ROME (CNS): The Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has dealt a powerful blow to the tourism industry, including the religious guesthouses in Italy that specialise in welcoming pilgrims.
Fabio Rocchi, president of the Italian association of religious guesthouses, said on August 19 that of the 1,700 guesthouses he regularly interacts with only “140 have closed their doors to hospitality definitively. The properties will be put to other uses.”
About 50 residences are still closed, but plan to reopen “at the end of the pandemic” or next year, he said. “Most of them are structures that also house a religious community, often composed of the elderly and so they want to avoid the risk of guests bringing the contagion to particularly fragile persons.”
Rocchi said, “Almost all the others have reopened” and they are “counting on the summer season” to ensure their survival.
Things are slow, though.
Ilaria Arcella, who manages the Casa San Giuseppe for the Daughters of St. Joseph in Rome’s Trastevere neighbourhood, said on August 20 that the guesthouse reopened at the end of May, catering to “very few guests.”
Arcella said, “We consider ourselves fortunate to be open, but there is not much work.” By late August, the inn’s 29 rooms had a 40 per cent occupancy rate.
The Domus Australia, owned by the Catholic Church in Australia, reopened on July 1 “with a little group of guests, a couple families,” said Monsignor John Boyle. Things changed when an international group of pilgrim—with members from Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany—filled the 32-room, four-star guesthouse on August 20.
Still, limits on international travel mean “we have no Australians coming here, which is what the structure was built for,” the monsignor said.
The Bridgettine Sisters run a small, but well-known guesthouse in the historic center of Rome, in the same building where St. Bridget of Sweden lived in the late 1300s.
The receptionist said on August 20, “We’re open, but we do not have very many guests. We’ve had more cancellations than arrivals.”
The situation is similar in Assisi, St. Francis’ hometown. At the Domus Laetitiae, a guesthouse owned by the Capuchins, “we are welcoming pilgrims, following the best practices for hygiene and safety. In fact, the friars have asked us to go a step further, measuring the temperatures of the guests” before they enter to make sure no one has a fever, said Tomas, the receptionist.
The convent and guesthouse within walking distance of the Basilica of St. Francis have a total of 100 beds; as of August 20, he said, they were running at about 35 per cent occupancy—”all Italians except for a German friar.”
While it is not good for business, Tomas said that “without throngs of tourists, Assisi has another atmosphere: it’s quieter, more spiritual.”
