Persona Non Grata
‘By the time I came to Santa Maria there was more for him to worry about than a black market in meat. The whole zone from here to the Po going north and over to Genoa going south – the whole area was like the Far West. A long, guerrilla war; and nobody knowing who was fighting who, and who was in charge. I was living here,’ he tapped the well-worn wood of his chair to indicate the presbytery, ‘taking mass every day in church – but a lot of people knew that I was chaplain to the partisans.’