Redundant religious heritage: from burdersome legacy to plentiful resource

The issue of underuse, abandonment, alienation or reuse of Catholic religious heritage is widely discussed in the secularized Western world. In Europa in particular, the matter becomes particularly delicate with regard to historical buildings of significant artistic interest, the conservation of which is considered socially indispensable, despite the discontinuation of liturgical use and the consequent lack of economic resources for maintenance. The system of religious cultural heritage presents a variety of challenges because it has a historically pervasive consistency and distribution, being found in the remotest countryside as well as in the most densely populated cities: masterpieces of Romanesque or Baroque architecture, they are the product of construction sites promoted by a number of now extinct historical patrons (monastic and canonical communities, dynasties and noble families, confraternities and guilds), while today's parish communities are unable to guarantee their use or proper maintenance. At the same time, neither state nor regional authorities have the financial resources for such operations, which are considered socially worthless. As a result, international theoretical reflection (on conservation, ecclesiology and liturgy, or on religious sociology) coexists with discussions and debates at local level, involving the life choices of every community, be it urban or rural, touched by the problem in its daily activities and affections. At the moment, it is premature to propose a spatial analysis of the uses of churches during the pandemic, and it may never be possible to do so, in the absence of systematic documentation initiatives during said pandemic (some attempts, developed within the framework of research projects, have yielded unsatisfactory results). Every country has suffered restrictions to liturgical use - which involves gatherings - but access to individual churches has usually remained permissible. In Italy, for example, churches continued to be the only collective buildings that were always open, even at the most critical times, and many people - even non-worshippers - appreciated their space and environmental values, precisely at a time of great spiritual and emotional suffering, regardless of religious aspects in the strict sense. In broader terms, however, a wider path of awareness can be developed: those spaces that were considered redundant and an unnecessary economic burden on shrinking communities until 2018, can, from 2020, be revalued and appreciated as spaces of abundance, surplus, freedom, for different forms of spiritual experience. This observation prompts the question: can the pandemic event suggest new possibilities for redundant churches of historical-artistic interest, possibilities less inclined towards mere functional utilitarianism? Are there social functions that can combine care for the artistic heritage, care for the community and attention to the spiritual dimension of spaces? The research proposes a change of perspective from considering redundant churches only as a burden on small Christian communities, whose priority is - quite rightly - the proper liturgical and ecclesiastical life of worshippers, and not the preservation of the artistic heritage. The pandemic highlighted how every society needs empty, open, available spaces to cope with emergencies of an objective nature (relating to health, war, climate): the use of provisional, generic, multifunctional or prefabricated buildings does not meet the emotional and spiritual needs of people who have been shaken or whose affections have been touched. Sustainable and far-sighted planning of social uses of disused historical churches - building on previous experience - can offer new perspectives for interaction between cultural heritage and spiritual heritage, while taking care to ensure the utmost rigour in terms of critical and design criteria for conservation and restoration, technological intervention, environmental aspects, etc. It is also necessary to consider the aspects of sustainability of the process in economic, social and governance terms: which new communities (patrimonial, spiritual, civic?) can ensure the sustainability of new uses? The outcome of the research is therefore an abacus of criteria, which can flank the Vatican Guidelines in this specific process of reflection, and which can be used to identify new communities capable of combining historical-architectural conservation, social innovation and spiritual care.