For Max Laudadio, famous correspondent for Striscia la Notizia, until a few years ago the word “fede” was just the diminutive used in the family to call his sister Federica: it contained no reference to spirituality. Then, to his great surprise, at the age of 43 the light-hearted TV host, as a convinced atheist and not very inclined towards the sacred that he was, met God and began a journey of research that changed him profoundly.
Max embraced the faith when his daughter Bianca attended the parish of Don Silvano Lucioni, to Bisuschio, in the province of Varese. «Don Silvano insisted on meeting me, he kept repeating to my daughter: “I want to meet your father”, but I always refused. When we finally met, he gave me the book For a barefoot Church by Ernesto Olivero, which tells the story of Sermig, the youth missionary service he founded in 1964 to help the poor.”
Max devoured the book, after which he wanted to meet Olivero: «I rushed to Turin to meet him. His energy and faith overwhelmed me: he is deeply convinced that we can walk together to help others. We talked for a long time and that was a fundamental stage in my journey, in my change”, he says.
Today, at 54 years old, Laudadio marks another stage in his journey by publishing the book The Song of the Ants (TS Edizioni), in which he underlines how each of us can write our own song made of gift and action. «In 2017 I was lucky enough to admire the oldest manuscript of the Song of Creaturesthe one preserved in the library of the convent of San Francesco in Assisi. Shortly afterwards they asked me to write this book – on the occasion of the eight hundredth anniversary of Poverello’s poem – but at the beginning I didn’t feel up to it. Subsequently I thought back to the moment in which, with great emotion, I had admired those ancient pages and I felt I had to do so. At that point the title came by itself: since animals are an integral part of the Song, I thought of relating man to an animal, and the first that came to mind, the one that in my opinion represents us best, is the ant. Because we are just like ants: alone we count for nothing, but together we can achieve incredible things”…
Read the complete interview with Max Laudadio in the issue of Credere distributed in newsstands and religious bookshops from Thursday 11 December and in parishes from Saturday 13 December. Or purchase a digital copy www.edicolasanpaolo.it
Credere, the magazine for living the “adventure of faith”
BELIEVE is the magazine that offers you stories, characters and columns every week to inspire faith in everyday life. Already chosen as the “Official Magazine of the Jubilee of Mercy”, it is a newspaper rich in content for the spirit, with many testimonies of famous people and ordinary people and the gestures and words of Pope Francis, closer than ever.
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