Funeral home operators staged a protest in Rome on Friday over a desperate situation that they say has left nearly two thousand coffins in the Italian capital, waiting weeks or even months to be cremated.
While the coronavirus did not help the situation, the increase in deaths and limited access to public services caused by the pandemic exposed only a long-standing problem attributed to Italy’s old nemesis – bureaucracy.
“We call on the mayor of Rome to end the current procedures necessary to authorize an cremation,” Giovanni Caccioli, national secretary of the Italian Federation of Funeral Homes, told AFP.
Sitting by the hearth, funeral workers laid wreaths around Hercule Victor’s Roman Temple near Mayor Virginia Raggi’s office, with announcements that read, “Sorry, they won’t let us bury our loved ones.”
According to Caccioli, Rome registers approximately 15-18,000 cremation requests each year, for which families have to go through a “torturous” bureaucratic journey involving the local cemetery, the AMA municipal agency and the registrar’s office.
Earlier this week, a grieving son, Oberdan Zuccaroli, staged a very personal protest, erecting billboards around Rome with the message: “Mom, I’m sorry I couldn’t bury you yet.”
But he is far from the only one for whom delays have exacerbated the pain of losing a loved one.
“It’s been three months since I waited for my husband to be cremated and nothing has been done yet,” said Lorella Pesaresi, whose husband died in January after testing positive for coronavirus while undergoing chemotherapy.
“It’s not right – coronavirus and this now,” she told AFP.
– I can’t continue –
Caccioli said that the documents for obtaining an incineration permit were still made by hand, and the process took an average of 35-40 days in Rome, “an absurd situation.”
He mentioned that other cities did it in a day or two, adding: “We can’t continue like this.”
Maurizio Tersini, who runs the Le Sphinx funeral home, says about 1800 coffins are currently waiting to be cremated in Rome.
“The main problem is a bureaucratic one,” the 59-year-old told AFP: “It is a great suffering for families.”
However, this is not a new problem.
The Cgil union warned in September that hundreds of coffins were piling up in Rome’s Prima Porta-Flaminio cemetery after one of the city’s two main cemeteries, Laurentino, ran out of space for burials.
“They did not do what was decided in 2017, which was to build four new crematoria and expand Laurentino,” Cgil chief in Rome Natale Di Cola told AFP on Friday.
The situation was exacerbated by the pandemic, which claimed more than 116,000 lives in Italy, according to the official balance sheet – although Rome was not as affected as other regions.
“What was a crisis has become chaos,” Di Cola said.
AMA, the mayor’s office that manages the cemeteries, said in a statement earlier this week that the situation is under control and that efforts continue to free up burial spaces.
He added that he faced a 30% increase in deaths from year to year between October 2020 and March 2021.
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