by the Revd Katharine Rumens
Another city, another locum. This one was in Sicily’s capital city, Palermo, at Holy Cross church, where I had covered Sundays in October and November last year. I returned to familiar faces in time for Mothering Sunday. This is not a Sicilian observation, but there were bunches of freesias – the first spring flowers – for everybody. Some of the men avoided being given any.
A member of the congregation suggests a walk. We go to Villa Malfitano where the Whitaker family once lived. (Whitaker and Ingham were the two Marsala wine merchants who bought the land and paid for the building of Holy Cross.) It is shut. My undaunted companion knocks on the door explaining that she had the Anglican priest with her who would like to see inside. We are given a private tour from smoking room to ballroom.
I am invited to a ceremony the Knights Templar are holding in church. Long citations and solemn sword bearers. Apart from the reference to crossing the Red Sea I don’t have a clue what’s going on.
I am walking around the Kala – the Arab old town – and pass the Palazzo Ajutamicristo. The “Help me Christ” palace. I assumed it was a former orphanage or shelter for the vulnerable. It was the family’s surname.
A cultural society is holding a musical evening in a large remote villa. A mafia connection – either seized from or given by. I find I am a guest of honour. Piano recitals are followed by supper at which fellow guests complain about the potholes.
A Spring Fair. Tea and cake and second-hand books. Business as usual when it comes to fundraising. We have decorated the church with palm branches cut from someone’s garden.
Palm Sunday and we have specially imported palm crosses. I see women coming back from church with olive branches. That would be more in keeping here, but less Church of England.
Maundy Thursday evening and I do hand rather than foot washing. I understand there is a reluctance regarding feet; moreover, the churchwarden doesn’t like his toenails.
After the service a group of us visit the sepulchres (tomb or burial chamber) in neighbouring churches. Elaborate gardens with or without an effigy of Christ lying in the tomb. White corn, that symbol of fertility, features, as do sheaves of corn. The Jesuits want to provoke thought among the young and have a one-armed bandit and the fires of hell in their garden. When the crowds get too dense to cope with, we go and eat ice cream.
On Good Friday afternoon we find Mass underway and a confraternity assembling for one of the “Processione dei Misteri“. They are in black tie: all ages and all male. At the end of the service drummers appear followed by a band and a regiment of Roman soldiers.
We follow them down the packed streets till we meet another band from another church, then we go in that direction. We arrive at a church where the procession of Christ’s body followed by the grieving Madonna is just setting off.
It takes forty men to carry an effigy, such is the weight of them. The sound is eerie: slow funereal music and drumming. Back at the flat after supper we see a procession coming slowly up the street. It has now been circling the centre for five hours and I can still hear the receding music when later I get into bed.
Easter Day and a baptism. The register dates from 1875 and includes many members of the Whitaker and Ingham families. I am the first woman to take a baptism here in 150 years.
Afterwards a visitor tells me he is a Lutheran. Is this a Roman Catholic church? He remarks that the Lutheran church is different because in his church the clergy do not hold the baby and I did.
Easter Monday and a morning message to say the Pope has died. Would I lower the flag to half mast? The key is on one of the bunches with all the other keys. A friend and former churchwarden is staying. She accompanies me for moral support commenting that this was not the first time we had had to exercise initiative and muscular Christianity together.
The Revd Katharine Rumens is a retired Anglican priest based in Salisbury, England. Previously she has had two month-long stints covering a clergy vacancy at All Saints’ Milan, one of the 250 Church of England congregations across 30 countries of Diocese in Europe.
She has written two other posts about being a locum priest in Milan.
Hi Katherine I am about to cover Holy Cross, Palermo for a month. Have done two locum duties also at Taormina. I enjoyed your blog.