If it ain’t broke DON’T fix it!

Colleferro is not famous for its antiquity, nor its picturesque landscape and nothing spectacular has emanated from the town. It has very recent origins. It was established post World War II as an industrial town – lots of huge, quickly constructed factories and warehouses and four storey apartment blocks with running water, electricity and not much glamour. Yes, you can find these places in Italy – well off the turisti beaten track of course.

Since the decline of the Italian economy post European Union towns like Colleferro have lapsed into abandonment. Factories are idle and deserted, every second shop is closed and dust ridden and the township has lost its soul. The only reason to go there is to get to somewhere else, to find really cheap very basic accommodation or to go to church and it is the last of these that is responsible for drawing the attention of this intrepid reporter.

The chiesa is tiny. It was constructed as a family chapel for a farming family that has seen much better days and attracts a capacity congregation of five families every Domenica to its traditional Mass. Yes, even in the home of Catholicism you need to take a 30 Km trip to find a Mass conducted in the traditional style, albeit in Italiano rather than the original Latin. There are two columns of pews, five rows each side accommodating three people per row in comfort, four with a squeeze. While the number of families attending is tiny, the families can be somewhat more extensive.

Domenico and Franca, their son and his three sons constitute one family without counting the in-laws who fill the balance of two pews. Anyhow this story is about one of those grandsons of Domenico and Franca – Davide, who is the regular altar boy assisting the priest, Don Ettore.

Davide is fifteen. His older brothers, Emanuele (22) and Feliciano (19) are each six-foot+, athletic and accomplished. Emanuele is a very talented back-stroker in the Italian swimming team. The two older brothers are impressive characters. They are intelligent, active and alert. Davide is shorter, more introspective and no-where near as active. In fact Cinzia says he finds the 10:30am start on Sundays precedes Davide’s start-up time – that he is always half awake at best during the services (in fact she describes him as “half asleep”). He wages a fifteen minute battle donning the altar boy’s robes and succeeds only with the assistance of bystanders. His principal duty – lighting the ten candles – takes forever and is only accomplished with a bit of help from the priest. He never gets the Bible out in time for the Alleluia and he regularly needs to be prompted to switch the Bible from one side to the other during the liturgy. He often needs an animated prompt from Don Ettore when it’s time to ring the bell during the sacraments. Despite all this the ceremony runs very well. In fact Cinzia – who is a stickler for these religious ceremonial things – says attendance at these weekly events goes a long way to justifying the expense and the suffering of traveling half way round the world to attend them!

Well today, for the first time in the past year or more, Davide was not in attendance. He had gone with the family to Florence for some important family occasion, so there was no-one to help get robed, no-one to help light candles and no-one to forget the Bible or ring the sacramental bell. Not a huge problem in such a tight, intimate community - at least that is what you would think.

Don Ettore quickly recruited and trained two young fourteen year old girls to undertake the very important task of ringing the bell during the sacraments. Both are educated, well presented, alert girls capable (as are most young women) of picking things up quickly and capable at multi-tasking (unlike most young males, especially ones that have a problem dressing at 10:30am on a Sunday and who struggle to light candles). The priest furnished the newly recruited young ladies with a copy of the liturgy and indicated the places where the bell was to sound – one ding here and here and three dings here. Everything seemed to be under control.

We got away to a flying start not having to wait for the struggle with the robes to resolve itself but half way through the Gregorian chant the priest realised that all of the ten candles were silent – not a glow to be seen. Don Ettore managed to light the six candles standing high above the altar with only a handful of interruptions to the chant. The Bible was rescued in the nick of time for the reading and Don dispensed with the need to switch it to the other side of the altar between the readings.

Domenico’s mobile phone spontaneously sprang into action during the gospel reading with one of those automated, animated online advertisements with the jingle at full volume and his son-in-law got an urgent call from his wife, reminding him that he had to bring home pane for the lunchtime meal. Then they slipped into the prayers prior to the sacraments. By this time those young, intelligent and capable recruits had forgotten their original training and, using the quick-thinking that usually comes from years of experience, decided, appropriately, that it was better to err on the side of “too much” rather than “too little” and elected to ring the bell at each break in the prayers which inspired the congregation to applaud their efforts with inaudible laughter. Of course when it came to the sacraments the girls had run out of bell ringing energy and needed some wild “ring, ring, ring” signs from Don Ettore’s right hand at the appropriate times. Alas the girls were otherwise disposed at these times or they thought the priest had a particularly itchy bum so there was a slight problem with synchronisation between text and rings. The “unas” and the “tres” were forgotten so the ringings seemed to all blend together.

All in all it contributed to a most interesting service – certainly it is one of the more memorable conducted during 2018. It is safe to say that Davide’s position is not in jeopardy and that the services will no doubt return to their more usual form upon his re-emergence from familial obligations.

The moral of this particular story is that sometimes it’s the most unexpected things that actually contribute to the orderly running of an enterprise. The old superstition about “not changing anything if it works” might just have some very real foundations.