Father Mattia Bernasconi, 36, of the archdiocese of Milan, said he planned to perform Sunday’s ceremony among the trees by the beach in Crotone, southern Italy, after helping out at a weeklong summer camp for high school students organized by Libera , an anti-mafia organization. However, having failed to find shade from the intense heat, Bernasconi said a nearby family offered to use the inflatable mattress and the priest took to the water, conducting the service with everyone – including himself – in bathing suits. After the photos went viral this week, the local Catholic archdiocese called for “liturgical decorum and respect.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST “In some special cases, during retreats, school camps, holiday places, it is possible to have a service outside a church,” the Archdiocese of Crotona-Santa Severina said in a statement. “But it is always necessary to get in touch with the church leaders where one is, in order to advise each other on the most appropriate way to conduct such a Eucharistic celebration.” In an interview with the Italian national newspaper la Repubblica, Giuseppe Capoccia, the general prosecutor of the city of Crotone, said the priest was being investigated for “violation of religious confession”. Bernasconi defended his actions on Wednesday while apologizing for any offence, saying his behavior was “perhaps careless”, adding that he would not do it again. “It was absolutely not my intention to trivialize the Eucharist … it was just the service at the end of a work week,” he said. “But symbols are powerful, they are true, and they do speak, sometimes in a different way than we would like. It was naive of me not to give them due weight.”
