“It’s as if he had killed someone,” said a priest in Ossanesga, Bergamo province, who chose a boy to help him.
A parish priest has defended himself after stirring up a scandal in a small town in northern Italy by asking a child to serve him Holy Communion.
Father Eros Accorigi said he found himself without “an ordinary minister of communion” during the recent Sunday Mass at the church of Santi Vito, Modesto e Crescenzia in Ossanesga, a town in the province of Bergamo, and so he chose an altar girl who he said seemed to have “the purest center among so many sinners” to help him.
The scene was filmed and shared on Gloria. tv, a Catholic video-sharing news site, prompting an angry email from the faithful to the bishop of Bergamo denouncing a “liturgical horror. “
“It was as if I had killed someone,” Father Eros told local newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana. “I don’t think the Eucharist has been vilified, no. . . I didn’t do anything wrong. “
According to Catholic Church law, Holy Communion can only be served through bishops, priests or deacons. A priest would possibly request the assistance of an “extraordinary minister of Holy Communion,” who would possibly be a seminarian or a layman. In certain circumstances, such as if there is no ordered user or if the religious birthday party has attracted a large crowd.
An article on the Catholic blog Messa in Latino suggested that the bishop of Bergamo intervene: “This is not a mere liturgical horror, but an act of unprecedented gravity, reflecting a deep, profound and widespread ignorance of the Eucharist, which has been reduced to mere ‘food’ to be carelessly distributed to those present.
The liturgical of the Curia of Bergamo intervened, but only to warn Father Eros not to do it again.
However, he gained the support of some of the faithful. ” I’m sorry, but what’s the problem?”he wrote one about Messa in Latin. ” If the girl had made her First Communion, which I find very believable, then she would deserve to be able to distribute [the Eucharist] in a normal situation. “
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Last year, the local Catholic archdiocese of Crotone, in the south of the country, called for “decorum and liturgical respect” after photographs went viral of a priest celebrating Mass at sea and on a mattress of air.