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TO Easter should be a feast of joy, only good things should happen. But this Easter is downright sad. This is what says Nadzareno Joliti, who sells ice cream in the city center, writes Deutsche Welle.
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This year Rome is deserted and there are no customers. Restrictions are imposed on going out, which will also be made more strict for holidays only. Everyone has to stay home for Easter, the shops are closed. There are no tourists either.
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Joliti fondly remembers the days when there was a long line of customers queuing for ice cream. Since there are no tourists, it depends solely on the local population and maintains a limited range in a mini refrigerated display case. Sales fell 80 percent.
A vacation without worshipers
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Tourism in Italy provides 13 percent of the gross domestic product. Government aid to companies has been delayed and cannot cover the losses of entrepreneurs at all.
40,000 companies in the tourism sector are about to close or have already gone bankrupt, and 100,000 people in the sector have lost their jobs since the crisis began. Most of Joliti’s employees have also switched to part-time work, which has been going on for an entire year.
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“Before the crisis, the flow of tourists and pilgrims was growing steadily, it was full of people,” said Pastor Werner Demel. “There was nowhere to step on the opposite sidewalk. And now you see a dead city,” the priest said with a sigh.
“For us, this is not a slow death, but a very slow death.”
Pope Francis has drastically reduced his schedule for the most important Christian holiday. “Before, in the week before Easter, there were liturgies every day, and the fact that now everything is limited and can only be experienced online is inconsolable,” Demel said.
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The Vatican has cut its budget for the year by a third, and the salaries of cardinals and pastors have been cut. The reason is that important sources of income such as the Vatican museums do not work. In the past, they also benefited from the influx of tourists at Easter, with an average of 25,000 visitors a day during the holidays. With a ticket that costs an average of 19 euros, the losses due to vacations amount to half a million euros a day.
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Monsignor Paolo Nicolini, deputy director of the Vatican Museums, hopes that vaccines will improve the situation, “so that soon people can travel again and enjoy the beauty of museums.”
Stunned, Joliti also hopes to see Rome so empty for the last time at Easter. Tourists have come here since ancient times, he says, and ensures that the locals are very short of tourists.
