{"id":19051,"date":"2026-05-23T09:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/19051\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T09:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:03:13","slug":"pope-leo-visits-italys-land-of-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/19051\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo visits Italy\u2019s \u2018Land of Fires\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

ACERRA, Italy (AP) \u2014 Families living in a toxic-waste polluted area around Naples were preparing to meet Pope Leo XIV during his pastoral visit on Saturday, carrying with them years of grief, anger and hopes for justice after losing children to cancer linked to a multi-billion mafia racket of dumping toxic waste.<\/p>\n

The visit to the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, comes on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis\u2019 big ecological encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), and indicates Leo\u2019s interest in carrying on his predecessor\u2019s environmental agenda.<\/p>\n

The European Court of Human Rights last year validated a generation of residents\u2019 complaints that mafia dumping, burial and burning of toxic waste led to an increased rate of cancer and other ailments in the area of 90 municipalities around Caserta and Naples, encompassing a population of 2.9 million people.<\/p>\n

The court found Italian authorities had known since 1988 about the toxic pollution, blamed on the Camorra crime syndicate that controls waste disposal, but failed to take necessary steps to protect residents\u2019 lives. The binding ruling gave Italy two years to set up a database about the toxic waste and verified health risks associated with living there.<\/p>\n

The pope will visit the city of Acerra to meet families who lost young relatives to cancer, the human cost of environmental pollution. Bishop Antonio Di Donna estimated 150 young people died in the city of some 58,000 over the past three decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe very much wanted the pope to meet with them because these children and young people who have died are, to all intents and purposes, victims of environmental pollution. There is a link, a correlation between pollution and the incidence of cancer,\u201d Di Donna said.<\/p>\n

The victims include Maria Venturato, who died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 25. Her father Angelo said he hopes to speak with the pope to explain their reality, \u201cnot for me \u2026 for the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to give these young people a future, so I\u2019m asking for the pope\u2019s help with this. That is, I\u2019m making a strong appeal to him to go to those in power and say, \u2018Look, let\u2019s heal this land of fires,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Filomena Carolla plans to present the pope with a book containing memories from the life of her daughter, Tina De Angelis, who died of cancer at the age of 24.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just angry at the people who poisoned the soil, because what did our children have to do with it? What did they have to do with it, so young,\u201d Carolla said.<\/p>\n

Francis\u2019 plans to visit the area in 2020 were canceled by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"IllegalIllegal waste is seen on the side of a road in the outskirts of the southern Italian town of Acerra in the Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, an area scarred by decades of pollution from illegal waste dumping and burning, much of it linked to organized criminal groups, on May 22, 2026, a day ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s visit.Andrew Medichini\/AP Photo\/Andrew Medichini<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ACERRA, Italy (AP) \u2014 Families living in a toxic-waste polluted area around Naples were preparing to meet Pope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2662,2036,318,13931,240,1139,6344,5,2787,1100,7062,243],"class_list":["post-19051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-cancer","tag-children","tag-courts","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-health","tag-human-rights","tag-italy","tag-pollution","tag-religion","tag-waste-management","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}