 I started working with masons and peasants, who kindly, gently, taught me their trades.That way my spectacles were no longer a barrier.Every day, all day, as the handle of hoe or shovel burned the blisters deeper, I learned more than any book could teach me about this people's struggle to exist..."

In Trappeto Dolci started an orphanage, helped by Vincenzina Mangano, the widow of a fisherman and trade unionist whom he rescued from penury and whose five children he adopted as his own.