In 1952 Dolci decided to head for "the poorest place I had ever known" - the squalid fishing village of Trappeto in western Sicily about 30 km west of Palermo.
In Trappeto Dolci started an orphanage, helped by Vincenzina Mangano, the widow of a fisherman and trade unionist whom he rescued from penury and whose five children he adopted as his own.