Since Chaucer's day, pious pilgrimages have proved remarkably effective as a story-telling device. But no pilgrimage in recent years has been more delightfully hilarious than the one from Munich to Rome (with a stopover in Florence) which Adalbert Scipolt chronicles in Rum, Rome and Rebellion. The pilgrims include an impoverished Baron and Baroness, a schoolmistress and daughter, a religious, but slightly alcoholic maiden lady, a pretty young medical student, several members of the clergy, the tour director and Sister Annaberta. Only someone like Sister Annaberta, on vacation from the orphanage and her beloved orphans, could mistake a Communist demonstration in Florence for a procession in honor of Our Lady. And who but Sister could get lost in Rome, and turn up a day later with a baby girl that she'd rescued from starvation? Much of the charm of Rum, Rome and Rebellion lies in the whimsical drawings of Polycarp Uehlein. No wonder the book is already a best seller on the continent among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.