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HEAVEN AND EARTH

In the autumn of 1935, an Italian peasant girl named Teresa Vannucci saw vision of the Virgin Mary. These were followed by a miracle which returned to a little paralysed boy the use of his limbs.
Don Ardito Piccardi, the parish priest who had assisted Teresa, and by means of whom the miracle was achieved, was shot by the Germans eight years later, saving by his death a group of young partisans. Heaven and Earth tells in fictional form the life-story of this priest. It starts with his death, his ultimate act of humanity, and reconstructs from its beginnings a life that can be described only as that of a saint. And with it comes an insight into aspects of life in Italy whose harsh realism is very far removed from her art and museum culture.
Carlo Coccioli claims that this story is authentic. It is based upon documents, accounts and opinions collected from people who knew Don Ardito during his life. Up to the performance of the miracle, and its shattering repercussions, told here with a dispassionate truth that dispels any possibility of distortion or superstition, he works as a young priest in the mountain village of Chiarotorre. Afterwards, during Italy’s most difficult period of the war, Don Ardito lives a public figure and theologian. Finally, he returns to take up again the duties of parish priest of Chiarotorre, which is now under the command of the German army and a focus of partisan warfare.
From the evidence collected, with its original variety of attitudes towards the priest, the personality of Don Ardito emerges with an astonishing unity and clarity. To all he is a man apart, even aloof, dedicated to his religion, and yet the hub of all those lives that revolve around his own. Constantly aware of the antithesis between the sacred and the profane ways of life, and the struggle within himself between good and evil, Don Ardito is at first almost inhuman in his attitude to human suffering. Only gradually, and at great cost, does he grow to realize more tolerant and truer relation between suffering and love; a balance, that is to say, between the claims of Heaven and those of the Earth.