A parish priest has defended himself after provoking a scandal in a small northern Italian town when he asked a child to help him serve holy communion.
Father Eros Accorigi said he had been without “an extraordinary minister of communion” during a recent Sunday mass at Santi Vito, Modesto e Crescenzia church in Ossanesga, a town in Bergamo province, and so chose an altar girl who he said appeared to have “the purest heart among so many sinners” to assist him.
The scene was filmed and shared on Gloria.tv, a Catholic video-sharing news site, prompting a furious email from churchgoers to the bishop of Bergamo in which they denounced a “liturgical horror”.
“It was as if I had killed someone,” Father Eros told the local newspaper, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana. “I don’t think the eucharist has been vilified, I really don’t … I didn’t do anything wrong.”
According to Catholic church law, holy communion can be served only by bishops, priests or deacons. A priest can seek the assistance of an “extraordinary minister of holy communion”, who could be a seminarian or layperson, in certain circumstances, for example if there is no ordained person available or if the religious celebration has attracted a sizeable crowd.
A post on the Catholic blog Messa in Latino urged the bishop of Bergamo to intervene: “It was not a mere liturgical horror, but an act of unprecedented gravity, and reflects a deep-rooted, profound and widespread ignorance about the Eucharist, which has been reduced to a simple ‘food’ to be sloppily distributed to those present.”
The Bergamo curia’s liturgical office did intervene, but only to warn Father Eros not to do it again.
He did, however, receive support from some churchgoers. “I’m sorry, but what is the problem?” wrote one on Messa in Latino. “If the child had made her first communion, which I think is very plausible, then she should be able to distribute [the eucharist] in an extraordinary situation.”
Last year, the local Catholic archdiocese in Crotone in the south of the country called for “liturgical decorum and respect” after photographs went viral of a priest celebrating mass in the sea using an inflatable mattress.
