Video by Michael Frierson, UNC-Greensboro, in Chorio, March 2008

Filmed in Calabria, Italy, just above the village of Chorio by Michael Frierson.

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.

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.

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.

This video was shot in Chorio, a small village in the southern Aspromonte in Calabria. The saint and his cousin, Carmelo Catanoso, who was my grandfather, were both born there. My Uncle Tony is the star of this story. He calls it The First Miracle. It is, without doubt, one of my favorite stories in the book, taking place as it does during World War II — in Chorio. Sticklers should note: this miracle was not vetted by the pope’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

This video was shot and produced by UNC-Greensboro film professor Michael Frierson in Italy last March.