A saint’s first parish
This is Pentidattilo, a tiny hillside village up from Melito di Porto Salvo on the tip of Calabria. It overlooks the Ionian Sea and offers an unimpeded view of Mount Etna on the east coast of Sicily. It is beautiful and haunting and, since the mid-1950s when rock slides threatened, abandoned. But it is also the place where a saint got his start.
In 1904 — two years after he was ordained, one year after my grandfather emigrated to America — Padre Gaetano Catanoso was assigned to the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul (look, you can see it clearly) in Pentidattilo. There he found a people beyond poor. They were illiterate, jobless, bankrupt of all hope. This is the place where the young priest began his outreach, where he started his first school, where he stood up for the first time to the Mafia goons in town. He somehow survived the earthquake of 1908, which leveled Reggio and Messina and did its share of damage in villages like this. He stayed here for 17 years, and often hiked to other remote Aspromonte villages to preach and help out. At that time, Italian priests were usually called don, as in Don Francesco. Not Gaetano. The people called him padre, or father.
Tags: Catanoso, Catholic, Catholic priests, Ionian Sea, Italy, Mount Etna, My Cousin the Saint, Padre Gaetano Catanoso, parish, Pentidattilo, Saints, Sicily
