L’AQUILA. The church chapter four of St. Peter’s, after years of waiting, yesterday, with a solemn liturgy well attended by the faithful of the parish of St. Peter’s enter Moeni and also of the neighboring parishes, was reopened for worship, during a Eucharistic celebration that the Cardinal Archbishop Joseph Petrocchipresided over yesterday morning’s solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, during which he blessed the Church, which has undergone a long restoration project, and the altar.
The reopening day is significant. In fact, on June 28, the Church celebrates and honors together the two holy apostles Peter and Paul, whom “God wanted to unite in joyful brotherhood” (preface of the mass). They are two very different people, but both driven by the same love for Christ and his Church.
This liturgical feast reminds us that the Church is a mystery of communion. We can therefore affirm that the primary mission of the Church is to be a sign of communion in the world.
The Cardinal, during his homily, after having reviewed the history of the church within the walls of St. Peter, in which he highlighted how this ‘beautiful’ and ‘solemn’ church, marks an identity, aggregative and representative value of a community that, even if poor, wanted the project and the ornaments to be majestic. The bell tower of the Church of St. Peter, the Archbishop recalled, was designed to be visible from a distance, as a point of reference and orientation for a community in which the bells daily transmitted messages of celebration, mourning and even warnings of danger.
One of the most salient passages of the homily saw the Cardinal reinterpreting the reopening of the fourth head church of St. Peter as a victory over the earthquake and a conquest of spiritual, aesthetic, cultural and social civilization.
The restoration of this church, as of many historical-artistic works of our City, marked by the tragedy of three earthquakes in a few years of distance from each other, has required the deployment not only of many economic resources by the State, but also of many skills, which in the analysis of the restoration of St. Peter’s within the wallswere defined by Cardinal Petrocchi as an ‘Integrated We-Group’, composed of officials, technicians and workers, who demonstrated how it is possible to work in a ‘coordinated whole’, in which the challenge was also to coordinate, and in this case successfully, many institutional, architectural, engineering, artistic, historical, cultural, ecclesiastical and civil skills.
In this festive context, which saw the presence of a group of concelebrating priests from the urban vicarage, including the parish priest of the fourth head church of San Pietro, Don Francesco Leone and the archiepiscopal chancellor, the can. Sergio Maggionisome associations and brotherhoods were present including the archconfraternity of Addolorata, the ‘flag-wavers of L’Aquila’ group and the CISOM.
Many authorities were also present, including, Emanuel Imprudentvice president of the regional council of Abruzzo, the councilor of the municipality of L’Aquila, Roberto Tinarithe regional secretary for Abruzzo of the Ministry of Culture, Matthew Pisithe vice prefect of L’Aquila, Maria Cristina Di Giacomol’arch. Antonio Di Stefanocurrent director of works for the Superintendence, who continued the work started by the architect. Antonello Garofalo. Present in the church, among the many parishioners of S. Pietro within the wallseven the architect. Robert DiPaolafrom L’Aquila, former regional director of Cultural Heritage in Abruzzo.
At the end of the celebration, before the concession and institutional interventions, the parish priest of San Pietro within the wallsDon Francesco Leone, expressed his sincere gratitude to the Cardinal Archbishop for his closeness and his commitment to completing the restoration work of this fourth chapter church, and after thanking the Superintendency for the work carried out, he addressed the faithful of his parish so that they may continue to fully live their being a Christian community.
In fact, with the reopening of the Church of St. Peter, a Christian community together with its parish priest, finds a place of identity in which to meet again and a wound opened by the earthquake of 2009 can now begin to heal, to give space to the rebirth of a City not only made up of churches, squares, houses, streets and places of culture, but also of a ‘people’ thirsty for normality.
