ROME — Bishop Giuseppe Marciante of Cefalù publicly “excommunicated” those responsible for devastating wildfires on the Italian island of Sicily in recent weeks.
“Whoever stains himself with this crime puts himself outside the communion of the Church,” Bishop Marciante said Friday, “in that he has committed a crime against the Creator, endangering people’s lives and destroying the good of the environment, precious for the survival of all his creatures.”
Speaking during his homily for Cefalù’s titular feast of the Most Holy Savior, the bishop laid the blame for a recent spate of wildfires squarely on the shoulders of “criminal” interests.
“Unfortunately, the sad episodes of devastating fires, the work of criminal hands, in these hot August days lead me to think that we are facing a planned program of desertification for our land,” Marciante continued, “for the benefit of dirty economic interests towards recipients who because of our guilty silence will remain anonymous.”
The city of Cefalù is only 43 miles from Palermo, one of the vital centers of Cosa Nostra, the primary Mafia organization originating from Sicily.
In his homily, Bishop Marciante said that the diocese of Cefalù will allocate the Sunday Mass collection “to help those who have suffered serious damage from the fires.”
While Sicily has been particularly hard hit by fires in past weeks, it has not been alone, as blazes ravaged the neighboring regions of Puglia and Calabria, as well as the island of Sardinia, a destination for Italians and visitors alike.
In early August, fire officials said that firefighters had conducted no fewer than 250 operations in Sicily in a single 24-hour-period, and some 200 people had been stranded in the southern part of Catania due to fire and heavy smoke.
Approximately 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) in the Oristanese countryside in western Sardinia have also burned and some 1,500 people have been displaced.
While the bishop of Cefalù expressed his conviction that arsonists have been behind Sicily’s fires, others have pointed to a heat wave that has created prime conditions for wildfires in Greece and Turkey as well as southern Italy.
Coldiretti, however, Italy’s biggest farmers association, has asserted that at least 60 percent of the nation’s recent wildfires were caused by arson.
Law enforcement arrested two arsonists on August 2 in Troina, central Sicily, the site of construction of numerous solar power plants.
“We must pay close attention to the hypothesis that the solar business wants to weaken local farmers, forcing them to do something else,” said Fabio Venezia, mayor of Troina, suggesting that arson could be a strategy to coerce farmers into selling their land.
The Sicilian anti-Mafia commission is currently investigating these suspicions, auditing landowners who have allegedly been approached by intermediaries offering to sell the land to affiliates of the solar sector.
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