If you’ve ever wondered about the connection, your explanation is here, offered by none other than a leading expert on saints, Father James Martin, SJ. The answer to that question is brief, but Father Martin, in this simple and engaging video, shares plenty more of his expertise on this favorite topic of his.

The process of making this video came in two parts. First, Micheael Frierson, a film maker at UNC-Greensboro, filmed me doing a stand up in front of the cathedral in Reggio. I had to just about shout over the noise of the traffic rushing by on the street. There’s a short transition related to the canonization and then, presto, there I am in Rome! This segment was shot on the last night of our stay in Italy last March. It was filmed around midnight and St. Peter’s Square was all but deserted. Laurelyn and Martha, Michael’s wife, were holding a light reflector and boom mic. We were all gibby from a late, wine-soaked dinner and tired from a long train ride that day from Reggio to Rome. We must’ve done 50 takes, laughing through most of them. Somehow, Michael found a take that worked well enough to use.

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.

Justin Cardinal Rigali, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, marks the anniversary of his fifth year in service to the city this week. The story is here. I wonder that if the Italian-American Rigali was named for an immigrant grandfather with the first name Giustino. I was.

A Vatican official said yesterday: “Maybe we need to abandon the habit of issuing apologies and treating history as if it were a court always in session.” The story is here.

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.

This video was shot in March, on location in Reggio Calabria, and filmed and produced by Michael Frierson, UNC-Greensboro film professor.

The Philadelphia Inquirer writes about “My Cousin the Saint” in today’s edition. Religion writer David O’Reilly, whom I met and interviewed with in the Inquirer newsroom on July 25, does an exemplary job. No surprise. He’s among the best religion writers in America.

Excerpt:

So why did his immigrant grandparents never talk about the southern Italy they fled a century ago? Had they left some family secret in the impoverished mountain region of Calabria - a home to the Mafia?

They had, but never knew it.

And it was no dark secret at all, but luminous.

The clan they left behind in 1903 had spawned a holy man, the Rev. Gaetano Catanoso, whom the Roman Catholic Church would proclaim a saint in 2005.

And in the course of discovering his long-lost cousin - a parish priest born in 1879 who grew into what he calls an “ethereal, holy being, so virtuous that he is hailed as a miracle worker” - Justin Catanoso would discover his larger family, his Italian roots, and the faith he hardly knew.

“It was an experience that pulled me into the heart of the family,” Catanoso, now a 48-year-old North Carolina journalist, said during a recent visit to Philadelphia. He recounts his journey of discovery in a new book, My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family and Miracles.

Read the whole story here.

Relics are an important part of the Catholic faith, and an important part of the prayer life of true believers. In this video, shot in Calabria and North Carolina by my friend and filmmaker Michael Frierson, I talk about the relics relating to Padre Gaetano Catanoso. Several sacred relics from the saint were given to me as gifts from my Italian relatives — including one believed to have been involved in a healing miracle in Reggio Calabria

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.