Don Vittone asked a young priest who was a friend of the philosopher to bless him in his place. In reality they talked at length about the nature of the soul and then took leave of friends
CASTELLAMONTE. It is a jokingly curious episode of the summer of 1942, the one remembered by Professor Valerio Giacoletto Papas, essayist and local history scholar, who got to know him directly from the voice of one of the protagonists, his maternal uncle Don Giovanni Capace, well known in Canavese for having founded the astronomical observatory of Alpette, named after him.
At the time of the event, the physical decline of Piero Martinetti had already begun, and Don Domenico Vittone, parish priest of Spineto, felt that it was his duty to make sure that he died in the grace of God. instructions to the sister and the governess so that they would not allow the priest to enter.
Don Vittone, even only aiming at the possibility of giving a simple blessing to the sick professor, asked the young parish priest of Fornolosa, Don Capace, who returned to Spineto every summer and who in the past had been received in the Martinetti house, to try in his turn.
“The philosopher knew my uncle well who, when he was in Spineto, did not fail to go and say hello, receiving as a gift every time fruit and products from the garden of the house,” recalls Giacoletto Papas. “Don Capace, who would soon become military chaplain of Justice and Freedom and would join the Resistance, was a young priest who always had a thousand questions to ask the professor, and who was appreciated for his ironic and lacking way of being of dogmas. Received by Martinetti, he limited himself to questioning him on the nature of the soul and on what Indian metempsychosis really was. Later Don Vittone who asked him how it went and he replied “Ch’as preocupa nin, dun Vitùn, a l’è tut a post: benedissiun a la pià”, when in reality the topic of the Church had not even been mentioned . Apparently satisfied, Don Vittone never returned to the subject. A few months later, the professor’s state of health plummeted and, in March 1943, he died. The funeral procession – concludes Giacoletto Papas – moved from the house to the cemetery of Castellamonte, avoiding, according to the instructions of the deceased, the parish church; Don Vittone, for his part, spread the rumor that participation in the funeral would lead to excommunication. In that surreal atmosphere, the children followed the procession in secret, behind the walls and hedges, spying on the professors dressed in black who had come from the cities. As for my uncle, Don Capace, until he died in 1992, he kept the Spiritual breviary, one of the most read and most loved works by Piero Martinetti ».franco farnè
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