A BELL FOR ALL

It all began with a 17th century bell, present in the ancient chapel of Villa Santina, in Emilia, on the farm purchased by grandfather Umberto Muggia, a Jew and migrant returning from America in the 1920s. The Jewish family always looked after the chapel and bell tower with respect.

Later, after the mixed marriage between Ugo, a Jew, and Lisetta, a Catholic, a marriage that took place in 1953 and that exorcised in its own way the dark years of Nazi persecution, the family had the church reconsecrated, where, during the war, acts of vandalism had taken place in search of an unlikely treasure. The Muggias were not great practitioners but had the utmost respect for all religions and wanted the little church to still serve its purpose for the Catholics of the area, who had to travel many kilometers by bicycle to go to mass. The priest began celebrating again, at least on major religious occasions.

In the 1980s, on the eve of the sale of the estate and fearing that the sacred places would be desecrated again, in a period in which no conservative intervention was being done on the artistic assets of which the small church was an example, he asked for their deconsecration; the most sacred furnishings such as the monstrance and the ancient illuminated missals were donated to other churches in the area to be used and steps were taken to save, restore and preserve other valuable artistic elements, including an altar frontal, a painting and a splendid historiated bronze bell which bears the name of the lord of those lands in the 17th century, Sanctinus, from which the toponym ("la Santina") derives.

Lisetta and Ugo Muggia expressed the wish that this magnificent bell "would return to its work as a bell" and now the opportunity presents itself.

It was donated to Don Aldo Bertinetti, a Turin priest, friend of the family and member of the Turin interreligious council, parish priest in the small town of Varisella, so that on the land annexed to the church a building can be built that will house both the bell and celebrations for the deceased of all religious beliefs, carried out jointly, in an ecumenical spirit, by celebrants of different religions.

"Death, finally, makes us all equal and no racism or anti-religionism exists anymore on this side of the mirror of life."