2023 (EN)

THE FONDAZIONE MEDITERRANEO AT THE FUNERAL OF GIOVANBATTISTA CUTOLO

Naples  ||  | 06 September 2023
Tutte le Attività (EN) - Anno 2023

A delegation from the Fondazione Mediterraneo led by President Michele Capasso took part in the funeral of Giovanbattista Cutolo, the 24-year-old musician killed in Piazza del Gesù on 31 August by a 17-year-old from the Quartieri Spagnoli who shot him dead with three gunshots for trivial reasons connected with parking his moped.
City mourning in Naples for the last farewell to Giovanbattista: at 2pm the funeral chamber, then the start of the service by the Archbishop of Naples, Don Mimmo Battaglia, said:
"We all huddle around Daniela, Franco and Lulu. We are here not to pray for Giò Giò, but to pray with him because he lives'.
Full Piazza del Gesù for the musician's last farewell, the crowd welcomed the coffin as it left the Gesù Nuovo Church amidst applause and tears, as a sign of condolences and closeness with the family, while the Scarlatti musicians sang the Ode to Joy to the rhythm of the funeral march.
Many Neapolitan singers and musicians joined the appeal of Giò Giò's mother, Daniela Di Maggio.
After his father, the mother of the 17-year-old from the Spanish quarters who killed Giovanbattista Cutolo, 24, a musician, also asked the family for forgiveness.
"Naples must rid itself of this havoc," said Michele Capasso, "and for this it is necessary to 'rope in' civil society and institutions, involving young people in particular in a difficult but not impossible task of redeeming the city, as has happened so many times in the past.
"It was and is an enormous pain because it is an absurd death, for no reason, and this affects everyone in the depths of their hearts, but it must also be an opportunity to have more and more civic participation in the city. This terrible death is only the latest, we must remember Francesco Pio, who died only a few months ago and in similar circumstances, and the many other innocent victims of violence and the Camorra, but if we manage to react, if we give a positive perspective to our city then it will mean that these deaths were not in vain'.
At the end of her son's funeral, Daniela Di Maggio, Giovanbattista's mother, announced that she would be at Palazzo Chigi tomorrow, received by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni:
"Tomorrow I will go to Premier Meloni especially for this, because she is very close to me, the institutions have all come. Giovanbattista's innocent death must serve the redemption of humanity, it was a crime against humanity to kill my son".