Fra Biagio Conte, lay founder of the Catholic church's youngest order, the Missionaries of Charity and Hope, says he is leaving Palermo hurt and disappointed because of what he calls the city's obstruction of his plan to help unfortunate people. Biagio Conte and his colleagues, guest "brothers and sisters,"an army of volunteers and benefactors house and feed a thousand indigent homeless people a day in now four urban centers and on at least four farms where homeless men and women raise food, including wheat that is ground into flour and baked into bread and pasta by other homeless people. He also makes sure the homeless he shelters have medical help, job training, and love, welcome and dignity. He was trying to raise enough enough money to buy a plot of land adjacent to the main mission where homeless men learn professional skills like metalworking, carpentry, pottery ( especially for the handicapped) and cooking. A supermarket chain had bought the land to build a superstore, but when Biagio protested they agreed to sell it to him at their cost if he could raise the money in a month. He apparently could not and now threatens to leave Sicily and walk around the rest of the world carrying his wooden crucifix. I do not know how the city government figures in all this.
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