The Museum, World War I, Peace, Starvation and the Maria Dolens!

History is a mystifying seductress to some of us.  Everywhere we look we find a piece of history that we are curious about.  Myself  I am continually looking into the history of everything and many times finding that I know very little of the history of things at all..

Every year we all set goals for the next and this morning as  I am sitting drinking a cup of coffee I am doing just that, I have struggled, poured much energy and money into keeping the museum open and with this year's pie sale that was pulled off with a struggle and made a success in part on
Sunday sales... with local support, the question that came to my mind was,...”should I continue after more than 20 years?”  

I thought about the new year as most of us do and I tried to find something that would guide me.  I asked myself if you didn’t work on the museum...what would you do?  The answers were pretty simple since I try to do them now… 1. Help wipe out poverty!  2. Work to end all War and Hatred..

I am adamant that we are in a terrible time of class separation, I remember a line from a song…”The hands of the have not’s have fallen out of reach!”  They have and are becoming more so everyday...even though we are in the middle of a supposed boom economy here in the USA. We are also in a time of world war, causing starvation of millions and skirmishes that are killing thousands of innocent people...and for what....Religion and Power....Riches?

So with the recent celebration of the 100th Anniversary of WWI..."The War to end all Wars" I went online to find out what  has been said in the past...   Pope Francis...who signs everything just Francis…in his  New Years message a few years ago for the 48th anniversary of the Day of World Peace spoke in front of a screen that had the Maria Dolens bell ringing in the background.  The Maria Dolens? And so I was off on my newest history quest.

The Maria Dolens is the name of a bell that was cast from the bronze of many of the cannons - 19, one from each of the countries that participated in WWI.  It sits in Roverto, in today’s northern Italy and it rings 100 times each day in the evening to honor the fallen and to many to act  as a symbol for peace and an end to war.

The Bell was the idea of Don Antonio Rossaro,  called the Bell of the Fallen.  It was given the name Maria Dolens and placed on the Malipiero tower of Castello di Rovereto.  It has been recast many times because of fractures from ringing 100 times a day no doubt... but it has always been recast and returned to the tower where is nightly reminds the world of the price of war.  The latest recast was blessed by Pope Paul VI and on November 4^th, 1965 was placed on the Colle di Miravalle where it today rest above the city of Roverto.

On the bell, which is the second largest swinging bell in the world, were added at its recasting the statements of the Pontiff Pius XII "With peace nothing is lost. Everything is to be lost through war." John XXIII: "In pace hominum ordinata concordia et tranquilla libertas."

Today, as always, it rang 100 times at midday...in Italy as I am writing this..... just as it  was shown on the large screen in St. Peter’s square that day.

It is said that it tolls in the hope that Man, in the memory of the Fallen of every war and every nation in the world, may find the path that leads to Peace….

I say AMEN to that…!