The Pastor of Fondi

When 50-year-old Umberto Righetti, a pastor of the Evangelical Church, rented a second-floor apartment in the 15th century baronial palace of Fondi (pop. 19,000), 75 miles south of Rome, nobody told him about the door. In his two-room apartment he conducted Protestant religious services twice a week, and soon had a flock of 500. He started a free Bible school for 70 children, some of whom had been attending the local Roman Catholic parochial school. In heavily Catholic Italy all this was distressing news to the parish priest. Don Pietro Santanto-nio. "Go away, leave Fondi," Don Pietro advised Righetti. "Fondi is no bread for your teeth." But even when some Catholics threw rocks at him, Righetti stayed on.

Last week Fondi's justice of the peace, bulwarked by the local carabinieri commander, came acalling on Righetti. They explained that in 1950 the owners of the apartment next to Righetti's had obtained exclusive rights to the one stairway leading into the courtyard below, but with the proviso that the door of what was now Righetti's apartment must be sealed off. The owner of Righetti's apartment had in turn sought permission to cut another door into the courtyard, but because the palace was a national monument, the Ministry of Fine Arts in Rome had forbidden it. Now, after eight years, a Rome court had ordered the door sealed off, and Righetti would have to leave. It was the law, they said, and had nothing to do with his Protestantism.

Righetti refused to go. "A captain does not abandon his ship,'' he declared. "A soldier does not leave the battlefield. I will not abandon my church." The masons came anyway and walled up the door with bricks, shutting Righetti inside.

Overnight Righetti became a nationwide sensation. His flock rallied to him and from the courtyard 20 ft. below sent up food to his window in a basket on a rope. Crowds gathered, and Righetti decided he might usefully preach from his window. "I don't know how long I will be here," the pastor shouted below. "It is in God's hands." Communist election campaigners accused the townspeople in Fondi of "religious intolerance," and with a national election close at hand, nobody in the government wanted to stir up the anticlerical issue.

On the third day, a piece of legal paper went up the rope in the basket. It authorized the temporary reopening of his door if Righetti would agree to find new quarters within four months. The imprisoned pastor of Fondi agreed, and the masons hurriedly tore open the bricked-up door to set him free.

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