//Processione al buio//

(Dark night procession)

In April 2022, after two years of lockdowns due the the Global Pandemic, the historical night Easter Procession in Corigliano Calabro (Cosenza-Italy) could finally take place again. 

As a child, my grandfather took me to many religious gathering of the village; he was a great lover of such moments, full of popular devotion. He was invariably moved when looking and the Madonna passing by, followed by the fanfare and the deep vibrations of its trombones. 

Since my grandfather died, I’ve regularly came back to these processions, probably moved by a very simple nostalgia, trying to find the emotions I had back then. 

While growing up, I started to dig the more profound meanings behind these practices, and found myself surprisingly in communion with the devotion of the people. I guess it is because there is something that goes beyond religion in these practices, a sort of universal and commun ground that resonates in me. What moves us? What surprises us? What do we ask? Why do we need this ceremonial, if it is not to make a noble and superior act out of our difficult, sometimes cruel, condition of humans? 

In a time where darkness seems to have fallen on us, the meaning of this first procession, after two years of break,  in the middle of the night, took a more sensitive meaning, revealing, more than ever, the fragility of our existences. 

Still, I put my eye at the height of a child, as back then…. as if it was still necessary for me to keep this Wonder that thrilled me, and still thrills me, till the very end of the procession, at dawn, in a last movement of colorful hope.