At the Gay Pride in Naples, Mangiacapra shows up dressed as Christ

“I am here to send a message, not a blasphemous provocation. I see blasphemy and morbidity in the rotten part of the Church that I myself have denounced and that the Church, I can say several months after the presentation of my dossier, has not denied was the truth". This is what Francesco Mangiacapra, the lawyer who delivered a dossier to the Neapolitan Curia at the beginning of the year accusing the prelates of sexual abuse and who today participated in the Gay Pride of Naples dressed as Christ, says. Mangiacapra is accompanied in the parade by Mirko Varlese, a dancer but also a catechist, dressed as an angel. Mangiacapra, referring to his dossier, stressed that it is "a truth based on a repeated and habitual conduct of life, not occasional". “With me there is an angel – explained Mangiacapra – who tells us that where there is love there is God, that universal love that knows no sexes or sexual genders. We send a message of brotherhood, not a provocation. Morbidity is often in the eye of the beholder. This is why I brought an angel who is part of the church, because Mirko Varlese is an altar boy, a catechist, he also does volunteer work in the Church and he embodies the evangelical message in the most coherent way which is instead far from some priests who from a pulpit condemn what they intimately and secretly pursue. We are here for them too, to give them the freedoms they already enjoy, but with an act of piracy."  Thousands of people, colorful open trucks full of music, balloons. From Naples to Ostia, the joy of Gay Pride showed its colorful face, twinning the two cities in the name of the fight against the mafia. In Naples the demonstration took place again this year along the streets of the city center. The party went by chaotically but peacefully through via Toledo and ended on the Naples seafront, in an explosion of music in front of the Gulf. At the start, in Piazza Dante, the mayor of Naples Luigi de Magistris also arrived: “From the Gay Pride of Naples – he said – a message is sent for, not against. For civil liberties, for equality, rights, for people, all equal in rights but all different, each with their own feelings. A contribution to build a community where you can find love, not resentment, indifference and racism. Always a strong message, and not because Salvini is in government today. We've always been there. We want to build bridges of solidarity, not walls of resentment." Among the political exponents there was also Marco Sarracino, member of the national management of the Democratic Party, together with a group of Young Democrats. A political message, in a Gay Pride that also included Antonio Amoretti, one of the partisans of the Four Days of Naples, also came from Carlo Cremona, president of the IKen association that marched together with migrants and refugees. In Ostia, on the Roman coast, the gay pride parade this year has also acquired another meaning: demonstrating against the mafia in the very town hall that a few years ago was dissolved due to mafia and police custody. Between the rainbow flags and the music that accompanied the entire pride, the demands ranged from requests for protection and recognition for the children of gay couples to rights for trans people. “We demand protections for the children of our community. We will move forward territory by territory without fear,” said one protester. Also on stage was Federica Angeli, a journalist from La Repubblica under escort, who greeted the Pride crowd as follows: “There are victims of homophobia and victims of the mafia. Abbiamo in comune il fatto di essere vittime del silenzio”.