St. Joseph of the Carpenters collapse, 1 million in damage. Parish priest: it could have been a massacre

It could have caused a massacre when the ceiling of the church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami in Rome collapsed, is the thinking of Monsignor Daniele Libanori, the parish priest. “A wedding was scheduled for Saturday,” he told Ansa microphones. “If it had happened on that day we would have been here mourning dead people. One thing that amazed me was the readiness of law enforcement: the police in five minutes were already here.” Also speaking to Ansa, the deputy commander of the Rome Fire Department, Marcello Lombardini, reconstructs the early stages of the emergency: “We only had the call to our operations room to intervene on the collapse, so we intervened with a large number of teams precisely because our fear was that there were people below. That was the key, initial element. We also brought in the dog unit precisely to avert the possible presence, but the dogs gave us no signal.” He then concluded, “We will secure the church. We are bringing in specialized drones with special cameras from the department precisely so that we can check from above, do an inspection and afterwards decide on the possible recovery of the goods inside, because there are priceless paintings inside.”

The damage estimate is one million euros. This was stated by the superintendent of Rome, Francesco Prosperetti, who also recalled that the church had recently undergone some work on the facade. The same superintendent, speaking to Repubblica, said that the ceiling collapse was an unexpected event, especially since, after the earthquake in Central Italy in 2016, a census of damaged churches had been made in Rome, but in San Giuseppe dei Falegnami no problems had been reported: however, Prosperetti concludes, perhaps the trusses of the coffered ceiling could not be examined at the time. Beyond the material damage we now therefore lament the loss of a valuable seventeenth-century artifact.

St. Joseph of the Carpenters collapse, 1 million in damage. Parish priest: it could have been a massacre

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