Some days this job just makes me shake my head.
Late Saturday afternoon, my wife and I happened to be heading home after a road trip. It didn't look like we were going to be able to make it back to Downingtown, where we usually attend the 5 p.m. Mass at St. Joe's, our home parish. So as we cruised up Route 202 toward West Chester, I actually pulled into the parking lot of St. Maximillian Kolbe in Westtown, but noticed there weren't many cars in the parking lot. And for a good reason. It was 4:55 and their Saturday Mass isn't until 5:30.
A quick check of the cellphone and we discovered that St. Agnes in West Chester has a 5:15 Mass, so it was into the borough we went.
At the beginning of Mass, the priest made a point of noting that the mother of one of their former priests had died. They noted the funeral arrangements for Bruna Cossavella and how parishioners could send condolences.
I didn't think much about it after that.
Until about 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. That's when we got word from the county Medical Examiner that the death of Cossavella, 89, which at first had been thought to be an accident after her body was found at the bottom of the basement stairs, was being listed as a homicide. She had been beaten and stabbed. Rose Quinn reports the details and stunned reaction here.
Her body was discovered by her only son, the Rev. Anthony Cossavella, who is now at St. Andrew Parish in Drexel Hill.
Yesterday Cossavella officiated at his mother's funeral Mass at St. Philomena Church in Lansdowne. His mother had been a parishioner there for 60 years.
No one knows of anyone who would want to harm Bruna Cossavella, and there appears to be no forced entry in the home.
Perhaps she merely answered a knock on her door.
For now there is an unease in the tidy neighborhood on East Plumstead Avenue.
As you might imagine, people say Bruna Cossavella was a deeply religious woman. Yesterday, in addition to her son, 40 priests and two bishops took part in her funeral Mass.
Now police are starting the painstaking process of a murder investigation. I don't doubt for a second they will make an arrest.
Arresting that unease will be harder to do.
Perhaps that's where Bruna Cossavella's faith, the kind she imparted to her son, could be her lasting legacy. Most of us, placed in the same situation, would think only of justice, and perhaps revenge.
Not Rev. Cossavella. Yesterday he was talking about forgiveness. That's what he told Stephanie Farr, of the Philadelphia Daily News.
"I'm a priest. I'm a follower of the Gospel and Jesus, and the main core of the Gospel message is forgiveness," he said. "So I forgive whoever committed this action. I forgive the person."
That is called faith. We could use a lot more of it.
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