LORETO (part IV): Healing shawls keep tourists warm

WE ALL WATCH the pouring rain as we stand shivering under a long portico in the town of Loreto. Berit, wearing a black halter-top, finds a little blue blanket on a rack and slings it over her tan bare shoulders.

“What are you doing?” I ask, surprised and somewhat sickened that she is snuggling into a random blanket.

“I’m covering myself so I can go in the Church,” she replies indignantly. “I didn’t know we were going to a church today or else I would have worn something else.”

We wander ahead under the portico with no real destination.

“I don’t think that’s for the Church,” I continue, not really ready to let Berit commit to a summer of body lice.

“Yes it is, they were all hanging there,” she says pointing to a small rack.

I look around. No one else is draped in a blanket. I look at the church entrance and don’t see a single person exiting with the blue cover-up. But we continue walking.

Our teacher George walks up, motions towards her covered shoulders and says, “Hey Berit. Where’d you get that?”

“Oh my gosh, I got it over there! It’s to go in the church,” she snaps frustrated that she has to justify her blanket to yet another inquisitive person.

Annie laughs, “Are you sure?”

Inspecting the blanket Berit notices little white designs with the initials UNITALSI.

Naturally, none of us know what this means, since it’s not in our pocketsize Italian phrasebook, pathetically our only form of communication.

Around us there are dozens of elderly people, most of them sitting quietly in wheelchairs with others on plastic seats. Nurses in crisp white uniforms with little white caps wander around, kneeling down and smiling as they readjust the seniors’ blankets.

I feel like I’m on the set of a movie: the nurses’ costumes are too white, their smiles are too sincere, the old people look too frail and we definitely do not belong. Four American girls in flip flops and t-shirts, one wrapped in a found blanket, all of us staring and curious.

“Did they come here to get better?” I ask aloud.

The only thing we know about this town is it’s a pilgrimage site. No one answers me; we’re all too confused and uncomfortable to make sense of the scene before us.

Despite my protests, Berit wears the blanket into the church, the way she believes the blanket is intended to be worn. Inside we each get little pamphlets describing Loreto and the pilgrimages.

As we walk out of the church I hear Berit,

“Oh my God, Ewww,” she exclaims, staring down at the brochure

Under “Shrine of the House of the Sick” subtitle she reads about UNITALSI, an organization that helps the sick pilgrims who travel from all over the world to Loreto to seek comfort and relief from their suffering.

Already Berit is holding the blanket with two outstretched fingers as far away from her body as possible with a look of disgust.

Quietly, with a scrunched face she returns the blanket to the rack she originally found it hanging from, located right next to the gathering of sick, elderly people in wheelchairs.

- Philly Petronis