Word: scugnizzi
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Dates: during 1956-1956
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...Salvation Army bread line he joined a knot of scugnizzi for a handout, then drifted off with them. Suddenly a big teen-ager turned on him and snapped: "Who are you?" "What do you want?" countered Father Borelli. The leader ordered: "Take your hands out of your pockets!" "Why?" asked the priest. The scugnizzo lunged forward with a razor, and Father Borelli removed his hands. Thus he learned a scugnizzo rule: concealed hands mean concealed weapons...
...made friends by talking about America. "All scugnizzi dream of going to America," he says. "Everybody in Naples does." Gradually he overcame their distrust, spent night after night huddled with them on bakery gratings. "When they rolled drunks or practiced immorality," he says, "I simply indicated indifference." In the cold dawn he would splash his face in street fountains before returning to his daylight duties (which included teaching 14 classes a week at a Roman Catholic college in Naples...
...Like a Movie." Gradually he began to pass the word along that there was a shelter in the Church of Mater Dei, but the suspicious scugnizzi gave it a wide berth. Late one winter night he watched sadly as a group of three scugnizzi stripped a drunk to the skin, then he plodded off, muttering aloud: "I'm going to Mater Dei to get out of the cold." When he arrived at the church he fumbled wearily in his pockets; he had forgotten his key. He hammered with his hands upon the door. The custodian opened it at last...
That night of the providentially forgotten key was the beginning of a tide of hungry, hard-bitten little boys that has flowed into Mater Dei ever since. At last, one day Father Borelli felt sure enough of success to walk among the scugnizzi in his clerical robes. No one recognized him until he produced a snapshot of himself dressed as a scugnizzo. First they gaped in astonishment, then they crowded in to touch his habit and kiss his hand...
...steady jobs and marriage, or back to their families. "Actually, we can't offer them as much materially as they can win for themselves on the streets," says Mario Borelli. "So why do they come to this church, and why do they stay? It is very simple. Scugnizzi are not animals. They are humans, and instinctively feel that animal life is wrong...