The Italian dilemma

Second of three parts

VERONA, Italy - A towering statue of Daniele Comboni, the first bishop to Africa, embracing two black children marks the entrance to the Veronetta neighborhood.

In the shadow of the monument inscribed with the words, “Either Blackness or Death,” Marco Corini serves espresso and cappuccino to locals he has known his entire life.

“Veronetta has always been a poor neighborhood. I was born here. I grew up on these streets. I moved away 10 years ago. It has changed an awful lot in the last 20, 30 years,” he said, looking out his cafe window.

“There is crime, vandalism. … They killed someone here a month ago. The area is not nice anymore.”

Just across the Adige River lies Verona’s 1,900-year-old Roman Arena, where early Christians were devoured by lions and Maria Callas once sang her arias. Nearby stands a balcony said to be the one where Romeo and Juliet fell in love.

Veronetta has been invaded by Africans from Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan — and more recently outsiders from Eastern Europe, Mr. Corini says.

“The Italian people have all gone. The authorities don’t look after us. Veronetta is filled with extracomunitario,” he said, using the Italian word for immigrants from outside the European Union.

Mr. Corini and Italy, like the rest of Europe, are struggling to deal with immigrants, black and brown faces on streets that were once all white, smells and music emanating from ethnic grocery stores, high unemployment, crowded mosques next to empty churches, crime, depleted pension funds and, most of all, the gnawing anxiety of what the future may bring.

While such concerns are not new, the recent advent of Islamist terrorism on a global scale has added a frightening new dimension to bread-and-butter issues such as fears of immigrants taking jobs and altering the cultural face of Europe — especially in nations such as Italy with large Muslim immigrant communities.

A 2000 United Nations report sounded an alarm in Rome when it found that with Italy’s low birth rate, the population could shrink from 57 million to 41 million over the next 50 years.

That would force Italy’s retirement age to 77, in order to keep the required ratio of four workers to one pensioner.

Verona — whose most beloved bishop was St. Zeno, a black African who converted Verona to Christianity in the fourth century — has a long history of missionary work both to and from Africa.

But the familial ties have become strained. Verona is also a center of Italy’s Lega Nord, the Northern League (NL), one of the most virulent anti-immigrant political parties in Europe.

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