Foreign News: Little World of Don Camillo

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Don Camillo Berlocchi, shepherd of the flock in the Umbrian village of Vingone, brooded long and bitterly on the day the results of the Italian elections were announced. All over the land before the voting, "sacred notices" were posted warning Christians that "all are excommunicated and apostate" who support the Reds or "those parties which make common cause with Communism." In parish after parish across Italy the Reds lost strength. Yet in Don Camillo's own village of 400-odd people, the Reds gained. Vingone cast 210 votes for the Communists, only 78 for the Christian Democrats.

All around Don Camillo, the faithless ones who had voted for the party of atheism were busy with preparations for the season's No. 1 feast, the celebration of Corpus Christi. It was the annual great event in many a village like Vingone. Children scoured the hillsides searching for flowers to string into garlands for the streets. Mothers sewed on fancy-dress costumes for the procession of the Eucharist through the streets, while their husbands wielded paintbrush and hammer on the decorations. And lilting in every heart in the village was the thought of the wining, dining and dancing that would follow; in every heart, that is, but the heart of Don Camillo. Instead of joining the festive preparations, Don Camillo posted a notice in the church: "Tomorrow, on the feast of Corpus Christi, the customary procession will not be held in Vingone. Our Lord Jesus would have to pass through streets frequented by more than 200 people who with their anti-Christian votes publicly renounced and trampled upon God, the Church, religion and civilization . . . May God bless the innocent children who with profound love for our Lord gathered so many flowers."

Consternation spread through the village, and soon afterward the news was all over Italy. Quivering with rage, Italy's chief Communist organ L'Unita reprinted the village priest's proclamation under the sneering three-column headline, CHRIST UNDER ARREST, and accused Don Camillo of making Jesus his "private property" and of treating "Corpus Christi like a batch of spaghetti payable in return for the Christian Democrats' vote." Against these fulminations, Don Camillo found himself supported and praised by the Vatican's newspaper Osservatore Romano. Don Camillo, it said, correctly "deemed it improper that solemn homage to Christ should be rendered 'with their feet' by people who reject Him with their minds."