Carmine Recano in the role of Don Giuseppe, protagonist of “Noi del Rione Sanità”, inspired by the story of Don Antonio Loffredo
«It’s the first time I’ve seen a fiction in my life», he confesses to us Don Antonio Loffredo, the former parish priest of the Rione Sanità who inspired the figure of Don Giuseppe in the Rai 1 series, «and I understood the ability of screenwriters to keep viewers glued to a story. Even I, who lived those events, in their fictionalized version was curious to see the developments of all the characters.” Don Antonio Loffredo, who was parish priest of the Rione Sanità from 2001 to 2022 (later replaced by Don Luigi Calemme), explains to us how many elements of both the figure of the priest and his work in the neighborhood faithfully reflect his story, also because the screenwriters drew from the stories written by his boys and collected in a volume originally titled Vico exclamativo, which is now released in a new guise and with the same title as the series, We at Rione Sanità (with a preface by the archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia), and is published by the San Gennaro publishing house, one of the many initiatives he created within the San Gennaro Foundation (including a gym for boxing, «a request from the kids», explains Don Antonio).
«Beyond certain more fictionalized parts for scenic needs, the series is perfectly faithful to the spirit with which I started the rebirth of Healthcare: my trust in children and the role of an entire community, first and foremost the mothers. It was a complicated neighborhood, but what struck me most was the lack of hope that anything could change and instead we demonstrated that it is possible to do impossible things, and I hope that of the Rione Sanità is a model to be exported to other areas, not just Neapolitan. And this makes me confident in the fact that the Camorra will sooner or later cease to exist, because it carries death inside, and that will destroy it.”
The Rione Sanità has become a tourist destination, thanks to the “La paranza” cooperative, where the kids themselves act as guides (currently 70 are employed), and they have helped rediscover an artistic heritage that had been forgotten, including the catacombs. «We are now carrying forward that same socio-cultural model in the Cathedral of Naples with the Napoli C’entro Foundation of which I am vice-president. The widespread diocesan museum project was born to enhance key places of the culture and spirituality of our city and create new job opportunities, always with the involvement of young people, 60 so far”.
Don Antonio Loffredo had already inspired a character, Don Luigi, in Mario Martone’s film Nostalgia, he was played by Francesco Di Leva, who won the David di Donatello for best supporting actor for the role. «The film was based on the novel of the same name by Ermanno Rea, who was a great friend to me, despite our having opposing ideas. He spent a week at home: he asked me to tell him everything I did for the boys and he told it in his own way in the book. On the contradictions and the great desire to react in Naples, I recommend the RaiPlay documentary I can enter. An ode to Naples by Trudie Styler, Sting’s wife, where we find the true stories of some of the kids from the TV series We at Rione Sanità. Like Enzo Pirozzi, the son of a Camorra member sentenced to life imprisonment. He was one of “my” boys, now he is a director and an actor, and he says: “I haven’t smelled my father for 25 years”, because he visits him in prison, but only by seeing him through glass.”
Thinking of his father, who wanted him to be an entrepreneur like him and who disappointed him when he became a priest at the age of 25, after a restless and rebellious adolescenceDon Antonio says: «After all, while responding to another boss, that is God, I have become an entrepreneur in my own way, in line with that circular economy that Pope Francis spoke about, and which draws on all the resources of a territory to make it grow for the good of all».
