Roman Catholics: A Padre's Patience

In Italy, as in other Mediterranean countries, the sacred and the profane exist side by side. There is nothing like a good shrine, for example, to attract a raggle-taggle of sausage vendors, post card hawkers, fortune tellers, pickpockets, shooting-gallery barkers and common gyp artists — all waiting to peel the pilgrims of their lire. And if the shrine honors a particularly popular saint, the traffic in counterfeit relics is brisk.

Such was the situation in the moun tain town of San Giovanni Rotondo, not far from Foggia in southeastern Italy. Here was...

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