A monthly magazine about family lineage offers a blurb about My Cousin the Saint in its January 2010 issue. Not too late to make it a Christmas present! Click here.

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

As part of this virtual book I’ve been on the last couple of weeks, I have a guest post at the blog Catholic Dads. The link is here. I appreciate the invitation!

Adam Sobsey, a talented book reviewer for The Independent, an alternative weekly in Raleigh, N.C., reviews My Cousin the Saint in this week’s paper. The review is here. An excerpt:

“Although Catanoso often shows us his skeptical-journalist card (he’s a Pulitzer nominee and the executive editor of the Triad’s Business Journal), the combination of his ardent earnestness and his felicitous discoveries mark him as a man who wants very much to believe—partially for the very reason that he seems to keep finding only good news everywhere he looks. Even when people close to him die, there’s uplift at the end.”

As I receive reader feedback, I am hearing that book clubs are reading My Cousin the Saint. That’s wonderful! To help with the discussion that is the heart and soul of every book club (until it veers off into good friends catching up with each other’s lives!), here is a set of questions to consider:

1.      How would you describe southern Italy at the turn of the 20^th century? How did Catanoso’s description of the land, the long history and the people surprise you? What role did those conditions play in the “great wave” of Italian immigration to America between 1880 and 1920?

2.      The central characters in Part I are cousins Gaetano Catanoso, the eventual saint, and Carmelo Catanoso, the author’s grandfather. How does the tenor of the times influence both men as they pursue their own profound, interior callings?

3.      My Cousin the Saint is divided into three parts – Faith, Family and Miracles. Each part begins with a short miracle story. How do those miracle stories set the tone for the chapters to follow in each part?

4.      Why does the Catholic Church, which has been doing so for 2,000 years, name saints? What is your reaction to the intricate, complex nature of this process?

5.      Pope John Paul II is still criticized by some for naming so many saints. This point is addressed in the book. Do you believe the criticism is fair?

6.      If you learned you had a saint in the family, someone whom the Vatican declares has actual miraculous powers, what would you pray for?

7.      Did reading this book temper your views on the Catholic Church or Catholicism?

8.      A central theme of Part I is America as a land of opportunity, and of biases and prejudices against recent immigrants. How does this story illuminate the current controversy over legal and illegal immigration?

9.      Catanoso, a lapsed Catholic, returns to church following the canonization of his relative and eventually comes to see that being lapsed, skeptical and doubtful is far more common in the church than he imagined. How does this story prompt you to reflect on your own faith or lack thereof?

10.  Catanoso goes off in search and faith and finds his family – scores of them in another country, most of whom don’t even speak English. It was almost as if they had been expecting him for 100 years. How much do you know about your own family history? If you connected with long-lost relatives in another place or country, what would expectations be? Is this something you would like to do?

Enjoy the discussion!

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.

On this day two summers ago, I met my great Aunt Maria Portzia Catanoso, in a manner of speaking. She was my grandfather’s sister, the only member of his family to not emigrate to the United States in the early 1900s. She stayed behind in the village where she and her two brothers were born, Chorio. That remote mountain village is also the birthplace of their cousin, Gaetano Catanoso, who became a saint.

On June 18, 2006, I traveled up to the cemetery on a hot day with my cousin Daniela and my friend and translator Germaine. Daniela was leaving flowers on the above-ground grave of her mother, Pina, who had died the previous fall. I was stunned by what I saw. Catanosos on nearly every row of place, dating back years and years. Presumably all relatives in some form or fashion, but lives lost to me forever because of immigration divide. So much unknown history. My heart ached for this knowledge.

This cemetery, high on a hill in the Aspromonte, surrounded by fig trees and olive groves, is a fascinating and peaceful place. Land is too scarce and the soil too rocky to bury anyone. Instead, the departed are stacked in these vaults. I knew my great Aunt Maria was there somewhere, and I wandered the rows until at last I found her. I was years late, of course. She’s been gone for 50 years. But my Uncle Tony, in one of my favorite stories in my book, found his Aunt Maria in Chorio during World War II. It took remarkable luck to find her and meet her. But he doesn’t look at it that way. He calls it a miracle. The first miracle of a future saint.

Hi. I’m Justin Catanoso, and I am excited to share this video in advance of my book’s North American release next week. The video was shot two months ago in Reggio Calabria in southern Italy at the church of Padre Gaetano Catanoso, my cousin the saint. It was shot by my good friend, Michael Frierson, a documentary filmmaker and professor at UNC-Greensboro. I will share more video with you as we produce them.

I hope to use this blog to discuss the thoughts, issues and emotions raised in my book regarding faith, family, immigration, Catholicism and miracles.