1998. ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΟΣ ΑΥΤΟΠΥΡΠΟΛΗΘΗΚΕ ΣΤΗΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΑΓΙΟΥ ΠΕΤΡΟΥ

Ομοφυλόφιλος αυτοπυρπολήθηκε στην Βασιλική του Αγίου Πέτρου
(Τα Νέα, 14/1/1998)
ΕΝΑΣ ομοφυλόφιλος σαραντάχρονος, αντίθετος στην καταδίκη από το Βατικανό των ερωτικών σχέσεων μεταξύ ομοφυλοφίλων, αυτοπυρπολήθηκε χθες μπροστά στην Βασιλική του Αγίου Πέτρου στην Πόλη του Βατικανού.
Ο Αλφρέντο Ορμάντο, κάτοικος του Παλέρμο, αφού έβγαλε τη μπλούζα του και περιλούστηκε με βενζίνη, αυτοπυρπολήθηκε στην Πλατεία του Αγίου Πέτρου. Φλεγόμενος, έτρεξε προς την κύρια είσοδο της Βασιλικής, για να λιποθυμήσει πριν καταφέρει να μπει στον ναό.
Στοιχεία που βρέθηκαν από την αστυνομία πάνω στον Ορμάντο καθιστούσαν σαφές ότι ήταν ομοφυλόφιλος και ότι η διαμαρτυρία του στρεφόταν ευθέως κατά της Ρωμαιοκαθολικής Εκκλησίας και της πρόσφατης απόφασής της για την απαγόρευση των ομοφυλοφιλικών σχέσεων. Η Ρωμαιοκαθολική Εκκλησία, ενώ δεν καταδικάζει την ομοφυλοφιλία είναι αντίθετη στη σύναψη ομοφυλοφιλικών σχέσεων.
Ο Ορμάντο φέρει εγκαύματα σε ποσοστό 90% και νοσηλεύεται σε κρίσιμη κατάσταση σε νοσοκομείο της Ρώμης.

Alfredo Ormando (San Cataldo, 15 December 1958 – Rome, 23 January 1998) was a gay Italian writer. On 13 January 1998 he set himself on fire in Saint Peter's Square (Rome) to protest the attitudes and policies of the Roman Catholic Church regarding homosexual Christians. After two policemen put out the flames, he was brought to Sant'Eugenio hospital in critical condition. He died there 11 days later. (en.wikipedia.org)

Alfredo Ormando, 39-years old, arrived by bus in Rome just as the sun was rising on January 13, 1998. After his long journey from Palermo, he found his way to the empty streets of the Vatican and, facing the entrance to the Basilica, knelt down as if to pray. He made a rapid hand gesture and suddenly was engulfed in flames. Before the Church and the world, Alfredo Ormando had set himself on fire.
A crowd soon gathered and Alfredo's burnt body was rushed to the hospital. As he lay there in a coma, few from his large, Southern Italian family made a visit. Even his elderly mother was kept in the dark by other family members, and to this day believes her favorite son was killed in a car accident. In one of the two letters found inside Alfredo's knapsack, he wrote, "The monster is leaving so as no longer to bring you shame...I'm taking my life because my family and society don't accept me."
Born in the small Sicilian village of San Cataldo, he lived a life alienated from his uneducated, peasant family, striving to find expression for the difference he felt in himself. At once oppressed by and bound to Sicilian codes of silence, honor and family, he sought refuge as a student at a Franciscan seminary and monastery. Disillusioned by what he experienced there as moral hypocrisy, Alfredo renounced his religious studies after two years, choosing instead the life of a contemplative writer--and a gay man leading a clandestine, double life. In his semi-autobiographical novel "Il Fratacchione" (The Jolly Monk), Alfredo recounts his time at the monastery, prompted by an earlier suicide attempt and reflective of a man torn by conflict between spirit and flesh, desire and reality.
Never before had there been a suicide attempt by self-immolation at the Vatican. But through its spokesperson, Father Ciro Benedettini, the Church downplayed the significance of the act: "In the letter found on Alfredo Ormando, he doesn't affirm in any way that his actions were prompted by his presumed homosexuality or as a protest against the Church...He tried to kill himself for no better explanation than family motives."
Gay activists in Rome angrily responded: "We are stunned by yet another tragedy caused by the cultural oppression of the Catholic Church. It appears the city of Rome under this Pontificate has plunged back into the dark ages of the rack." Arcigay, the national gay political organization, promptly declared January 13th Alfredo Ormando Day--an "international day of struggle against sexual discrimination for religious motives." Some activists even referred to Alfredo's gesture as the "Italian Stonewall," the decisive moment of coalescence and collective action against homosexual oppression. This year's World Pride demonstration in Rome, meant to coincide with the Church's Jubilee celebration, was in part motivated by Alfredo's gesture.
Alfredo died ten days later from burns covering 90 percent of his body--a suffering, he once described in a journal, that would be miniscule compared to the pain he endured while alive. "If the gasoline doesn't do its job, burn me and spread my ashes in the countryside," he wrote, leaving behind an enigmatic and emblematic human tragedy which echoes in incidents across the world. What really was Alfredo's fire and how far do the ashes blow?
"I ask the entire world forgiveness for my crimes against nature, a nature so dear to, yet desecrated by, Christianity. I ask forgiveness for coming into this world, for having tainted the air that you breathe with my venal breath, for having dared to think and act as a man, for not having accepted an 'otherness' that I did not feel, for having considered homosexuality natural, for having felt equal to heterosexuals and second to no one, for having longed for..., for having dreamed..."
Alfredo Ormando
(soulforce.org)