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.''
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,...
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