The people of Lohr am Main in Lower Franconia want to say goodbye to a 14-year-old who was killed with a church service on Tuesday. In the morning, parish priest Sven Johannsen was unable to estimate how many mourners would come to the Roman Catholic parish church of St. Michael in the afternoon: “There are 400 seats. I assume that the church will be full.”
A German-Italian Eucharist celebration is planned. He himself would speak Italian for the victim’s family who had traveled from Italy. “It will be a classic mass in terms of the rite that the family knows from their homeland.”
After the approximately one-hour event in two languages, people can say goodbye to the 14-year-old’s coffin in the cemetery. Among other things, the plan is to play a song for the dead. In addition, 14 balloons will rise into the sky to symbolize each year of life of the person killed.
According to the priest, the body will be cremated later and the burial will take place at a later date, closed to the public.
The teenager is said to have been shot by a peer near a school center last Friday. The background to the crime in the small town in the Main-Spessart district is not yet publicly known. The suspect is in custody on suspicion of murder. He is said to have killed the victim with a neighbor’s pistol.