Word: castelpoto
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Like a thousand other villages in Italy's Mezzogiorno (midday, i.e., the south), Castelpoto (pop. 2,800) was bone-poor and bright Red. A medieval huddle of stone houses high in the Neapolitan Apennines, it had no sewage system, no running water, no schoolhouse, no movie, and almost no electricity. On chilly winter evenings peasant women lit bundles of twigs on their mud floors to warm their chimneyless, smoke-blackened houses. When party organizers moved in after the war, Communism took Castelpoto with a rush-even to the local branch of Catholic Action, whose leader, Costanzo Savoia, became mayor...
When the new priest trudged up the hill to Castelpoto, accompanied by two armed policemen, his parishioners were waiting for him in the town square, jeering and yelling: "Get out! We don't want you. Go back where you came from!" Don Domenico Scapatici shrugged, smiled and gave them his blessing. But later he said: "It was the most terrible day of my life...
Three weeks after he arrived, Hungary hit the world's headlines, but there were no headlines in Castelpoto. Don Domenico went to a nearby town, rented four loudspeakers and a public-address system for $15 a month. He set up the speakers in the Church of the Madonna's crumbling brick campanile and turned up the power loud enough to be heard five miles away. Then he set to work with high-decibel hymns, prayers and sermons...
Misery & Mirages. By last week it was clear who had won the first round in the Battle of Castelpoto. Between 400 and 500 people were attending daily Mass-a record 1,500 came on Sunday. A day nursery had been organized, a social assistance program had been set up by landowners for the village poor, a television set from Benevento was functioning, and a social hall, a sewage system and a soccer team were in the planning stage...
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