The Los Angeles Times today carries a column I wrote about the new pope, the old pope and my favorite saint. Thanks to my good friend Frank Wilkinson, executive editor of The Week in New York, for motivation and editing assistance. The piece is here.

It starts like this: “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent,” George Orwell said. The Vatican lately seems to share Orwell’s skepticism.

Pope Benedict XVI has made no secret of his disdain for the high volume of saints named by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. John Paul II conducted 482 canonizations, naming more saints in 26 years than his predecessors had canonized in the previous four centuries.

Since becoming pope, Benedict has stopped attending the elaborate beatification ceremonies in St. Peter’s Square, the last step before canonization, and has issued a call for “greater sobriety and rigor” in the process. Last week, he replaced the leader of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, an office that fully supported John Paul’s active saint-making philosophy. Vatican-watchers expect the new leader, Archbishop Angelo Amato, to throw more wrenches in the saint-making machinery.

So who need saints, anyway? That’s a question I take personally. Read the whole thing.

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.

I love to post photographs on this blog, particularly from Calabria. Sometimes simple tourist shots tell a greater tale than the best photo essayist. Here’s an example, with lots of photos — a retired teacher and football coach from California sharing highlights from his recent visit to Catania, Sicily. My paternal grandmother, Caterina Foti Catanoso, was from a tiny fishing village, Riposta, located just north of Catania near Taormina. The coach’s photos of the WWII museum remind me of my Uncle Tony’s experiences there in 1943 as part of Operation Husky, the allied invasion of Sicily.

Thanks coach. Buon viaggo.

I have a cousin in Australia — Annette Condello, whose parents hail originally from Calabria and are connected to the Catanoso family tree. I didn’t learn about Annette until after I learned I have a saint in the family. She contacted me by email after the canonization, having seen a story I wrote online. We’ve been communicating ever since; we even talked on the phone a few times. She is a PhD candidate in archiecture and provided much-welcomed research material for me about the great earthquake of 1908 that devastated Reggio and Messina. I was thrilled to thank her in my book acknowledgements — another great gift from this project. A new family connection on another continent.

By the way, Pope Benedict XVI is heading to Australia, which brought this post to mind.

On June 30, 2006, a cousin, Barbara Catanoso, took me to visit the historic fishing village of Scilla, located about 30 minutes up the coast from Reggio Calabria. Padre Gaetano sent his nuns to Scilla a half century ago to open a home for the elderly, which they still operate. Today, the village is among the top tourist destinations south of the Amalfi Coast.

In 1944, during World War II, Tony Catanoso, my uncle, went AWOL from his Army post in Palermo, Sicily, to search for his aunt, Maria Catanoso, in Calabria. There was just one problem. He had no idea where she lived. He deemed his finding her several days later “the first miracle” of Padre Gaetano Catanoso, who wasn’t even a saint yet! This video was shot in Chorio, Italy, and produced by Michael Frierson.

Please see Michael’s other videos on the Multimedia page here.