Travel & Leisure: the Alberione edition

Dad, the armchair traveler, goes places via Travel & Leisure magazine, with its lovely photos and engaging write-ups. He tossed me the September issue because the cover picture looked like Italy. It was. In fact, it was the Piemonte region, where my congregation was founded and all of its first members were born. I flipped to the article, which was a gastronomic tour of Piemonte (the link is to a similar website), and found that the writer had visited places I have heard about since my entrance: Alba (famous for its white truffles), where we were founded; Cherasco, where Father Alberione's family moved when he was two, and where he climbed the steep hill every day to go to school; Bra, known today as the birthplace of the "Slow Food" movement, but first known to me for the Shrine of Our Lady of the Flowers, where Mama Alberione brought her ailing baby to consecrate him to the Blessed Virgin who had rescued a young mother in the 14th century from the threatening advances of mercenaries along the wooded roadside. For the full story in Italian (with a couple of pictures!), click here.