By Jim Yardley

The 18 coffins were placed in two neat rows beneath the late-afternoon sun as the mayor and other dignitaries took their seats inside the hilltop cemetery. A Catholic vicar-general offered a homily. A Muslim imam unfurled a small rug and knelt in prayer, his singsong voice rising above the stone mausoleums toward the blue of the Mediterranean.

They had come to mourn strangers. Inside the coffins were the bodies of Africans who died in August, collected from the smuggler boats that were carrying them into Europe. Eight of the coffins bore small plaques that stated, simply, "Sconosciuto," or "Unknown." "The opposite of love is not hatred," Msgr. Angelo Giurdanella said toward the end of his homily, "but indifference."

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/