make keep drugs away”, the words of the archbishop.
