By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
As devoted lifelong Catholics, my family and I had witnessed all the events of Holy Week and Easter, but never anything like an actual funeral procession for the death of Jesus. All that changed one warm evening ten years ago on Good Friday (“Venerdi Santo”) in Sorrento, Italy.
Sorrento is the Southern Italy gateway to the famous Amalfi Coast. It sits on high sea cliffs with temperate weather, palm trees, and stunning views of the Bay of Naples. In springtime, when we visited, the town’s citrus tree groves filled the air with the subtle but unmistakeable aroma of fresh lemon.
We were there on a trip to Rome, Florence, and Sicily, organized by our friends Tim and Jen Soran for Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. During our Sorrento stop, before moving on to Taormina and Palermo, we saw woodworking and carved sea shell cameo jewelry product demonstrations, and then sampled the local delicious pizza and limoncello.
We also toured nearby Naples and Pompeii, sailed out to the Isle of Capri, and climbed into small skiffs to navigate the narrow rocky entrance of the renowned Blue Grotto. We were exhausted on the boat trip back and so I snapped a photo of our son sleeping by a complete stranger. After my nap at our hotel, I skimmed though the camera photos and found he had returned the favor by photographing my own siesta.
Despite these many amazing moments, the most memorable part of our Sorrento excursion was unplanned and unexpected. After dinner, my wife and our three children went out for an evening walk, La Passeggiata in Italian, in search of some local gelato. We do not normally eat gelato on the day Jesus died but hey, it was Italy. The shop was closed, but we found ourselves in the middle of the town’s annual Good Friday procession.
Sorrento actually hosts two ritual processions on Good Friday, both dating back several centuries. The “White Procession” (Processione Bianca) includes marchers in all white robes and hoods, is held in the morning, and represents Mary, the Mother of Jesus, going out to search for her son.
During the “Black Procession” (Processione Nera), which we attended in the evening, Mary finds her crucified son. When we realized we had strolled into the middle of a very unusual event, one never staged in Salt Lake City, we quickly found places by the side of the street and watched in solemn awe.
The procession opened with a band playing famous classical music funeral dirges, including from Chopin. Someone dimmed the city’s street and shop lights. Black-robed and hooded marchers appeared carrying torches and, on their shoulders, bearing a life size 16th century statue of the dead Christ. “Could that really be him?” our puzzled faces asked.
A series of bands, choirs, and other walkers followed. They chanted lamentations in Gregorian style and sang the “Miserere” (Latin for “Have mercy on me, O God”) from Psalm 51 (you can listen to a version of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDOENZediM8). They also carried the instruments of crucifixion, symbols of death, and emblems of the various confraternities (religious brotherhoods) to which the marchers belonged.
Eventually, the procession ended with a large statute of Mary, who having found her dead son now mourned him as Our Lady of Sorrows. Beside the grieving mother, hundreds of fellow mourners marched down the main street, the Corso Italia, and through the smaller lanes of Sorrento.
Afterwards, I looked at my wife and our children─two teens and a pre-teen. The parade was exciting and unique, but they also were transfixed, and seemed unusually reflective for youngsters. Other Good Friday services we had attended were poignant, but not nearly as intensely personal as what we had just witnessed. This was a real funeral, dominated by palpable grief and loss, the two unwanted but inevitable companions on the final journeys of mortality.
As I walked back to our hotel I knew, of course, how the story turns out─that this death culminated in triumph, and as a result all life is changed not ended. On our remarkable Venerdi Santo in Sorrento, however, the occupied tomb loomed larger than the empty one, and the always-anticipated Easter moment seemed like a very long three days away.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
