In Italian, when we want to refer to an in-depth knowledge of someone’s life, we use the expression “life, death and miracles”, as if to say that we know absolutely everything about that person. This happens because the Latin and Christian soul of the language allows us to see the life stories of saints as constant role models when looking upon the lives of men and women.
The lives we recount are those of saints whose path to holiness matured at a young age and most often meant a radical break from the rules of the established order, from the schemes in force at that historical moment and represented in some ways a form of rebellion.
How many saints have there been who in their youth abandoned their father’s house to follow their own journey of faith, in spite of the judgment of their superiors and the opinions of others? The awareness of world injustice, the ardor of youth, the quest of the Absolute, the dream of eternal love, the torment of those radical and painful choices which sometimes appear impossible to avoid, are all existential tensions that afflict youth in a universal way.
For these reasons we have conveyed biographies, hagiographies, chronicles and legends using a “rock” attitude. Amazing events, miracles, prodigies, supernatural interventions are all recounted through rock ‘n’ roll and cartoons, trying to show the Saints, for once, equal to other heroes of youth cultures.
The Friar Minor Agnello Stoia, parish priest of the church of the Holy Apostles in Rome, guides us along the way. The Friar’s account represents the main thread of our investigation, namely the canonical elements, the historical facts and the Christian value of the testimony of the Saint of the episode.
Finally, to complete the story, the program presents documentary inserts shot in the places in Italy where the cult of our Saint resides or where his deeds were consumed. Ancient mountains, medieval villages, nature paintings, treasures of art and spirit, the thousand colours of the great Italian beauty are the counterpoint to the words of the Friar and to the drawings that follow his story.
