Each time he went to a funeral, Gino Verani came away with a “santino”, the traditional laminated card with a picture of the deceased on the front and a prayer on the back.

Over the years he would slip them into two small cardboard boxes in a drawer in the living room of his house in San Fiorano — a town in northern Italy that was at the epicentre of the country’s coronavirus pandemic — with his watch, an outdated cellphone and his keys.

By the time Verani died on September 6 at the age of 88, he had collected nearly 150 “santini”, so-called because they are similar to cards bearing images of Roman Catholic saints...