My story on Palermo's incredible Brother Biagio is inside this issue.
Sicily
The Feast of St Agatha page 4
How sad Catania is without the feast of St Agatha
Here is a link to a video:
https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/palermo/la-festa-di-sant-agata-prima-e-durante-la-pandemia-com-e-triste-la-citta/407481/408191
The video from La Repubblica daily newspaper today shows how it was once and how it is today in Catania, Sicily today, 5 Feb, the feast of St Agatha, native daughter. My friend Palmina says the only sign of the feast is the smell of torrone cooking on the street in Via Etnea. She said they held Dawn Mass in the cathedral today and that it was televised, but due to Coronavirus, devotees were locked out of the church. The fercolo workers did remove the reliquary bust from its dark, dank chamber in the cathedral's lava wall but the relics have not left the church, not even to be carried around on shoulders in Piazza Duomo, as they normally do on the Octave of the feast. She sent me a picture of mostly women in front of the cathedral gates which were festooned with beautiful white bouquets of flowers that normally they would hand up to the fercolo workers to be placed in front of the saint's remains.
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My story on Feast of St. Agatha in AMBASSADOR magazine
It begins on page 36 of this sweet little flipbook:
https://www.niaf.org/niaf_magazine/ambassador-magazine-vol-33-no-2-current-issue/#dflip-flipbookContainer/1/