This is the story of a girl named Angelina LoDico, who in 1921, at the age of 21 years, arrived from Sicily, to teach in an elementary school in southern Italy. She was sent to cover a temporary post in Pisticci, in a community known as Tinchi-Caporotondo. She was a young teacher who left her homeland, to teach in a marshy place, where reigned many illnesses. She taught her students many things, even how to live one’s life each day based on the Christian teachings. She taught, based on the highest virtues of being a Christian. In the years of her extraordinary presence, she decided there was a need to erect a small chapel in Tinchi. Built by herself and her little boys who loved her, Angelina realized that there was really a need for a place of worship in Tinchi-Caporotondo, where everyone could stop to pray.

She diligently attended Mass each day at the Chiesa Madre or convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Pisticci. She also visited many local families who had difficulties in traveling to Mass or hearing the word of God. To enable the inhabitants of Tinchi and other districts, to participate in the joy of the Holy Mass and have a place of worship, Angelina set up a provisional chapel in a stable, in an old abandoned farm and obtained an altar which was consecrated by the archpriest Don Vincenzo Di Giulio, who was pleased that his people participated in the Mass.

For the construction of the small chapel, the entire township offered a valuable contribution and all kinds of help, selling fruit, eggs, and wheat. It was an entire community that now wanted to build this House of God, in the deserted wasteland of this poor southern Italian region. Her pupils worked in the morning, bearing bricks and sand. The Chapel, which would be called Christ the King (Cristo Re), was now a reality.

Angelina did not betray her joy; noting on the school register that: “This day will be memorable for the young of this school. Finally the much awaited Chapel is no longer a dream, but sweet reality. All are happy. In their faces are the joy that palpitates in their hearts, seeing the sweat on their crowns, or the carrying on their shoulders a big stone, every morning, or coming to class with their faces red and sweaty, happy, and a bunch of wheat collected, coming to school.”

Eventually the Chapel was opened for worship on Palm Sunday in 1929 with a solemn and long procession that crossed the nearby towns of the countryside, between songs and prayers. Angelina was always an exemplary teacher, who wanted to devote her life to God, “brotherhood”; and the true teachings of the Franciscans and their missionary work.

Angelina later fell ill with tuberculosis and was forced to leave Tinchi and return to Marianopoli where her condition was aggravated further, until death took her. She died in a State of Grace (Fama di Santità) at the young age of 33 years, on the night of the 4-5th November 1932, clutching the Crucifix in her hands and kissing it.

On the day of her funeral Father Luciano Vullo spoke these beautiful words: “Her heart’s burning desire and her mind’s ideal was to make the world more religious before she left it. She was not able, fully, to put into effect this one desire. A thousand obstacles prevented her, and they remain in the middle of this world, never of her world. Her spirit and body is consecrated to God.”