MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Italy: Day of mourning for quake victims

Mourners gather for Good Friday's open-air ceremony in L'Aquila

Grieving relatives collapsed over flower-draped caskets of the victims of Italy's worst earthquake in three decades as the nation joined in a day of mourning.

The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, is to preside over an exceptional Good Friday funeral Mass for about 200 victims, whose coffins were lined up on a vast military ground in the quake-stricken city of L'Aquila.

Some of the 289 victims have already been buried privately.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi and other key government officials are among the 10,000 mourners expected for the outdoor ceremony beneath Abruzzo's snowcapped mountains. The funeral is being held outdoors because none of the region's churches is stable enough for the ceremony.

“Today will be a moment of great emotion. How can one not be moved by so much pain?” Berlusconi said, shortly before departing for L'Aquila for the funeral.

“These are our dead today, they are the dead of the whole nation,” said the premier.

Volunteers guided mourners to the caskets of their loved ones. Each of the simple varnished wooden coffins, graced with either a cross or a crucifix and with a bouquet of flowers, bore a golden plaque with the name of the deceased, the dates of their birth and death.

Small white caskets holding the quake's youngest victims rested on larger coffins, presumably those of a parent or close relative.

Berlusconi said 20 children and teenagers were among the dead.

The Vatican granted a special dispensation for the Mass. Good Friday is the only day in the year on which Mass in not normally celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church.