Praying for the Dead in Uncertain Years: The Rosary of 100 Requiem in Castellaneta (Puglia, Italy)
Praying for the Dead in Uncertain Years: The Rosary of 100 Requiem in Castellaneta (Puglia, Italy)

Summary/Abstract: The worship of the dead is a deep-rooted Catholic tradition. A significant display of it is a ritual practice known as the Rosary of 100 Requiem, consisting in the recitation for one hundred times of Requiem aeternam, a short prayer expressly addressed to the eternal repose of the faithful departed. Usually carried out as an individual practice, at home or in a church, this pious ritual can also be performed in a collective and public form, as demonstrated in this research. Actually, the Rosary of 100 Requiem, organised by a lay confraternity in Castellaneta, a little town in southern Italy, has given this ritual a processional form, with the participants walking through the cemetery while reciting the prescribed prayers. The pandemic, however, dramatically changed the situation, forcing the organisers to find an alternative form for the ritual to survive. Thus, between 2020 and 2021, the Rosary of 100 Requiem was mostly performed at a (safe) distance, by means of a Whatsapp group. In May 2021, the participants were allowed to gather again in the cemetery, but since then the ritual had lost its main peculiarity and has been reshaped as a static prayer performed in a church inside the cemetery

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