ITALY: Dolci v. Far Niente

Six years ago Danilo Dolci decided to give up studying architecture and do something practical about the poor in Italy. He went back to Sicily's bleak, bandit-ridden "Triangle of Hunger," where he had lived as a boy. There, in the fishing village of Trappeto, with his own meager savings and a few small contributions from outside, he put up a collection of shacks and shanties which he called "the Hamlet of God" to provide shelter for the area's neediest cases. He married an impoverished widow with five children; together they adopted five more childen.

At first government and church authorities...