The Little Apostles

The village of Nomadelphia, near the northern Italian city of Modena, has a population of about 1,000--mostly children. When anyone there wants food, clothing or cigarettes, he takes what he likes from the common supply. When anyone wants money for dealings with the outside world, he draws it from the common cash box. Says Don Zeno Saltini, "We have no locks. We live according to the Christian principle of ask and you shall receive."

Round-faced, grey-haired little Don Zeno, 50, is the founder and sparkplug of Nomadelphia, which means "Town of Brotherhood." His followers call themselves the Piccoli Apostoli (Little Apostles). The Little Apostles may well contain the seeds of a movement destined to outlast Don Zeno and his disordered century.

A Pledge. As assistant pastor in his first parish, Don Zeno attracted children to church with a Punch and Judy show, later built a small amusement park on the church grounds. When homeless children turned up, he lodged them in a nearby house. By 1946 he was looking after 250 children, had enlisted 28 foster mothers.

When D.P.s began evacuating a former concentration camp near by, Don Zeno applied to the government for permission to turn it into a Little Apostles' colony. The government dallied; Don Zeno moved in anyway, and set about partitioning the barracks into family quarters, planting flowers, setting up workshops. By the time permission to stay had arrived, Nomadelphia was a going concern.

Family life is the cornerstone of Don Zeno's method. The very idea of orphanhood, he thinks, is a pagan one: "Every child needs a mother ... not just a caretaker or someone to give him money." Among the Little Apostles the role of mother is a vocation: most of the foster mothers who sign up take a pledge to remain unmarried. Though Don Zeno does not consider the pledge as binding as a nun's vows, he feels strongly that a foster mother's marriage upsets the life of her "family," and he insists that she leave the community.

A Debt. Good-natured Little Apostle Don Zeno likes to amble through his Village of Brotherhood in turtleneck sweater and beret, pepping things up with a tune on his accordion. This week his bushy eyebrows were knitted with concern over plans for expansion. More foster mothers have been signing up each year (current total: 100), but Nomadelphia still has a waiting list of 7,000 abandoned children. To take care of the overflow, Don Zeno has bought 3,000 acres for a new "village" on the Tyrrhenian coast.

Raising donations for the land, clearing it and putting up buildings will take adroit managing, but Don Zeno is more worried about safeguarding the ideas on which he has built his Christian experiment. "Here in Nomadelphia," he says, "we are living the true Gospel. We have no debts. It is society that has the debt to care for children who have no homes."

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