The words of parish priest Don Giulio Madeddu resound through a stunned church in Santo Stefano di Quartu: "There are moments," says the priest, "when even faith cannot keep the tears away , and even a priest lacks the words to explain what happened."
The many people sitting in the pews in front listen in a silence broken only by the sound of fans, gathered to pay their last respects to Andrea Pintus, the forty-two-year-old shot dead by his brother Alessandro at dawn on Thursday in Quartu . Before the coffin covered with a cushion of roses and white gerberas, the young man's mother, Bernardetta, is a mask of grief. She sits motionless, with relatives at her side trying to comfort her. She isn't moving, she's feeling ill; they're giving her water. His father, however, was unable to come to this funeral. He's in too much pain and has stayed home.
"In recent days," the priest continues, "a tragedy has struck many people. A brother leaves us, a woman is fighting for her life, and a man's existence is marked by a grave responsibility."
At the end of the ceremony, the hunter friends accompany the coffin to the churchyard: all dressed in green, they release green balloons into the sky. The young man's mother throws herself onto the coffin and keeps repeating, "How can I do this? My son, my son, there is no consolation."
From afar, another relative shouts: “He died for nothing, he died for nothing.”
