The year is 2002, it’s been six years since the seizure. Dino Mazzorana, at the time interim mayor of Lamezia Terme appointed by the prefect (the City Council had been dissolved due to mafia infiltration), asks Don Giacomo if he would like to take possession of the house that no one wants. Don Giacomo agrees; it’s what he’s been waiting for. He has this community of individuals around him, with families who are unable to take them in, who’ve lost their jobs, who must rebuild their day-to-day lives, who need a place to live. He has people with dystrophy, people with motor impairment, people with cognitive problems. He says yes.

The keys are handed over to him. But as soon as he shows up, Antonio Torcasio (the brother of Giovanni who was killed a few years earlier), recently released from prison, approaches him and says: ‘Either we live here or nobody lives here.’ Because that’s what the mafias do with their properties: when a house is seized, they scorch it, take everything out, from the parquet floors to the door handles. They want to leave it abandoned as a message to the citizens: you see what the government does? It leaves everything in a state of neglect; it seizes property, then doesn’t take care of it. In fact, Don Giacomo says: ‘Each time I went in, something was missing. From radiators to the electrical wiring. One day I saw a Jacuzzi in the bathroom, the next day it was gone.’

Don Giacomo is not easily intimidated, however, and goes to inspect the house to see how he can make it accommodating. A woman calls him ‘a priest sent by the devil, not by God’. There are many changes that have to be made in the house: he must first of all have the architectural barriers knocked down, so he has to look for a construction company, for workers. But no contractor in Lamezia wants to go against the Torcasios who run the cement business. They tell him: ‘Don Giacomo, for you, anything you want. But at the Torcasio place, no. We have families.’ It will take a good seven years to finish the job!

One of the reasons the work is needed is because the entrance to the seized home is common to that of the house where the Torcasios still live: each time Don Giacomo goes there, he has to ring the doorbell of the Torcasios to get in. During one of these visits, he is again threatened by Antonio, who tells him: ‘We’ll blow everything up rather than let mongoloids live here!’ Antonio Torcasio will be arrested for this threat, but then he plea-bargains and will be sentenced to eight months of house arrest to be served in the very home that is six yards away from the community. The ultimate insolence.