Rome Newsroom, May 24, 2021 / 06:00 am
Fourteen people died in a cable car crash in northern Italy Sunday after the cable carrying the passengers up a mountain near Lake Maggiore suddenly snapped.
Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, expressed the “closeness of the entire Church in Italy” in praying for the victims and their families.
He said that the crash is a tragedy “that deeply touches the hearts of all” especially because the accident involved families that were on vacation.
Bishop Franco Giulio Brambilla of Novara, a diocese in Piedmont where the crash occurred, offered prayers for the victims and asked that the Holy Spirit give comfort to the families in mourning.
“I learned with deep dismay the news of the dramatic and very serious accident at the Stresa-Mottarone cable car with a very high number of victims, who were experiencing a day of renewed serenity and normality, enjoying the beauties of our region after months of restrictions due to the pandemic,” Brambilla said in a statement May 23.
The cable car accident occurred one day after Italy allowed the reopening of ski lifts and cable cars after months of closure due to the country’s ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.
The cable had been carrying visitors from the town of Stresa up the Mottarone mountain on the afternoon of May 23 when it broke, plunging the car around 65 feet before it hit the side of the mountain.
Italy’s Infrastructure Minister Enrico Giovannini has announced an investigation into the cause of the cable’s failure.
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