The Battle of Castelpoto

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, 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 on the Communist ticket. This situation, church authorities decided, called for Don Domenico's soft eyes and strong jaw. For Don Domenico, 46, had acquired fame of a sort by having won his most recent parish--a village not unlike Castelpoto--away from Communism with a well-balanced combination of good works and strong words.

Into the Valley. He moved into the priest's quarters--a tiny room and kitchen rented from the Communists--and went around to the cobbler to get his dilapidated shoes repaired. "He has holes in his shoes like us,'' some people said approvingly. At night, on his battered portable, he wrote letters for the illiterate, appeals to provincial authorities, pension applications for old soldiers. More and more people began to bring Don Domenico their problems. Some of them even began showing up for Mass.

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.

The Reds did their best to silence Don Domenico. They vainly invoked the law, then descended to petty harassment, e.g., denying the priest the use of the town-hall toilet, the only one near his quarters. They smeared insults on the church walls --BLACK REACTION. Don Domenico was undeterred. At Christmastime his speakers picked up every word of his services and some women prayed aloud in church all day long for the pleasure of knowing that their voices were being heard all the way into the valley.

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.

Don Domenico resented news stories comparing him to Don Camillo, Humorist Giovanni Guareschi's funny little Communist-fighter, who has often found real-life counterparts in postwar Italy. "This is not comedy," says Don Domenico. "Here we must deal with real Communists and real problems. In this year of Our Lord people are no longer content with misery and mirages. They want progress, and this is human; it is just, it is Christian."

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