Diario de un curato di montagna

Father Filippo Lanci's parish is not a parish like any other. Going up the narrow and suggestive roads that cut the slopes of the highest mountain of the "Appennino" chain, the "Gran Sasso d'Italia", in Abruzzo, you can get to Pietracamela, Cerqueto and Intermesoli, small and lonely villages clinging to the rocks and, by now, partially unpopulated. As a matter of fact, after the summer holidays, just few old people and some families keep living in the stone houses and, in the winter, when the level of the snow is high, being cut off is very frequent. Therefore the secular churches get more and more empty, the alleys and the roads get deserted, the pastures and the valleys get silent. The wind rises undisputed from the screes and the slopes, along the gullies and the wooded gorges up to the mountaintops and the peaks, while the tolls of the bell towers scan in the silence the everyday life just like the seasons and the years...