Lucia Mantione: murdered Sicilian girl finally given funeral after 66 years

Catholic church had denied 13-year-old girl sexually assaulted and killed in 1955 a funeral due to arcane rule

There had never been so many people at a funeral in the history of Montedoro, a village suspended in time among wheat fields and abandoned sulphur mines in central Sicily.

Its 1,500 inhabitants had waited for this moment for more than half a century, and on Wednesday gathered in hundreds in solemn prayer in the village church around a small white coffin.