As promised, here are the answers to more questions left last week at the blogs bleeding espresso and My Bella Vita:

Q: Had you lost your faith…and did this make you find it again?” (oops that’s a two part question. Because I also wanted to ask: Did your wife slap you upside the head when she read the above passage [referring to the posted story I wrote "Almost like falling in love]? LOL Sorry. Couldn’t resist./This eclectic life

A: Last question first. No, my wife didn’t slap me. She laughed. We’ve been to Italy several times together, and she’s pretty used to me swooning over the beauty that seems to be everywhere. She swoons as well! How could we not? As for my faith – lost and somewhat found – this truly is a major theme in my story so I don’t want to give away too much here. Let’s just say that I fell completely away from Catholicism after high school and it took a canonized relative to draw me back.

Q: Before your trip to Calabria in 2003, did you spend a lot of time Italy? What role did religion play in your day-to-day life? Nyc/Caribbean ragazza

A: When my wife and I married in 1984, we spent two months traveling through western Europe, 10 of those days in Italy — Venice, Padua, Florence and Rome. It was a glorious experience, and we vowed to return when our children were old enough to take it all in. Our return to Italy took 19 years. I’ve been back four times since then. Regarding religion, it played only a minor role in my life prior to researching and writing my book.

Q: Can we hear the NPR interview somewhere [this commentary led to me being able to write the book]? Fern

A: Yes, just click here. It’s less than four minutes long and aired Oct. 20, 2005, three days before the canonization.

A: In 1984, during a two-month honeymoon tour of Western Europe, my wife and I spent 10 glorious days in Italy – Venice, Padua, Florence and Rome. We didn’t return for 19 years, but that time with our three daughters. Prior to writing this book, religion played a very small role in my day-to-day life.

Q: If you return to Italy again, please promise that you will take your wife and daughters. I, too, am catholic, and wish I knew more about my religion. Question for you: does it all make sense now? Marmie

A: I’ve taken my wife and daughters to Italy, including Calabria twice since 2003. And we were all together for the canonization in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 23, 2005. And last March, my wife and I went back to Calabria so that the relatives could see the book (I had galley copies to share). I have every intention of visiting my Italian relatives as often as possible, and no intention of ever going back alone. As for Catholicism. I feel like I am a few steps down a very long road. Some things make a bit more sense to me – the rituals of the Mass, the meaning of saints, the tangible comfort of prayer. But the great mysteries of the Church remain mysteries to me.

Q: Has your Italian improved in the past years since visting Italy and doing your research? Carla

A: Yes, relatively speaking. When I made my first trip to Calabria in 2003 with my family, I had no Italian. Upon my return, I started studying on my own, settling on the Pimsleur language training system. I found it extraordinary. Over the next four years, I completed all three levels, some 90 30-minute lessons. I am far from conversant, unfortunately, but I can enough to communicate at a basic level.

Q: When Dorthy Day was called a saint her response was “I won’t be dismissed so easily” (That’s one of my all time favorite quotes). So Justin, What do you think St Gaetano’s response would have been if someone called him a saint?

A: I think Padre Gaetano would have said, “I am not worthy of the honor.” Among his many virtues was his humility. He called himself “the little donkey of Christ.” My Calabrian relatives who knew him tell me would not have approved of the fuss and expense expended over 25 years to ensure his canonization. But like Dorothy Day, Gaetano Catanoso was a saint in the truest sense of the word. He and she lived lives of heroic virtue in service to others.

Q: What does it feel like to be related to a saint? Joanne

A: One of the central questions in my book is this: what does it mean to have a saint in the family, does it mean anything at all? I spent the better part of 300 pages addressing that fundamental question. I wasn’t sure there was a compelling answer when I started my research for this book, but I learned otherwise after spending the better part of a month in Calabria in the summer of 2006 with my Italian relatives there, many of whom knew the saint personally (he died in 1963).

Q: Do you think you reconstructed the episode exactly or do you think you were guided in part from Saint Gaetano who motivated you to write your book? Thanx From Australia

A: It’s hard for me to separate out how hard I had to work for so long to complete this project, with the great luck and good fortune I experienced along the way to make it actually happen. Did St. Gaetano play a role? I won’t argue against that.

Q: Did your trip to Calabria, finding new/old relatives, discovering Italian lifestyle and the research about your cousin the Saint change your attitude towards religion? Do you believe in God (now?/before?/at all?) suzie

A: To answer these questions here would be to reveal 85 percent of the book!

Q: I think what you are doing is brave and admire your goal and aspirations. Today so many people criticize the Catholic church for so many things. How do you think this book will help other Catholics be brave? And able to open up more about there lives in the Catholic church? Thanks, Lainey

A: I don’t know how brave I’m being, but I did strive to be honest, as honest as possible about some deeply personal things when writing my book. The Catholic Church gives many reasons for someone like me to walk away and stay away — particularly when church leaders become politicized, exclusionary and judgmental. I have been fortunate. I have found a church where I feel welcomed, which focuses on the true meaning of the faith, which doesn’t make socio-political demands which exceed its moral authority. I am comfortable there.  But I still wrestle with many questions, concerns and doubts. In college, I had a mentor about whom I write about in Part II of my book who told me — “it’s ok if you don’t believe everything the church teaches, just believe what you can.” That piece of advice has resonated with me for more than 25 years.

Q: What’s changed for you (faith-wise) since your book was published? Donna

A: I joined a church – St. Pius X in Greensboro, North Carolina. That’s an enormous change.

I am thrilled to able to post a new video (with a few more to come!). This one gives you a glimpse of Pentidatillo, a hillside village above Melito di Porto Salvo at the very bottom of Italy. This short video opens with a view from Pentidattilo of Mount Etna, which lies across the Ioanian Sea in Sicily.

This village is where Padre Gaetano Catanoso was sent as a young priest to lead his first parish in 1904, a year after my grandfather emigrated to America. Pentidattilo was a rough and hopeless place at the time. The young priest faced enormous challenges, including Mafia threats inside the church. He served there for 17 years, before being called down to Reggio.

Pentidattilo has been abandond since the 1950s when there were fears that earthquakes would cause a rock slide and crush the homes. It never happened. The European Union is now working to restore some of the homes. A private effort is underway to restore the church. It’s an incredible place to visit.

This video was shot and produced my Michael Frierson, a friend and filmmaker at UNC-Greensboro.

For newcomers to this site, especially faithful readers of Bleeding Espresso and My Bella Vita, welcome! This video, shot and produced in Calabria last March, captures a bit of the spirit of My Cousin the Saint. Please be sure to see the other videos at the Multimedia link. My pal and filmmaker Michael Frierson is completing a few more video shorts, which I will post soon.

Journalist David Robinson, who covers religion for the Main Line Times in Armore, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, writes a long and thoughtful review of My Cousin the Saint in the current issue. The review is here.:

An excerpt:

“Catanoso weaves his story of My Cousin the Saint with threads from Padre Gaetano’s life amid the villages of southern Italy, and the American story of Carmelo Catanoso (the author’s grandfather and a cousin of the saint) who fled Italy in 1903 and never looked back. Equally compelling are the author’s confessions as he seeks to understand his God, church and the river of questions that dilute his faith.”

This relic can be seen in the church St. Pasquale of Baylon in Chorio, a little village in southern Calabria where St. Gaetano Catanoso was born — as well as my grandfather. The relic is actually a thin piece of skin from the saint. Catholics, of course, believe relics are holy objects, closely associated with the sacred departed, that maintain mystical and sometime miraculous powers when prayed over.

Please see the video at the Multimedia button called Sacred Relics for more details.

Rhode Island Catholic, the disocesan newspaper for the state,  reviews “My Cousin the Saint,” in its current issue. The review was written by Father John A. Kiley, a pastor in Warwick. An excerpt:

“Mr. Catanoso’s book is a family saga of faith, ambition, determination, hard work, illness, death and success on both sides of the Atlantic. Crowded Sunday afternoon pasta dinners at the family homestead merge with tense family conferences in hospital waiting rooms. The family camaraderie Mr. Catanoso experienced as a youth when his family moved to the Jersey shore is revived on successive trips to Calabria to research and reaffirm his Italian roots. These familial experiences, mixed with some Church politics, make absorbing reading. The author’s maturing Catholic faith is integral to the narrative as well.”

And this, too: “Pope John Paul has been criticized for canonizing too many saints. But there was a scheme in his zeal. Local saints touch the lives of local people. Local saints re-incarnate Jesus Christ graphically and tangibly on the local level so that once again believers can reach out to touch the tassel of his cloak, learn from his words, enjoy his company, bring him their fears, be consoled by his presence.  Saint Gaetano Catanoso had an immeasurable spiritual effect on his family, on his seminarians, on his religious sisters, on his fellow Calabrese, on his American cousins. St. John the Evangelist writes of Jesus Christ: ‘…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ ”

The entire review is here.

Padre Gaetano Catanoso (1879-1963) experienced a relatively quick route to sainthood — about 25 years from the start of his cause to the canonization by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2005. This blog post regarding Father Nelson H. Baker (1842-1936) of Buffalo, N.Y., is a reminder of how long and difficult the path can be for many who are already deemed saints by their ardent followers.

An excerpt: “One of the most frustrating things about the process of establishing that someone is a saint, that someone is with God and can act as an intermediary between God and those still living, is proving miracles. In Father Baker’s case, over 20 healings have been investigated so far for his cause, and none of them have passed muster in Rome.

This video was shot on a hill above Chorio, the Calabrian village where my grandfather, and the saint, were born in the late 1800s. It was shot and produced by Michael Frierson, a film professor at UNC-Greensboro.

Last night, we hosted a special guest at our home – Thiago Catanoso, a 29-year-old computer expert for an America-based software company who lives in Sao Paolo, Brazil. In that South American country, there are scores of Catanosos who, like the Catanosos in America, trace their roots back a few generations to Calabria in the toe of the boot of Italy.

Thiago’s great-great grandparents emigrated from Chorio in 1903, a year before my grandfather left the same tiny Calabrian village (also the birthplace of the future saint to whom we all share a common bloodline). One of his Brazilian uncles, Jose Carlos Catanoso, returned to Reggio di Calabria several years ago to meet his Italian relatives for the first time, and learn also about Padre Gaetano. Jose Carlos and his wife, Maria, returned, as we did, to attend the canonization in St. Peter’s Square in October 2005.

Last evening, we had a wonderful visit with Thiago, who was at the end of a business trip for his employer that took him first to Miami (we “met” online earlier this year when he contacted me by email). We shared family stories and family photos and spoke about our lives in America and Brazil. His father and wife called during the visit to say hello from the southern hemisphere. To our knowledge, this is the first time that American and Brazilian branches of the Catanoso family have ever met.

The world feels like a smaller place today, but I know now that I have a bigger family.

This afternoon, the Sons of Italy News Bureau in Washington, DC, announced its Top 3 Summer 2008 Book Club selections, and I’m happy to say that My Cousin the Saint tops the list. This is a wonderful endorsement, shared with 600,000 Sons of Italy members in 745 chapters across the United States.

From its web site: “The Sons of Italy Book Club chooses three or four titles each quarter for a total of 12 to 16 titles a year. The selections will be announced to the press, posted on the Sons of Italy web site — www.osia.org — and published in the Sons of Italy magazine, Italian America, the most widely read cultural publication for Italian Americans in the United States. The Sons of Italy encourages its 745 chapters around the country to choose one or more of the books each quarter and use as part of their monthly meetings for discussion.”