Don Ettore believed that the case was a hoax. The five trials that came of it resulted in several convictions, but they never proved anything except for the existence of an ancient war, now being waged on the backs of children, by the state against the church. Emilia Romagna represented the ideal place for such a clash, according to him, because past Communist administrations had infused an insensitive anticlerical ideology into the region’s welfare and social services systems.
