Evangelist

Giorgio Torelli, aged 95, has moved to the editorial staff of Cielo. Journalist, writer.
Indeed, evangelist. Because if the Gospel is "good news" and the four ancient storytellers have precisely that title, Torelli is one of our times, having chosen for himself the role of hunter of good news.

To say: he discovered and flaunted to the world Dr. Marcello Candia, a Milanese industrialist who placed his (much) money at the complete disposal of poor Brazilians, building an Amazonian hospital, treating lepers at home, finally donating everything he had to missionaries of St. Camillus de Lellis.

He narrated it in the famous and highly reprinted book From rich that he was, an extraordinary reportage of hope and generosity and pure faith.
«Candia Marcello – Torelli rod in affectionate admiration – Milanese, thickset, tall, inexhaustible talker, grind of hard work, nerd of the holy faith, stubborn, walker who never looks back».
Torelli unveiled Candia to the world, then sharing the strenuous battle for the last of the last in Macapà, in the Amapà region, in the Brazilian Northeast, in that corner of the Amazon where a hospital with 150 beds and 4,800 admissions has sprung up from nothing annually, 28,000 outpatient visits.
But he was not satisfied, Giorgio Torelli who «parmesan cheese from the plains – in his words – a long-distance journalist, lives in Milan with his wife and children, while his mustaches turn white, he is keen to say, as far as he is concerned, that the Kingdom of heavens is always news". Thus, between newsrooms, flights and long stays in Amazonia and Africa, he went to track down the men and women who put on and no longer put off the Kingdom of Heaven, showing in word and deed how much the Gospel is possible, and therefore obligatory, for anyone who wants to keep the all-encompassing following of the carpenter of Nazareth finished nailed to a cross.

He narrated other Candias, who wear themselves out on the four sides of the world, in the dust and mud, in the name and on behalf of the merciful Eternal Father, Samaritans in effective permanent service, a scandal for self-styled right-thinking and long-time selfish people. He wrote so much, Giorgio Torelli, right up to the end, increasingly white moustaches, pipe drawn, the family circle, Candia Marcello was Camillus in heavenly sanctity and in the form of a stony statue on the Milan cathedral. He spread good news, without ever getting tired.
Parmesan evangelist with a "direct line to the boundless paternity of God".

Renzo Agasso
NP May 2023