Italy's San Francesco holiday returns as October beaches fill and roads clog
Four October became a national holiday for the first time since 1977, drawing crowds to Sicily's beaches and to Franciscan observances marking eight centuries since the saint's death.
At Marina di Ragusa the day began early. According to the Ragusa edition of La Sicilia, families, groups of friends and holidaymakers reached the shoreline from the first hours of the morning, setting out deckchairs and umbrellas, walking the water's edge and — for the more daring — taking a swim. Mild temperatures, bright sun and near-perfect sea conditions produced a scene the paper described as more typical of August than of early October.
The occasion was 4 October, the feast of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of Italy. Ragusa Oggi noted that the date returned as a national holiday for the first time since 1977, under a law approved by parliament the previous year, and that this year falls 800 years after the death of the Poverello. In Ragusa, Ragusa H24 reported, the Franciscan community and the faithful marked the solemnity within that centenary path; the morning's most awaited moment was the blessing of the animals, an appointment the outlet said draws numerous families each year. The afternoon programme listed the holy Rosary and the Coroncina to St Francis at 17.30.
In Modica the Franciscan calendar took a theatrical form. A letter published by Radio RTM described a representation of the Prayer of the Transit of St Francis at the Church of San Domenico – Madonna del Rosario, staged through collaboration between the Friars Minor Capuchins of Modica and the Compagnia del Piccolo Teatro of Modica. The writer set the evening against churches that appear increasingly less frequented and against men and women who seem to have drifted from the faith, and said it was not simply a spectacle but an experience of extraordinary intensity.
The day produced a second, less devotional picture. La Sicilia's Ragusa edition reported long queues and heavy slowdowns on the Ragusa-Mare road in the late afternoon and evening as bathers made their way back to the city, with journey times in some cases approaching an hour — an unusual wait, it said, for the Iblean area, where movements normally take considerably less. Among the contributing factors it cited was the mass return of holidaymakers and Ragusans.
What remains is a day that kept two faces: a stretch of coast behaving as though it were August, and a road at dusk carrying the same crowds home at walking pace.