of several companies. During these years, he reaches the most remote suburbs of the city with his “flying church”, a second-hand Austin car he had acquired when the Allies departed from Naples. He converted the boot of the car into an altar for Mass and a puppet theatre to teach catechism to the children. In 1949, he was appointed to teach religion at the Jacopo Sannazaro High School of Naples. With his seminary companion, Father Ciccio (Francesco) Spada, he decides to carry out an enterprise among the street children, commonly called in Naples “scugnizzi” (street urchins). «...how does the street urchin live? The essence of life is the gang. Six, seven, eight and in some cases up to twenty youngsters organized in a gang with a leader. A leader who has been able to impose on its own in perfect style with the wild. The rules of the street can be considered a subchapter of the rules of the wild.» Mario Borrelli, Marciapiedi, Edizioni La Meridiana, Molfetta, 1995. The venture among the street urchins of Naples The “street urchins” in Naples at the end of World War II were abandoned children because of war or whose fathers had returned to the US or the UK. They had a precarious survival with no homes, regular source of food, no education and no adult figures to provide care and support. The schunizzi were generally reviled because of their thieving and disreputable habits. Father Borrelli realised that the apparent delinquency was driven out of desperate need. He obtained permission by this superiors to dress like a street urchin and, at night, mingled with them, sharing their life and misadventures in the street for four months. In the meantime, Father Ciccio Spada and the other priests of the Comunità Piccola Opera di Materdei organized a provisional dormitory in the small deconsecrated church of San Gennariello, with the hope that Father Mario can convince the street urchins to find shelter there, at least for a night. During one of these nights as a street urchin, Father Mario revealed his true identity to the gang and succeeded in bringing the street urchins to the dormitory of San Gennariello. In a few months, hundreds of youngsters are housed in the structure that will soon to become the Casa dello Scugnizzo (The House of the Urchins), a community more than an orphanage, where nobody is forced to stay