Trieste, the bells of San Dorligo released from seizure: “Deafening tolling”. “No, I call to faith”

For that excessively long and frequent ringing of the bell tower of the historic church of Sant’Ulderico/Sveti Urh, from the stony areas of Dolina the diocese of Trieste was involved first, then the judiciary and finally even Brussels. But then, after years of disputes, controversies and bitter controversies, an agreement was reached between the two communities, Slovenian and Italian. So today the bells resumed their activity again in the valley at 5pm.

The town on the border

Dolina is a small fraction of the small municipality of San Dorligo della Valle, close to the border with Slovenia where in 2022 a controversy broke out due to the prolonged and frequent ringing of the bells. The pastor, Klemen Zalar, according to those who were bothered by the ringing of the bells, he had set the bell clock to 6am, 12pm and 8pm with at least 70 strikes of the clapper, in addition to one strike every quarter of an hour, from 7am to 9pm with this rhythm: two strikes in the first quarter of an hour, 4 in the half hour and 6 in the third quarter. An unsustainable situation for those who lived there and a petition was started. Someone even took the trouble to measure the sound with a sound level meter, noting the frequent exceeding of the legal limit thresholds.

The seizure of the bells

Once the judiciary was involved in the case, the bells were seized, a measure that many judged to be “disproportionate” towards “religious freedom and cultural tradition in the area”. Even the eight Slovenian parliamentarians in Brussels deposited a question on the tables of the EU administration. Finally, common sense took over and, as the newspaper reports The smallthanks to the Regulation prepared for all the churches of the Diocese by the Bishop Enrico Trevisi and to the diplomatic arts of Don Ettore Malnati, a well-known theologian in Friuli Venezia Giulia, the chimes resumed today as part of a solemn religious ceremony. And today the clock in the bell tower has also started to rotate again, so the hours can also be marked.

The new statute

“With the new statute of the Diocese and after having accepted the request of the Prosecutor’s Office which asked to postpone the first chime from 7 to 8, we managed to unblock the situation – commented Don Malnati – It is a gesture of pacification, there is no they are neither losers nor winners in this matter, with dialogue we have found a compromise: to give Dolina peace of mind and satisfy everyone’s needs”.