Canonic (church) law in the Roman Catholic church states that it is the Bishop who appoints a parish priest and certainly not ‘the will of the people’. Hence the rise of often troublesome situations.

Bagni di Lucca suffered one recently in its parish when the newly appointed vicar was accused by his parishioners of favouring radical religious opinions (e.g. ecumenical services with other religions, advanced views on gender etc.). For the somewhat conservative Bagni church goers this was all too much and they complained to the Bishop of Lucca.

The situation was further complicated by the new appointee accusing the former parish priest of interfering in his parochial affairs despite the fact that the previous incumbent was now officiating at a church over thirty miles away. It’s true to say that the former parish priest was very popular and was particularly dexterous in organizing youth and music activities. His ex-parishioners were sorely disappointed at Don R’s departure but he made occasional return trips to meet them.

The difficult event made its way to the newspapers and the local TV station NoiTv; it was only the intervention at Bagni of the bishop of Lucca which has obtained a workable solution to the parishioners’ stand-off. After all, locals still love a church wedding and for a new-born not to be christened would be anathema.

A rather clearer and certainly more intolerable situation occurred when a parish priest from North of the Appennines was found in delicto flagrante with an underage girl in his car. He was relieved of his duties and escaped to a relative’s house in a village near to Bagni. Everyone thought that the priest should be immediately arrested and put on trial for abusing minors (indeed, parents withdrew their children from the local school for fear of this ecclesiastical predator) but this did not happen for months until, recently he was brought to justice and given a long prison sentence.

An incredible situation regarding unpopular and troublesome priests occurred back in 1967 in a village we passed on our recent peregrinations in the mountain regions of the Veneto. Called the Schism of Montaner it led the entire population to renounce their Roman Catholicism and espouse the Greek orthodox religion.

How did all this happen? In 1967 Don Giuseppe Fae’, a very popular priest who had led the partisans against the nazi-fascists during WW2 and who was considered a saint by many, died.

Everyone thought he would be succeeded by his helper and vice-vicar but the bishop (who would later be appointed one of the Church’s shortest lived pope, John Paul I) thought otherwise and appointed a less than popular candidate. The locals were outraged: they barricaded the new priest in his vicarage, there was talk of an armed insurrection and eventually the Bishop turned up, protected by a bevy of carabinieri. The bishop’s answer to the problem was short and sharp: he withdrew the consecrated hosts placed on the parish church’s altar and forbade all priests to celebrate Holy Mass or to administer the sacraments until the Montaner parishioners accepted the new vicar.

The parishioners’ answer was to renounce their Catholic faith. Thanks to a lady who was herself of Greek orthodox persuasion an orthodox priest was invited to the village and converted all the inhabitants to a religion which, ironically, had itself been the product of a schism, this time some hundreds of years previously.

Regrettably, the orthodox priest and his acolytes proved to be less than orthodox in their behaviour and there were instances of drug-dealings and mass sex orgies. Other variants of orthodoxy were tried out: Nubian, Assyrian and even Nestorian. Eventually, a less unorthodox orthodox priest was appointed and the Montaner parishioners returned to a less sinful path. An orthodox monastery was founded which still continues to the present day; indeed a foundation stone for a new cloister was inaugurated in 2018.

We did not have time to investigate the monastery in further detail but looked sadly upon the remains of the original orthodox church which was burnt down, due a short circuit, almost ten years ago.

I was, however, informed that several inhabitants had returned to their Catholic faith and that the previous troubles were just a dim memory. I think part of the reason for this is that religion plays a rather less important part in Italians’ lives than it used to at the time of the scism fifty years ago.

It’s all a bit sad, anyway. There was a time when ‘vox populi ‘ was indeed ‘vox Dei’ but today, with increasing secularism aided by paedophilia scandals in the Church, collapse of recruitment for priests, nuns and monks and the decline of religious axioms had meant that it would be difficult to have entire communities change their other-wordly directions just because they were afflicted by the imposition of a troublesome priest within their parochial boundaries.