One Year On, Church-Municipality Dispute Over Masses and Conventino

It has been exactly one year since Bishop Monsignor Luigi Bressan, during a banquet at Castel Toblino, handed a letter to the mayor of Riva, Cesare Malossini, which was destined to cause a stir within municipal circles. The letter — as will be remembered — contained a courteous request for the Curia to pay the substantial sum of 984 million lire, as settlement for 64,972 Masses that the Municipality was supposed to have celebrated at the Inviolata Church from 1964 to 2000. According to the Vicar, these Masses were what the Municipality — “owed” to the benefactors of the Church due to an ancient contract established between the Municipality and the Diocese when, following the Napoleonic secularizations, the Inviolata had transferred from clergy to civil municipal control. An “onerous” duty honored until 1964 and no longer beyond that point.

_andamento della questione storioco-religiosa_

One year after Monsignor Bressan’s request, the issue has become clearer. Mainly thanks to a consultation provided by Lawyer Renato Ballardini to the mayor. Based on the lawyer’s assessment, the municipal obligation to celebrate the Masses appears to be much less rigid than the Curia had suggested. Aside from the Masses that have fallen into prescription, at most 600 would remain, valued at less than 10 million lire. And not only that: the residual burden could be easily annulled by submitting a specific request to the Land Registry Office.

Having established this — and indeed confirming that even the Curia has a much less inflexible stance than previously thought — an upcoming meeting between Mayor Malossini and Bishop Bressan is anticipated in the near future. The meeting was tentatively scheduled during the last, almost casual “encounter” between the two authorities: last Saturday at the Church of San Giuseppe, when Bressan ordained Father Loris Floriani.

Imminent agreement and the fate of the former Conventino

Malossini and the bishop are set to meet towards the end of July to definitively settle, through an agreement, the long-standing issue of the uncelebrated Masses. The compromise, as already hinted, should involve the transfer of the Inviolata’s former Conventino to the Curia, which has remained in a state of near-total abandonment for many years. The Municipality supports the diocesan project to convert it into a Center for Ecclesiastical Studies and would be satisfied with the first floor for potential cultural use. The deal is certainly feasible.

However, at this point, the Masses matter little. “If the Curia has the funds to refurbish the building,” says the Municipality, “we are happy to transfer ownership. Also because a strictly ‘secular’ use would conflict with the atmosphere of prayer and reverence that characterizes the entire 18th-century complex of the Inviolata.”