[1] In the 1950s and 1960s, Dolci published a series of books (notably, in their English translations, To Feed the Hungry, 1955, and Waste, 1960) that stunned the outside world with their emotional force and the detail with which he depicted the desperate conditions of the Sicilian countryside and the power of the Mafia.

Dolci became a kind of cult hero in the United States and Northern Europe; he was idolised, in particular by idealistic youngsters, and support committees were formed to raise funds for his projects.

[3] Among those who publicly voiced support for his efforts were Carlo Levi, Erich Fromm, Bertrand Russell, Jean Piaget, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernst Bloch.

[5] Danilo Dolci was born in the Karstic town of Sežana (now in Slovenia), at the time part of the Italian border region known as Julian March.

[6] "I had never heard the phrase 'conscientious objector'", Dolci later said, "and I had no idea there were such persons in the world, but I felt strongly that it was wrong to kill people and I was determined never to do so.

[6] Dolci was inspired by the work of the Catholic priest Don Zeno Saltini who had opened an orphanage for 3,000 abandoned children after World War II.

In 1950 Dolci quit his very promising architecture and engineering studies in Switzerland at the age of twenty-five, gave up his middle class standard of living and went to work with the poor and unfortunate.

[6] 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.

Towns without electricity, running water or sewers, peopled by impoverished citizens barely surviving on the edge of starvation, largely illiterate and unemployed, suspicious of the state and ignored by their Church.

[6] 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.

Dolci started using hunger strikes, sit-down protests and non-violent demonstrations as methods to force the regional and national government to make improvements in the poverty stricken areas of the island.

[1][8] Throughout his career in Sicily, Dolci used methods of peaceful protest, with one of his most famous hunger strikes occurring in November 1955, when he fasted for a week in Partinico to draw attention to the misery and violence in the area and to promote the building of a dam over the Iato River, which roared down in the winter rains and dried up in the nine arid months, that could provide irrigation for the entire valley.

The Palermo court acquitted Dolci and his two dozen co-defendants of resisting and insulting the police, but sentenced them to 50 days' imprisonment (time they had already served) and a 20,000 lire (US$32) fine for "having invaded ground that belonged to the government.

[15] Subsequently, he started a campaign for a dam in the Belice river, to avoid the valley from becoming a wasteland and providing jobs to stop the emigration of workers.

Dolci actively assisted victims and months after the disaster he announced demonstrations and hunger strikes to demand immediate help for homeless families living in tents.

[20][23] On June 21, 1967, the Court of Rome determined that Mattarella had offered reliable evidence of his opposition to the Mafia in the entire course of his political career.

The statements collected by the defendants – Dolci and his assistant Alasia – were considered nothing more than "deplorable gossip, malicious rumour or even simple lies."

With the money he received for the Lenin Peace Prize in 1958, he founded the Centro studi e iniziative per la piena occupazione (Center of Research and Initiatives for Full Employment) in Partinico, the village in the Palermo hinterland that had become his home, and other towns on the island.

[18][28] In his community work Dolci "sought concrete methods of pedagogy and conflict resolution that would pave the way for a fully democratic and non-violent society.

[1] In 1964, Palermo archbishop Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini publicly denounced Dolci and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of The Leopard, as well as the Mafia, for "defaming" all Sicilians.

Ruffini's allegations and their approval by Pope Paul VI[30] could be interpreted as a kind of endorsement for his liquidation and increased concerns for Dolci's safety.

[31] In 1968 Dolci was accused of embezzling funds sent from abroad to help the victims of the earthquake which destroyed much of the Belice valley, though the charges were never substantiated.

His centre sought to produce evidence against a secret NATO submarine base around Maddalena island off Sardinia on the basis that such an installation required Italian approval and control which in this case was apparently granted covertly to the United States Navy.

The last 20 years of his life he disappeared from public view, although he continued to be revered abroad, winning prizes for his poetry, and working as a guest lecturer at universities.