Exiles

In Memory of all those mothers and grandmothers who followed their men to the other side of their world.

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Exiled from home. The far sea rolls

My paternal grandmother, Eva Arida Fahkrey (Coory) 15yrs old & married, Bcharre, Lebanon

between them and the country of their birth;

the childhood-turning impulse of their souls

pulls half across the earth. Exiled from home.

No mother to take care that they work too hard,

grieve not too sore;

no older brother nor small sister fair

no father any more.

Exiled from home; from all familiar things;

the low browed roof, the grass surrounded door;

accustomed labours that gave daylight wings;

loved steps on the worn floor.

Exiled from home. Young girls sent forth alone

when most their hearts need close companioning;

no love and hardly friendship may they own,

no voice of welcoming.

Blended with homesick tears the exile stands;

to toil for alien household gods she comes;

a servant and a stranger in our lands,

homeless within our homes.

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– Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (1914)

Divina Commedia…..HW Longfellow

DIVINA COMMEDIA

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

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Oft have I seen, at some cathedral door,

A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,

Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet

Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er;

Far off the noises of the world retreat;

The loud vociferations of the street

Become an indistinguishable roar.

So, as I enter here from day to day,

And leave my burden at this minster gate,

Kneeling in prayer,  and not ashamed to pray,

The tumult of the time disconsolate

To inarticulate murmurs dies away,

While the eternal ages watch and wait.

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How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!

This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves

Birds build their nests;  while canopied with leaves

Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,

And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!

But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves

Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,

And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!

Ah!  from what agonies heart and brain,

What exultations trampling on despair,

What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,

What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,

Uprose the poem of earth and air,

This mediaeval miracle of song!

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I enter, and I see thee in the gloom

Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!

And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.

The air is filled with some unknown perfume;

The congregation of the dead make room

For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;

Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine

The hovering echos fly from tomb to tomb.

From the confessionals I hear arise

Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,

And lamentations from the crypts below;

And then a voice celestial, that begins

With the pathetic words, “Although your sins

As scarlet be,” and ends with  “As the snow.”

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I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze

With forms of saints and holy men who died,

Here martyred and hereafter glorified;

And the great Rose upon its leaves displays

Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,

With splendour upon splendour multiplied;

And Beatrice again at Dante’s side

No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise.

And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs

Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love,

And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;

And the melodious bells among the spires

O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above

Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

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O star of morning and of liberty!

O bringer of the light, whose splendour shines

Above the darkness of the Apennines,

Forerunner of the day that is to be!

The voices of the city and the sea,

The voices of the mountains and the pines,

Repeat the song until the familiar lines

Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!

Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights,

Through all the nations,and a sound is heard,

As of a mighty wind, and men devout,

Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,

In their own language hear thy wondrous word,

And many are amazed and many doubt.

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Dante Alighieri is entwined everywhere in Italy’s culture,  He is their own Sommo Poeta.  The American poet, Longfellow, was inspired by Dante when he came across the original Commedia in Rome in 1828.  Totally entranced by the great poet,  Longfellow set about translating the epic poem after he had lectured on Dante for many years at Harvard.   He completed the task in 1867.

DANTE by R W B Lewis is a fascinating account of Dante’s life,   including his exile from Florence and  the years he spent writing the  Commedia. I enjoyed this book so much, not least because the author quotes Dante’s Italian throughout.    I have taught myself the language, because only then can one appreciate fully its poetic beauty.

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See Previous Post:  THE DANTE CLUB

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Dante: “I have unjustly suffered punishment. I mean of exile and of poverty. After it was the pleasure of the citizens of that fairest and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me out of her dearest bosom…I have wandered through almost every region to which the tongue of ours extends. A stranger, almost a beggar. “

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Dante's Florence - Ancient Wall from Michelangelo Piazza. Photo: afcoory

Unification of Italy Anniversary – Risorgimento!

Jasper Ridley's Garibaldi & the history of Risorgimento

Pope Benedict XVI has the audacity to say that  Catholics made a fundamental contribution to creating a united Italy and a national identity, in a message marking the country’s 150th birthday.  Benedict says Christianity helped forge a national identity that resisted political fragmentation on the Italian peninsula,  and foreign domination.  He says the church’s contribution came through education, literature and the arts in general, listing such personalities as Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Bernini, whose works were often commissioned for religious purposes.  Is the pope trying to publicise a dwindling Christianity in this age of free thinking and science?

Benedict is speaking utter BS.  Artists were stymied and never allowed to paint what they pleased in case it offended the Catholic Church.  Many artists lived a life of subsistence because of this and it is well documented how the Catholic clergy, including extremely wealthy popes and cardinals,  enforced their sexual proclivities on young artists.  The 19th Century Pope did all he could to quash any attempts at the unification of Italy.  It would mean that the papal states would shrink to the City of Rome and finally to Vatican City.  Giusseppe Garibaldi led the Risorgimento;  he and his followers hated the Catholic Church (Papal Rome) because so often they were betrayed by nuns, priests and cardinals.  It was Garibaldi and those politicians who supported his quest for unification, who finally forced Austria, papal sycophants, and France, out of Italy.  Garibaldi’s heartbreak was that Nice, his birthplace,  was ceded to France in 1861 by politicians, as part of the deal that they leave the peninsula.

It is such a joke that this pope could come out and say it was through Catholic education and literature that Italy was united.  The truth is, only ‘the list’ of books approved by the Church were available for the general populace to read.  Most literature that made its way to Italy was burned or hidden in heavily fortified libraries only accessible to Monks and Cardinals.  See previous post Vatican Library.   As for resisting political fragmentation; the only reason they exiled or brutalised any political opposition was because the Church did not want to lose the corrupted power base they possessed.   The Church was fully funded and supported by the Spanish, French and Austrians.

If any group can be held responsible for seeding the Risorgimento (resurgence) it was the people of Italy themselves; mostly peasant farmers, some elitists, and mercenaries who fought with Garibaldi in South America.  Peasant farmers, led by Garibaldi, almost singlehandedly drove foreign power out of Sicily, and this was the catalyst that began the unstoppable unification of the peninsula.  The Roman Catholic Church opposed unification simply because it would mean the end of the vice grip they held over Italy.  Read Garibaldi by Jasper Ridley, it is very enlightening and I would hazard a guess that it is not one of the Vatican’s favourite books.

See Pino Aprile’s book about Southern Italy

Shame on you, Mr Berlusconi!

Silvio Berlusconi - Fake Tan, Fake Hair, Fake Man

Thousands of Italian women are protesting in the streets at Silvio Berlusconi’s sexual antics.  Banners read: “Berlusconi illuminate us – set yourself on fire!” “We are neither virgins nor whores”  “You old pig! Take your hands off her!”

I would have thought even Berlusconi would have shown more self-control and discretion in light of the paedophile priests scandal going on within the Catholic Church.   Berlusconi’s latest scandal involves a 17-year-old prostitute, ‘Ruby’  to whom he gave almost $10,000, a diamond necklace and a new car.  He says he was helping out a friend’s grand-daughter who was having financial difficulties.  Why?  Weren’t the other politicians paying her enough?  The friend whose grand-daughter Ruby was supposed to be?  None other than that Pharoah himself, Mr Hosni Mubarak.  It so happens Ruby is nothing of the sort.  It gets worse.  Not only did Berlusconi  pay the girl for her services, but he rang the police station himself, when he heard that Ruby was being held in prison for theft.  He told the police to let her go.  He says he did this to prevent a diplomatic incident!  When has Berlusconi ever been concerned about diplomacy.  We know the man has always acted as a buffoon on the world stage.

I find it interesting that these two elderly men have jet black hair – nary a grey hair between them (Berlusconi was almost bald not that long ago.  Not sure about Mubarak).  Saddam Hussein, I noticed, also had jet black hair when he was a tyrant and flaunting himself via his state controlled media.  When he was found hiding in an underground bunker, he was completely grey.  The thing I don’t get is that these fascists don’t think they are ever going to die!  Reminds me of the powerful heads of most giant corporations and banks who caused the latest GFC.

The orgies held at Berlusconi’s home are legendary.  You would think that a 74-year-old man would have better things to do with his life given that he can’t have too many years left.  He must spend a fortune on Viagra pills.  He has five children and I wonder what damage all this has done to them.  It seems that his gluttonous life has finally caught up with him and the people of Italy want him out!  Berlusconi controls Italian media and it reflects his gaudy, debauched appetites.  Berlusconi is emulating the very worst of the Roman Emperors; believes he has power over judges, he owns Italy’s media, Cinema and owns a  large stake in Associazione Calcio Milan or A C Milan.

See Post Dark Heart of Italy

Pope Benedict has suggested that politicians should take the example of St Joan of Arc and die for their faith.  I nearly died laughing when I read that.  To top that off, it may be that Joan was mistaken for another woman!

See post Joan of Arc & the Pope

Article below By Marianne Arens and Peter Schwarz:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is notorious for the fact that he flouts elementary democratic principles and unscrupulously uses his power to defend his own personal interests.

On a number of occasions he has modified laws in order that both he and his relatives could evade legal proceedings and to keep control of his media empire. He has used his influence over both private and public television channels in order to suppress criticism, and to agitate against those judges who are investigating big business corruption and criminality. His authoritarian behaviour has now reached a new pinnacle with his amendment of election law six months before parliamentary elections are due in order to prevent the looming victory of the opposition.

Berlusconi’s total abuse of the right to vote follows an international trend: Five years ago, George W. Bush stole the US election without achieving a real majority, and in Germany, leading politicians are about to form a grand coalition following neo-liberal policies, openly ignoring the wishes of the electorate.

It is fitting that female judges will hear Berlusconi’s trial.  Italy is a country in which misogyny reigns supreme.  Tobias Jones, the author of  “The Dark Heart of Italy”, dubbed Italy as “the land that feminism forgot,” ranked 74th out of 134 countries in a World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index, behind Malawi and Kazakhstan. With the exception of Malta, Italy has the lowest ratio of working women in the European Union, 46 per cent.

Berlusconi Lives For Another Day in Politics

Rome is Burning - Berlusconi Rises Again!

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday scraped through a crucial confidence vote in parliament, overcoming one of the most serious crises in his 16-year political career.

( See my post Is Berluscoi…….

Poor Italy – Corrupt government – Corrupt Vatican.  A bit like FIFA – MONEY TALKS??!!)

Berlusconi won with a razor-thin majority, as 314 politicians voted in his favour with 311 against and two abstentions in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies lower house.

His government earlier won a comfortable majority in the Senate.

Tens of thousands of anti-Berlusconi protesters meanwhile marched through Italy’s biggest cities. Some of the protesters in Rome set off smoke flares, hurled bottles and threw firecrackers, while police fired tear gas.

“Summing up what’s wrong with Berlusconi would be a very long list! But basically he hasn’t managed to cope with the economic crisis,” said Andrea, a school pupil taking part in the protest in Rome.

Silvia, a teacher, said: “I don’t see a future for young people.”

The vote followed heated debates in both chambers of parliament and a fight broke out between some supporters and opponents of the prime minister in the tense minutes before the announcement of the result in the lower house.

Berlusconi earlier voiced confidence in a victorious outcome as he arrived in parliament and said he “absolutely excluded” his resignation, demanded by former allies from his centre-right coalition who rebelled against him.

Berlusconi first launched himself onto a corruption-ridden political scene with an election win in 1994. He has since gone on two more elections in 2001 and 2008, brushing off a series of sex and graft scandals along the way.

The government’s current mandate is set to run out in 2013 but some analysts have argued that Italy will now still have to hold early parliamentary elections because the government’s narrow majority could paralyse parliament.

“This is a country that is tired and wants change,” the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani, said ahead of the vote.

Antonio Di Pietro, a former anti-corruption judge and leader of the Italy of Values party, said Berlusconi’s “papier-mache empire” was finished.

“Go to the Bahamas! This is what awaits you: giving yourself up to the judiciary or fleeing,” Di Pietro shouted at Berlusconi.

But Fabrizio Cicchitto, the leader of Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in the lower house, said: “Berlusconi’s story is not over.”

The confidence vote followed a bitter split within the ruling coalition after the rebellion earlier this year of Berlusconi’s once-loyal ally Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of parliament, along with around 40 politicians.

Berlusconi had appealed to Fini’s supporters on Monday, calling on them to show “responsibility” and saying: “We must unite for the good of Italy.”

He asked his former partners not to “betray the mandate from our voters.”

The 74-year-old also argued that a vote of no-confidence would be damaging for Italy given the current turbulence on eurozone financial markets.

He warned against the “political folly” of ousting him at such a time.  “Berlusconi: The Day of Truth,” read a headline in La Repubblica, while Corriere Della Sera said the government was “on the razor’s edge.”

“Parliament will today probably finalise the collapse of the structure of centre-right coalitions for 16 years – the alliance between Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini,” Corriere della Sera said in an editorial.

La Repubblica criticised Berlusconi’s attempt to rally his former allies from the centre-right, saying: “It’s a little prayer to try and survive another bit with the illusion of still having a government, a majority.”

Paedophilia in Italy

I feel vindicated in writing about the generational sexual abuse in Catholic Lebanese and Italian families which I uncovered during the research for my book ‘Whatever Happened to Ishtar?’ . If  paedophile priests were sexually abusing children why would we be surprised when we find fathers and uncles doing the same thing?  At last the abused can speak out about what has been covered up by the Catholic Church, not for decades, but for centuries!

The woman’s testimony below reminds me how complicit nuns were, if not in the sexual abuse, then certainly in the physical and emotional abuse, of children in Catholic orphanages and schools.    My brother wrote a story in his early teens (see Kevin Coory’s  Story) about the time he and our mother were starving,  yet they were  turned away by a fat priest who was on his way to his roast dinner which the pair could smell wafting from the kitchen of the presbytery.

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Ex - Italian victim & priest, Domolo speaks out. Caption above: "We are victims of paedophile priests"

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The Vatican, under global pressure,  has just raised the statute of limitations for reporting sexual abuse, to twenty years from the time the victim turns eighteen.  However, most human rights activists agree there should be no statute of  limitation as occurs in most western countries.

Excerpts from Associated Press:

VERONA, Italy – Italian victims of a paedophiliac clergy want such sexual abuse declared a crime against humanity, and they launched an international appeal on Saturday during the first public gathering of such victims in Italy.

Organizer Salvatore Domolo, a former victim and an ex-priest, said the group is looking abroad for solidarity because justice for pedophile victims is hard to come by in Italy with a statute of limitations of 10 years.

“Here there is no hope. By the time a victim arrives at the awareness of having been a victim, legal intervention is not possible,”  Domolo said in a country that has long been reluctant to confront the Vatican in its own backyard.

“The complicity of the hierarchy, together with the enormity of the numbers and vast geography of these crimes, should lead us to consider that we are facing a crime against humanity carried out by a political-religious organization,” Domolo told a news conference before the victims met, his delivery bearing the cadence of a homily.  “With this gathering, we want to ask civilian justice to do its duty in full freedom and truth, without being intimidated by the clerical culture.”

The meeting was held opposite Verona’s heavily visited Roman colosseum and advertised with placards outside. Passers-by were free to enter, but few did.

Another will be held in Rome at the end of October, but Verona was chosen for the first gathering because it is the home of a school for the deaf where 67 former students have alleged suffering sexual abuse, paedophilia and corporal punishment from the 1950s to early 1980s.  About 40 former victims inquired by e-mail — but many are still reluctant to come forward, organizers said.

The Vatican has been reeling for months as thousands of victims around the globe have spoken out about priests who molested children, bishops who covered up for them and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye to the problem for decades. In the latest admission, hundreds of victims came forward in Belgium with tales of horrific abuse linked to at least 13 suicides.

While Italian bishops have acknowledged 100 sexual abuse cases that warranted church intervention in the last decade, victims believe the true number in Italy is much higher because the reluctance to speak out in Italy is especially strong.  “This gathering is fundamental because we live in a social situation in which the presence of the Catholic church reduces the possibility of talking about the situation,” Domolo said. “They do it all over the world, but in Italy even more. That we are just now having the first gathering of victims indicates that only in the recent months is something exploding in Italy.”

Domolo, now 45, said he had been a victim of his parish priest from age 8 to 12, and that he was forced to confess “as if I had sinned.   The church has known for 50 years this has been going on but kept it quiet in a disgusting way,” he said.

Domolo was a priest for 15 years. He renounced both the priesthood and his Roman Catholic faith after meeting another victim on a trip to Ireland in 2001. A man named Francesco from Padova, who did not give his surname, told the group he had been abused both by priests and nuns who used punishment as an excuse to touch him inappropriately. “The worst was my family. They refused to believe it was true,” he told the group, adding he has only been able to come to grips with it through therapy.

A 58-year-old deaf woman, who only gave the nickname given to her by the nuns of Verona’s Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf, carefully annunciated her words as she told her story. During her 15 years at the institute, she was only alone with priests once a week for confession. Recalling her first confession, she said she asked the nuns what to say, and they asked her what she had done. “I told them I scratched myself everywhere because I had too much wool clothing. The nuns said, ‘Tell them you touched yourself.”‘

At that, she said, the priest asked her to lift her clothing to show him where. And so it continued, she said, “little by little, week after week. We girls didn’t do anything, and we had to confess. The priests, who sinned, did they ever confess, I ask?”

Is Berlusconi Good For The Bel Paese?

Berlusconi imitating the pope

‘This sort of sadness has always prevailed among intelligent Italians, but most of them, to evade suicide or madness, have taken to every known means of escape…a passion for women, for food…above all, for fine sounding words’. – Ignazio Silone from the Dark Heart of Italy.

Berlusconi has been Italy’s (bel paese; beautiful country) Prime Minister for seven out of the last ten years.

I have travelled to Italy many times over the past two decades; I love the people, the country, and would have loved to have lived there for a couple of years if I had been given the opportunity.  It goes without saying that their literature, poets and authors have always grabbed my undivided attention.  But the natives I spoke to say it is a difficult and harsh country to live in if you are not wealthy and don’t have powerful connections.  From what I have read, it has always been this way.

Berlusconi and his fellow politicians are about to pass new laws curtailing the Italian press from reporting sensitive issues like what the men in government, and in other institutions such as banking,  get up to in their private lives. Berlusconi tells ‘his people’ that the new rules are necessary to protect citizens’ privacy. “In Italy, we are all spied upon,” he said recently in the law’s defense.  The press are on strike.

The prime minister speaks from experience. Last year, wiretap transcripts were published revealing that he was hosting select parties where young women, including call girls, were the star attraction. Another intercept revealed how he had asked a manager of public television “about girls,” to help “raise the boss’s morale.” The incidents were reported to have led to his divorce from his second wife because she asked him to apologise to her for his behaviour,  and put him at odds with the Catholic Church.  He informed  the press that his wife had no right to insult him in public.

The following piece taken from an article by Alessandro Speciale — Special to GlobalPost Published: June 29, 2010 06:49 ET in European article:

On July 29, Berlusconi ousted Fini — the charismatic, current speaker of the Lower Chamber of the Italian parliament — from his People of Freedom party, accusing the party co-founder of being “totally incompatible” with its principles. He also contended that Fini was waging a shadow “political opposition” within his own party, trying to administer a “slow death” to it.

He had reason to be worried: 33 lawmakers from the lower house of parliament and 10 from the Senate abandoned the People of Freedom upon Fini’s departure, leaving Berlusconi five votes short of a majority in the lower house and with a wafer-thin majority of two votes in the upper house.Fini has pledged support for Berlusconi on an ad hoc basis, vowing to fight fiercely against proposals that are “unfair or damaging to the wider interest.”

Sounds similar to the political stalemate here in Australia…

 

See Post… Berlusconi Lives For Another Day