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‘Sorry we can’t bury your loved ones’: Rome funeral directors protest against Italian red tape

Funeral home operators staged a protest in Rome on Friday over a desperate situation they say has left almost two thousand coffins in the Italian capital waiting weeks - or even months - to be cremated.

'Sorry we can't bury your loved ones': Rome funeral directors protest against Italian red tape
Funeral home workers hold placards that read, "Apologies but they won't let us bury your loved ones", as they protest at the ancient Roman "Hercules the Winner" circular temple against the disruption of funeral services due to the increasing number of deaths caused by Covid-19. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)

While coronavirus has not helped the situation, the increase in deaths and limited access to public services caused by the pandemic has only exposed a long-standing problem blamed on Italy’s old nemesis – bureaucracy.

“We appeal to the mayor of Rome to end the current procedures needed to authorise a cremation,” Giovanni Caccioli, national secretary of the Italian Federation of Funeral Homes, told AFP at the protest.

Standing alongside their hearses, the funeral workers laid wreaths around the Roman Temple of Hercules Victor, near Mayor Virginia Raggi’s office, with notices reading: “Sorry, they will not let us bury your loved ones.”

According to Caccioli, Rome registers around 15-18,000 requests for cremations every year, for which families must go through a “tortuous” bureaucratic journey involving the local cemetery, the municipal agency AMA and the registrar office.

Earlier this week, a bereaved son, Oberdan Zuccaroli, staged a very personal protest by putting up billboards around Rome with the message: “Mum, sorry I’ve not been able to have you buried yet.”

But he is far from the only one for whom the delays have exacerbated the pain of losing a loved one.

“It’s been three months that I’ve been waiting for my husband’s cremation, and still nothing has been done,” said Lorella Pesaresi, whose husband died in January after testing positive for coronavirus while undergoing chemotherapy.

“It’s not fair – coronavirus and now this,” she told AFP.

READ ALSO: More people died in Italy in 2020 than in any year since World War II

A hearse covered with posters reading: “Apologies but they don’t let us bury your loved ones” is parked near the Ancient Roman “Hercules the Winner” circular temple. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)

‘We can’t go on like this’

Caccioli said the paperwork to obtain a cremation permit was still done by hand, and the process took on average 35 to 40 days in Rome, “an absurd situation”.

He noted other cities did it in one or two days, adding: “We can’t go on like this.”

Maurizio Tersini, who runs Le Sphinx funeral home, says around 1,800 coffins are currently waiting to be incinerated in Rome.

“The main problem is a bureaucratic one,” the 59-year-old told AFP, adding: “It is a great suffering for the families.”

However, it is not a new problem. The Cgil trade union warned in September that hundreds of coffins were piling up at Rome’s Prima Porta-Flaminio cemetery after one of the other two main cemeteries in the city, Laurentino, ran out of space for burials.

“They didn’t do what was decided in 2017, which was to build four new crematoriums and expand Laurentino,” the head of Cgil in Rome, Natale Di Cola, told AFP on Friday.

The situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has claimed more than 116,000 lives in Italy, according to the official toll – although Rome has not been as hard hit as other regions.

“What was a crisis became chaos,” Di Cola said. AMA, the city hall agency that manages the cemeteries, said in a statement earlier this week that the situation was under control and that efforts were continuing to free up burial spaces.

It added that it had been confronted with a 30 percent increase in deaths year-on-year during the period from October 2020 to March 2021.

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Reader question: How common is air conditioning in Rome apartments?

With summer at the Eternal City's doors and temperatures on the rise, one reader asks: how easy is it to find an apartment in Rome with air conditioning?

Reader question: How common is air conditioning in Rome apartments?

Question: ‘I’m thinking of moving to Rome next year. With the effects of climate change and summers getting hotter, are air conditioners becoming more common in homes? If so, how does that work with the peculiar Italian system of consumption of electricity?”

Last summer was a scorcher in Italy, and Rome last July registered its hottest temperature since records began, at 41.8 degrees Celsius.

Yet despite warnings from Italian health authorities to drink water and stay inside, one object was missing from most homes in the capital: an air-conditioning unit.

READ MORE: Seven tips for surviving (and enjoying) Rome in summer

Air conditioning is far from guaranteed in apartments in Italy in general: partly because of the amount of energy they use, but there’s a long-standing fear of cold air (colpo d’aria) and a belief that if you stand near cold currents, you will be ill.

While this may be true for some people, soaring temperatures suggest this fear will increasingly be put to rest – and the most recent data suggests that it somewhat has.

A growing number of homeowners are looking at installing air-conditioning units in Lazio, the region where Rome sits, with a six percent rise in enquiries from 2021 to 2022.

This increase was attributed to the launch of Italy’s bonus condizionatori, a state incentive launched in 2022 for the purchase of more efficient AC units, as well as to rising temperatures.

The trend seems to be nationwide, with certain types of air conditioning units seeing a 27.9 percent increase in the first half of last year, according to association Assoclima.

READ ALSO: What are the rules for installing air conditioning in your Italian home?

However, this doesn’t mean it’s getting much easier to find an apartment with air conditioning: in Rome, their absence is still all too apparent

If you go into most restaurants, particularly outside the city centre, you will not find it. If you are going on holiday, a lot of places advertise having AC when perhaps it should be a given.

And if you’re renting or buying a property, chances are you’ll be advised to buy a fan and close the shutters on the windows during midday.

Finding an apartment with air conditioning in Rome is possible, but still a rarity. Real-estate search portal Idealista recently surveyed the percentage of properties up for rent or sale in each city which had air-conditioning. Rome did not even make the top 20.

What’s more, it’s hard to know what will happen when air conditioning becomes more common in Rome. There were blackouts last summer in the Rome quarters of Torpignattara, Alessandrino, and Marconi after people turned up their air conditioners in an attempt to keep cool.

Rome isn’t the only part of Italy where this happens: widespread blackouts in Milan in 2022 were blamed on soaring air conditioner use amid extreme heat.

There’s also the fact that standard household power capacity in Italy is set at 3.3 KW (3,300 Watts), which many find is too low to run more than one power-hungry appliance at a time. This limit can be increased by your electricity provider, for a fee, but the expense is often prohibitive.

For all these reasons, air conditioning is still not common in Rome, but it is on the rise. If it’s a must-have for you it’s always necessary to double-check before leasing anywhere.

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