Journalist priest threatened in Reggio Calabria

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“We will abort you”, written in an anonymous letter to Fr. Davide Imeneo, following  one of his articles defending a family which criticised  the morality of the mayor.

Early in August 2019, the journalist Fr. Davide Imeneo, a priest and director of L’Avvenire di Calabria (the Future of Calabria), received a threatening letter: “Your mother should have had an abortion, we will abort you, shitty priest”. Fr. Davide found the letter in the editorial office’s mailbox in Reggio Calabria. It was written on a computer and signed “Rainbow Collected”. The incident was reported to the Reggio Police Headquarters. On August 3^rd the news was made public.

The previous week, Fr. Davide and another journalist, Federico Marchetti, had published an article entitled: “Dear Falcomatà, enough double morality on rights”, in which they criticized the participation of the mayor of Reggio Calabria in the Gay Pride event. Imeneo and Marchetti had accused the mayor of double standards because the Municipality’s Equal Opportunities Commission had opposed an initiative in support of the so-called natural family. Taking a cue from the quote “no one excluded”, published on Facebook by the mayor after participating in the event, the two journalists asked the first citizen why he did not deal with the separated fathers, the housing problems of all and the everyday poverty (read here). This article could be the cause of the intimidation.

Fr. Davide Imeneo told Ossigeno “The police is investigating to find out who was responsible. Since we started in 2015, we have suffered six intimidations “. The newspaper, a Sunday supplement of the daily newspaper Avvenire, also has a regularly updated web-site. Ossigeno, in the summer of 2017, had reported a night-time incursion  into the editorial offices of the Calabrian newspaper. On that occasion, the Archbishop of Reggio Calabria – Bova, Giuseppe Fiorini Morosini, had said: “l’Avvenire di Calabria and Avvenire are annoying someone. And this, rather than intimidating us, even gives us satisfaction, because it means journalists are touching upon sensitive issues and interests “.

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