Parents wail as Italy buries its children
The earthquake, on Thursday, heavily hit San Giuliano di Puglia, a village of fewer than 1,200 people in south-central Italy.
Mourners applauded when Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and his wife, Franca, who was fighting back tears, arrived for the service, under a tent at the outskirts of this now-evacuated town.
The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Pier Ferdinando Casini, embraced the town's mayor, whose daughter was among the nine six-year-old an entire class - who perished, along with 17 schoolfriends.
A moment of silence followed, broken by the wailing.
Photos of smiling children were placed on the coffins, surrounded by a thicket of white flowers.
Authorities have launched a criminal investigation, and have questioned why the 49-year-old school was practically the only structure to completely collapse in the 5.4-magnitude tremor.
A quake of such intensity is not usually strong enough to knock down a building which has been built to meet modern earthquake standards.
Nunziatina Porrazzo, whose eight-year-old son was killed, said: "I am Luigi's mamma. I'm the mother of all the angels of San Giuliano di Puglia."
Then to applause at the end of the ceremony she appealed to politicians: "I ask that all schools be made safe. I don't want any mamma or daddy to ever weep for their children as the parents of this town have."
Bishop Tommaso Valentinetti, from the nearby Adriatic town of Termoli, which was also damaged in the quake, also appealed to authorities.
"Help us to be vigilant so these tragedies don't happen, to prevent such a terrible experience from happening again," he said.
At the altar, the bishop read off all the names of the victims, starting with the teacher, then the children, then the elderly women who were killed in their damaged homes.
The bishop said the mourners were confronting the "mystery of death" and added: "We want to be aware of all our fragility and our finality."
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II told pilgrims in St Peter's Square that he wanted again to express his "fatherly closeness, entrusting in the hands of God who is in the heavens the young lives of those who have left us, and imploring the comfort of Christian faith and hope."
