Remembering Maria Clementina of Austria, Queen of the Two Sicilies

24 April 1777 — 15 November 1801

In memory of Maria Clementina of Austria, Queen of the Two Sicilies, we pray for the happy repose of her soul. Viva ‘a Reggina!

Eternal rest grant unto Her Majesty, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Help Save the Robert E. Howard Museum—The Home of a Legend

Photo courtesy of the Robert E. Howard Museum

“Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars…” ~ The Nemedian Chronicles, Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

The Robert E. Howard Museum in Cross Plains, Texas—the humble home where the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane dreamed his immortal worlds into being—is in need of our help. More than a museum, it’s the birthplace of modern heroic fantasy and the beating heart of sword-and-sorcery itself.

For me, Robert E. Howard was one of the great shaping forces of my imagination. Alongside the artwork of Frank Frazetta, his stories fired my adolescent mind as much as the Matter of Britain, the Matter of France, and the ancient myths of Greece and Rome. His heroes were larger than life yet deeply human—fierce, fatalistic, and alive with the tragic poetry of struggle.

If Howard’s work ever stirred something in you—if his tales of courage and doom helped you see the world a little differently—please consider supporting the preservation of his legacy. The house still stands in Cross Plains, but it needs champions of its own now.

For more information, visit https://reh.world/articles/museum/

The Neanderthal in 23andMe

Limestone capital with four heads emerging from acanthus leaves,
Apulia, probably Troia, carved about 1230 by Apulian sculptors
working for the court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1194-1250)

"In 863 a monk named Theodosius wrote of the grandeur of Palermo, describing it as 'full of citizens and strangers....Blended with the Sicilians the Greeks, the Lombards and the Jews, there are Arabs, Berbers, Persians, Tartars, Negroes, some wrapped in long robes and turbans...faces oval, square, or round, of every complexion and profile, beards and hair of every variety of color and cut.'" ~ Excerpt from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label for the thirteenth-century limestone capital (pictured)

Curious about my ancestry, I submitted my genetic material to 23andMe, hoping to learn something new about my biological makeup—and I did, just not in the way I expected.

Growing up hearing how we Southern Italians were part Greek, Jewish, Albanian, Berber, Arab, Black, Norman, Lombard, and every other group under the sun, almost nothing would have surprised me. So when my results came back with virtually none of these disparate ancestries, I was genuinely surprised.

As expected, I was over 90% European, with almost all of my ancestry originating from Southern Italy. I was impressed by how specific some of the regional matches were: Irpinia, the southern Gulf of Naples, the Campanian Valley, Mount Etna, and the Simeto Basin. Missing, however, were my roots from Messina (Gaggi, to be exact) and Lucania (Melfi). Given that I have my great-grandparents’ birth records from those towns, I expected them to appear.

Also unsurprising was that I was nearly 6% Albanian—my late aunt always claimed we were part Arbëreshë. It was the only group from that long list of peoples we were told we descended from by the self-appointed experts who always seemed to know more about us than we did.

Alternate view of capital

A “scientist” friend tells me that anything under two percent is likely just genetic or statistical noise, so I can’t really claim my Maltese, Andalusian, Castilian, or Asturian roots. Still, it’s nice to think they’re in there somewhere.

What disappointed me most was how vague the results were about my non-European ancestry—nearly 7% of my genome was traced to Western Asia. The largest portion, 3.3%, was labeled “Caucasian, Iranian, and Mesopotamian.” That’s a pretty large region to lump together. Is it all three, or just one? I wouldn’t be surprised to have Armenian ancestry, given their Byzantine-era presence in Southern Italy. If they’re even in there, the Iranian and Mesopotamian traces likely go back much further, to the Neolithic and Bronze Age migrations of Near Eastern farmers.

Next came “Anatolian,” at about 3%. Again—where, when, and by whom? The label could refer to Neolithic farmers, early Greek colonists of Magna Graecia, or the later Byzantine reconquest. Which is it?

At a negligible 0.4%, I apparently also have Levantine heritage. However, none of the tested populations from the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, etc.) registered a match. Was this from the same prehistoric migrations, or from later Phoenician or Carthaginian colonization? My guess is the latter, but who knows.

By far the most amusing result: I have 71% more Neanderthal DNA than other 23andMe users. While this accounts for less than 2% of my genome, I prefer to think those genes are dominant. They’re clearly responsible for my toxic manliness, gruff humor, rugged good looks, and, of course, my deep and abiding love for Paleolithic cave art. As we all know, Neanderthals were, as the cool kids say today, base, chad, and fire—which is fitting, since we were striking flint long before Homo sapiens showed up.

Overall, 23andMe left me with more questions than answers.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 13th, Feast of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Simple Pleasures: Rediscovering San Gennaro

I was happy to see an old painting of San Gennaro at the Figli di San Gennaro’s 100th Anniversary Gala, held Sunday afternoon at the El Caribe Country Club. I’d long wondered what became of it after the sale and subsequent destruction of Most Precious Blood Church’s rectory in Little Italy in 2019. Someone told me it was the work of Donatus Buongiorno (1865–1935), though I can’t confirm.

150° anniversario della morte di S.A.I.R. Francesco V Duca di Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, Massa, Carrara, Guastalla, ecc.

In Modena

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein: A Requiem for the Dead, the Damned, and the Neapolitan Dawn of a Monster

Only monsters play God.

It feels strangely fitting that Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) premiered in November, the Church’s month of remembrance for the Poor and Forgotten Souls in Purgatory—and yet, at the same time, it's hauntingly odd that it did not open in theaters on Halloween. Perhaps that was by design. Del Toro’s reimagining is not about jump-scares and shrieks, but a lament for the lost—a requiem for the restless dead. It belongs to November’s cold breath, not October’s masquerade.

Del Toro, a master of the macabre, conjures a world where beauty festers and sorrow gleams. Every shot feels carved from marble and shadow. His creature—stitched together from ambition, grief, and the daemonic impulse to play God—is less a monster than a soul suspended between heaven and hell. Watching him stumble through his creator's ruins is like gazing into Purgatory itself, where love and sin burn side by side in the same flame.

Visually and audibly, the film is a triumph. The performances are uniformly superb, and the sets are grand yet desolate. The costumes seem woven from mourning veils and funeral silks, each rich with texture and sorrowful grace. The score hums with dread and pity, echoing like a hymn from a ruined chapel. Few recent films have looked or sounded so hauntingly beautiful.

There's a striking symmetry—almost providential—in this return to Frankenstein’s origins. Though conceived in Geneva, Mary Shelley’s novel gives life to its eponymous protagonist—the true monster—in Naples (a detail not depicted in del Toro's film), an ancient city where the sacred and profane share the same breath, where death is no stranger, and the stones seem to whisper with ghosts. Shelley was deeply inspired by the city’s vitality and decay, its charnel houses and shrines, its proximity to both beauty and oblivion—and it's said Naples helped influence her vision of life torn from death.

Naples, no stranger to monsters, is even said to cradle the bones—and perhaps the restless spirit—of Vlad Tepes, the Prince of Wallachia, whose dark legend would one day cast the shadow of Dracula. It's a city where resurrection feels possible, even perilous. Del Toro’s gothic sensibility seems to draw from that same well—the city’s volcanic heartbeat, its mingling of death and divinity.

Reanimated across genres and generations, the creature refuses to die

As someone who has loved Shelley’s masterpiece since childhood, I’ve spent a lifetime chasing its many incarnations across screen and shadow. I’ve seen Frankenstein reanimated in every form imaginable: humorous, as in Young Frankenstein; erotic, in Lady Frankenstein; set in the Wild West, in Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter; reborn as kaiju terror, in The War of the Gargantuas (the sequel to Frankenstein vs. Baragon); and rendered with tragic grandeur in gothic science fiction like Bride of Frankenstein.

But none of those countless incarnations prepared me for del Toro’s vision. Though it's not a faithful retelling, his film stays true to Shelley’s original spirit—its anguish, its wonder, its holy terror at the act of creation. His Frankenstein isn't just an adaptation but an exhumation—it digs into myth and memory, unearthing the moral bones Shelley buried two centuries ago.

It might not have been released on Halloween, but perhaps that is just as well. Halloween delights in shadows; Frankenstein listens to the voices that linger within them. In November’s fading light, del Toro’s creature stirs—not to terrify, but to remind us that even the dead dream of mercy and forgiveness.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 11th, Feast of San Martino di Tours

Remembering the Fallen — A Prayer for Veterans Day

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

In honor of Veterans Day I’m posting a Prayer for Deceased Veterans. The accompanying photo of the Sixty First District Memorial was taken at Greenwood Playground, my childhood stomping ground, located at the corner of East 5th Street and Greenwood Avenue, Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. Dedicated on November 11, 1922, the classical bronze relief by Charles Keck commemorates the 47 men of Draft Board District 61 who made the ultimate sacrifice in WWI.

Prayer for Deceased Veterans

O God, by whose mercy the faithful departed find rest, look kindly on your departed veterans who gave their lives in the service of their country. Grant that through the passion, death, and resurrection of your Son they may share in the joy of your heavenly kingdom and rejoice in you with your saints forever. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Il Portastendardo di Civitella del Tronto (n. 53 - Novembre 2025)

Photo of the Week: Detail of Fountain Outside the Basilica di Santa Trofimena, Minori

Photo by New York Scugnizzo

Back Among the Ruins: Reflections After the Woods

“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10

The morning after returning from the woods, the city seemed louder than ever. The subway’s groan, the blaring horns, the reckless scooters careening down the sidewalk, the polyglot chatter of strangers—all of it crashed in at once, like a tide against the mind. After the silence of the forest, the noise felt invasive—almost painful. Yet soon enough, one remembers the rhythm again: coffee, train, work, conversation, distraction. The machinery of modern life resumes its ceaseless motion.

And yet, as much as I love the woods, I cannot leave the city. My life, my work, my duties bind me here. Its energy, its pace, its sheer immediacy still stir something in me—though it comes at a cost. The stillness of the forest lingers only faintly here, often drowned beneath the clamor.

Even so, something within resists. The quiet I found among the turning leaves still rustles beneath the surface, faint but insistent, like a prayer remembered between errands. Once, city life carried a kind of rhythm—hurried, yes, but not yet hostile. It felt alive, not frantic. Now, amid the incessant din, the lurid temptations, the steady decline of living standards, and the increasingly frequent altercations, I find myself asking what it all amounts to.

In the woods, life had seemed ordered—each falling leaf fulfilling its purpose, each breeze whispering of transience and renewal. Here, in the city, we chase permanence through motion, as if busyness could substitute for meaning. But grace, I think, is not found in movement but in awareness—the ability to see eternity flickering even in the mundane.

The saints worked, prayed, and walked among the same noise we endure, yet they carried the silence of contemplation within them. Perhaps that is the task now: to let the stillness of retreat shape the noise of return, to find a chapel not only in the forest but in the crowd. The meaning of life is not hidden in some distant refuge; it waits, quietly, in the midst of our daily grind, asking only to be noticed.

And so, until the day comes when I can retire to the woods, even here among the ruins, the task remains the same—to order life toward the Cross, and to carry its silence within the noise.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 8th, Feast of the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs

Memorie Ritrovate

Narrazioni dal Fondo storico della Biblioteca Civica di Belluno e oltre

A Serene Discovery at Bear Cottage

It was on a quiet day in the woods of upstate New York that we found Bear Cottage—a quaint art studio, antique shop, and Marian shrine tended by a delightful Sicilian couple. Tucked beneath the maple and chestnut trees, it breathed of linseed oil and Sunday ragù, the mingled scents of atelier and hearth.

Inside, the artist’s workshop brimmed with curiosities: portrait paintings, carved figures, and relics of forgotten crafts. Amid the sunlight filtering through old glass panes, one piece caught my eye—a weathered ceramic jug topped with a whimsical cork in the form of a naked lady. Somehow, it felt meant for me.

I left the cottage with my newest addition in hand, my belly full, my heart light, and the lingering warmth of new friends and fading afternoon light among the pines.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 7th, Feast of San Prosdocimo di Padova

Feast of the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs

The Martyrdom of the Four Holy Crowned
Martyrs attributed to Francesco Trevisani

Præsta, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus: ut, qui gloriósos Mártyres fortes in sua conessióne cognóvimus, pios apud te in nostra intercessióne sentiámus. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum. Fíllum tuum. qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti, Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum.

November 8th is the Feast of the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs—Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronian, and Castorius—who lived in Rome during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (early 4th century). These Christian sculptors were commanded to carve idols of pagan gods but refused, boldly professing their faith in Christ. For their steadfastness, they were scourged and put to death.

Renowned as patrons of sculptors, stonemasons, and craftsmen, they embody the sanctification of labor and the courage to uphold truth against worldly demands. Their relics rest in the Basilica of Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome, where they have been venerated for centuries.

Four Holy Crowned Martyrs, orate pro nobis.

In celebration of his feast, we offer this prayer:

Grant, we beseech Thee, O almighty God, that we, who have known the fortitude of the glorious martyrs in bearing witness to Thee, may experience the fruit of their intercession with Thee. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who lives and reigns with Thee In the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.

Remembering King Francesco I of the Two Sicilies

b. 14 August 1777 - d. 8 November 1830

In memory of King Francesco I of the Two Sicilies, we pray for the happy repose of his soul. Viva ‘o Rre!

Eternal rest grant unto His Majesty, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

A Luna Reverie

A Nocturnal Meditation in the Passenger Seat

Homeward I rode as a passenger beneath the cool breath of night, the road winding through hills that once echoed with the tread of wolves. Beyond the misted glass, Luna kept her silent vigil—waning now, yet undiminished in grace. She drifted in and out of veiling clouds, a tenebrous icon of the Morning Star, half-seen, cloaked in incense and candle smoke, her ethereal light falling upon the serpentine road, like the Virgin’s heel upon the head of the primeval serpent.

Immacolata Concezione
by Bernardo Cavallino

I thought of my forebears—the Hirpini, wolf-men of the Campanian Apennines—who knew these same stars, who prayed to older gods before the Cross rose over the Neapolitan hinterlands. Yet even they, I thought, might have bowed their heads beneath such a sky, where the ancient and the eternal commingle.

Luna, mirror of the Sun Divine, thou art the Virgin’s own emblem—chaste and shining not by thine own power, but by reflection of the greater Light. In thee Mary’s mystery abides: the gentle intercessor who gathers the radiance of Christ and pours it upon the darkened earth. As the moon waxes and wanes, so too does mortal life—death yielding to rebirth, shadow yielding to dawn.

Through the windshield’s dim reflection, I beheld her face once more, veiled and unveiled by the coursing clouds. And in that vision there stirred both memory and longing: for the mountains of my progenitors, for the faith that outlives the flesh, for the wild howl of the spirit still running through my veins and echoing through the valleys of Irpinia.

O Luna benigna, pale shepherdess of souls, guide us through the night’s uncertainty. Shine upon the road that leads us home, and keep thy radiant heel upon the coiling dark—until the Sun of the Resurrection breaks anew upon the hills.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 6th, Feast or San Leonardo di Noblac

Red and Blue Utopias: The Mirage of Modern Belief

Meme depicting Trump as "God Emperor"

By rule, I never punch right. But since I’ve long considered myself the furthest right, and most Republicans to be merely less extreme leftists than their Democratic counterparts—progressives with better manners, better hygiene perhaps—I don’t think I’m breaking my own rule by relating this story.

Most of the people I know support Trump in some form or fashion. They view him as the lesser of two evils. They’re not zealots or cultists; they’re simply tired of being lied to, taxed to death, and treated as enemies in their own country. Whatever their faults, they still strike me as normal people—men and women who go to work, raise families, pay bills, and try to keep their sanity amid the noise.

By contrast, the few Democrats I know tend to live in a state of permanent agitation. They’re emotional wrecks—angry and belligerent about everything and nothing. Obsessed with political mythologies, they refuse to let go of narratives long since debunked. I’m not sure what they’re so upset about, considering we live in an overwhelmingly blue city in a blue state—a world of their own making. They just elected a socialist mayor, for heaven's sake. Politics for them has become a substitute religion, complete with saints, devils, rituals, and heresies.

So when, at the Election Day party I attended (even though I don't vote), I finally met him—the MAGA unicorn, the mythical creature Democrats keep insisting represents the norm—I was genuinely curious. This was the deplorable bogeyman they’d been warning us about: the extremist, the fascist, the racist white male. Except he wasn’t white. He was Puerto Rican.

Friendly enough, he was clearly deep down the rabbit hole. What followed was a torrent of fantastical claims so numerous and wild I could hardly keep track. According to him, Trump was on the verge of unveiling hidden technologies, including time travel, teleportation, secret bases on the Moon and Mars, miracle cures to prolong life indefinitely, and even a new monetary system to liberate mankind from debt. In short, “God Emperor” Trump was not merely going to Make America Great Again—he was going to inaugurate a new golden age for homo americanus.

If the Democrats’ ideology revolves around naïve utopian delusions—egalitarianism, climate hysteria, and the dream of global governance—this was their mirror image: a techno-messianic fantasy dressed in red, white, and blue.

Trump as avatar—the incarnation of God, a strain of Esoteric Trumpism that almost makes the mystical Hitlerism of Savitri Devi and Miguel Serrano seem measured by comparison, though not quite as unhinged as those who believed Biden possessed all his mental faculties while in office.

The difference, perhaps, is only in aesthetics. Both sides crave salvation without repentance, progress without humility, paradise without God.

What struck me more than the fantasies themselves was not the absurdity of his claims, but the hunger behind them. He wanted to believe in something greater than the world we’ve made. Looking around, who could blame him?

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 6th, Feast of San Leonardo di Noblac

New Book — Torches Against the Abyss: The Complete Essays of Rev. John A. Perricone

A new title that may be of interest to our readers. Available at Amazon.com

• Torches Against the Abyss: The Complete Essays of Rev. John A. Perricone

Publisher: Os Justi Press
Publication date: Sept. 4, 2025
Hardcover: $39.95
Softcover: $24.95
Kindle: $9.95
Language: English
Pages: 594

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Before the Supreme Pontiff: A Humble Audience in the Vatican

A moment I'll never forget—meeting His Holiness Pope Leo XIV

It was a moment beyond imagining—an audience with the Holy Father himself, within the august walls of the Vatican. For an old street urchin from Brooklyn, it felt like something dreamt, not lived. I have never been one to grow star-struck, yet I confess I was struck dumb by the Pontiff’s serene majesty—an authority not derived from wealth or influence, but from grace. His quiet presence seemed to fill the room more completely than any global technocrat or financier ever could.

My friend John and I at the Vatican,
waiting for our audience with the Pope

In his presence, we felt both honored and unworthy. A handful of us—pilgrims, admirers, perhaps even fawning sycophants—stood before the Vicar of Christ, keenly aware that he had, only hours before, met with kings and ambassadors: His Majesty King Charles, Prime Minister Orbán, and others of global renown. What were we compared to such company? Yet he greeted us with the same gentle courtesy, exchanging small gifts and laughter as if no difference of station existed between us.

He blessed us and our sacramentals with paternal grace. I had hoped to speak to him regarding the suppression of the Tridentine Mass, a matter close to my heart, but in the moment I found myself silent—humbled by the weight of his office and the brevity of our time. Perhaps it was better so. Words, however sincere, could not have rivaled the witness of that same evening, when His Eminence Cardinal Burke offered the Traditional Latin Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica before more than three thousand faithful.

Although I was attending a different pilgrimage Mass elsewhere at the time, I later learned how it moved hearts and inspired souls. Even from a distance, it seemed as if all of heaven bowed low. No audience, whether brief or grand, could surpass such a display of the Church’s timeless and transcendent beauty.

May the Holy Ghost continue to guide and strengthen the Successor of Peter in wisdom and charity, for the good of all the faithful. Vivat Papa!

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 5th, Feast of the Holy Relics 

Review of Gianandrea de Antonellis’s essay on Rafael Gambra’s Quello che chiamano Stato

Gianandrea de Antonellis’ review of Rafael Gambra’s Quello che chiamano Stato (What They Call the State) on altaterradilavoro.com is a model of intellectual engagement—lucid and deeply informed in tone and analysis alike. With scholarly precision, de Antonellis succeeds in conveying both the inner coherence of Gambra’s thought and the abiding relevance of his critique of modernity.

“Gambra was one of the first to understand the link that connected, on one hand, Marxism and idealism, and on the other, fascism and existentialism.”

From the outset, de Antonellis situates Gambra within the great ideological and philosophical struggles of the twentieth century, demonstrating how his thought bridges politics, theology, and metaphysics. Rather than treating him as a relic of reaction, the review presents Gambra as a thinker of surprising modernity—one who, without surrendering to modernism, understood its logic from within.

De Antonellis’s analysis of Gambra’s engagement with existentialism is particularly compelling. He notes that Gambra was not interested in creating a “Christian existentialism,” but rather in “utilizing certain elements of the existentialist reaction within the genuine conception of Christian philosophy.” This distinction, deftly unpacked, reveals Gambra’s originality and the subtlety of his philosophical approach.

The review also underscores Gambra’s engagement with figures such as Camus, Saint-Exupéry, Gustave Thibon, and Bertrand de Jouvenel—a constellation of authors rarely considered together, yet meaningfully connected through his synthesis of moral seriousness and political realism. De Antonellis highlights these influences with admirable clarity, drawing out the threads that link Catholic traditionalism to the broader intellectual currents of Europe.

Equally impressive is the treatment of Gambra’s Spanish traditionalism, particularly his defense of hispanidad as a spiritual and cultural category rather than a purely national one. De Antonellis rightly identifies in this notion the key to understanding Gambra’s vision of a civilization rooted in Christian order and historical continuity—an idea that feels all the more urgent in an age of disintegration and relativism.

Providing the backdrop to these pages, de Antonellis explains, is Spanish traditionalism itself, which toward the end of the book takes center stage. He points especially to four chapters: the acute reflections on patriotism and nationalism, where Gambra rejects the modern and romantic roots of the latter; the contrasting treatments of the “two federalisms”—the traditional form (more accurately called foralism) and the revolutionary, statist one that must never be confused with it; and finally, Gambra’s discussions of liberalism and his reconsideration of Spanish history. In all these reflections, traditionalism is embodied in Carlism and stands firm against the enemies of Hispanic Christendom.

The review closes on a note of moral and cultural clarity: Gambra’s critique of liberalism, nationalism, and statism, de Antonellis suggests, is not a rejection of modernity per se, but a call to recover a sane hierarchy of principles—a defense of the human person and the spiritual dimension of politics.

Beyond its careful exegesis, de Antonellis’s piece also serves as a reminder of the urgent need to make Gambra’s works available to a wider audience. Quello che chiamano Stato, like La Monarchia sociale e rappresentativa nel pensiero tradizionale (The Social and Representative Monarchy in Traditionalist Thought) before it, deserves to be translated into English. Without such translations, Anglophone readers remain deprived of one of the twentieth century’s most insightful and penetrating traditionalist philosophers—a thinker whose critiques of rationalism, secularism, and the modern state speak directly to our own cultural and political crises.

“The timeliness of Gambra’s writing is striking—it triumphantly withstands the passage of time.”

In sum, Gianandrea de Antonellis’s review is more than a summary; it is a learned meditation on the continuity of Christian civilization and the intellectual courage of one of its most faithful defenders. Thoughtful, well-structured, and spiritually alive, it honors both Gambra’s work and the tradition he sought to renew.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 5th, Feast of the Holy Relics

Rafael Gambra, Quello che chiamano Stato, prefazione di Francesco Elias de Tejada, Premessa di Miguel Ayuso, Solfanelli, Chieti, 2025, pagg. 192, € 14,00

Retreat Among the Turning Leaves: Celebrating the Feast of Sant'Uberto di Liège in the Silence of November

Sant'Uberto di Liège, ora pro nobis

Great St. Hubert, you were passionate about the hunt, but when touched by Divine Grace, you laid down your bow and took up the collar of priesthood. Known for your miracles and the conversion of many, you led countless souls to worship and glorify Our Lord. Moved by your example, I implore your help: obtain for me the Grace to follow in your footsteps and become a passionate disciple of Christ. Amen.

A few hours away was all it took to remember how quiet the world can be when left to itself. Upstate, beyond the reach of sirens and the din of digital devices, the woods were already clothed in autumn—scarlet, gold, and rust whispering beneath a pale sun. The air was sharp and honest, filled with the scent of damp earth and fallen leaves, and the silence was not emptiness but presence.

Here, without the noise and the endless commentary of modern life, the soul begins to breathe again. One can think—not in the shallow, distracted way of the city, but in that older sense of recollection, of turning inward. The rhythm of the woods restores a proper order, where all things, seen aright, lead back to God. Watching the leaves fall, I was reminded that every created thing speaks of its Maker, and that rest, rightly understood, is not escape but return—to simplicity, to gratitude, to truth.

Each year, the Feast of Sant’Uberto di Liège—the hunter turned saint—arrives with the first days of November, the month of the Holy Souls. I think then of my father, who was an avid hunter. It is a time when the world itself seems to mourn, and we are called to remember those who have gone before us.

Once a nobleman chasing stags through the Ardennes, Hubert was struck by a vision of the Crucifix between a deer’s antlers, and from that encounter his life was changed. The hunt became a prayer.

I’ve long adopted him—along with Sant'Eustachio—as patron for my father, who spent his happiest hours in the woods. For him, hunting was never mere sport, but communion: with creation, with silence, with the God who speaks through both.

The forest becomes a chapel, the stillness a litany. Every rustle in the underbrush recalls the sacred order of things—man as steward, not master, of creation. In that quiet, my father, and by extension all my ancestors, feel near again. And as I pray for their repose, Sant’Uberto’s lesson resounds: that all pursuits, rightly ordered, lead us back to the Cross—and through it, to the peace of eternity. Evviva Sant'Uberto!

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 4th, Feast of San Carlo Borromeo

The Chapels of Santa Lucia del Gonfalone

While visiting the Chiesa di Santa Lucia del Gonfalone in Rome, I wandered through its interior and paused in the many small side chapels—each a quiet world of its own. The walls were lined with paintings whose authorship is unknown to me: tender Madonnas, stoic martyrs, and scenes of sorrow and redemption rendered in vibrant pigments. In one chapel stood a black crucifix; in another, a white statue of Santa Lucia, serene and luminous against the dim light. At the high altar, an extraordinary icon of the Madonna and Child seemed almost to glow from within. Though centuries old, all these works still breathe with devotion, their beauty softened but not diminished by age.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, November 3rd, Feasts of Sant’Uberto di Liègi and St. Winfred