From 2022 Agnese Pini has directing the National newspaper (the group that brings together The day, the rest of the Carlino and the nation); He has also been appointed president of the Longanesi publishing house. But it is not for his brilliant career that we interview her on Believebut for having told – in the recent book the truth is a fire (Garzanti) – a story that crosses memories and family affections with a labor that has a lot to see with faith. Imagine a 13 -year -old girl who, rummaging in a drawer at home, accidentally discovers a photo album with the word “Don Pini” on the cover and, inside, the photos of a young priest: his father Adriano. Imagine Agnese’s surprise and the waterfall of emotions and questions that such a discovery puts in motion.
Since that distant February 1998 Agnese began to dare on his father (who became a teacher of letters at the Institute of Accounting In Carrara, after leaving the ministry in 1977) and on his mysterious past (“Your secret was for me, for a long time, like a slow dying”, reads the book). As long as the adult Agnese, successful journalist, former author of an autumn of August (Chiarelettere 2023), decides to deal with his history and his family: he retraces the places where his father lived his priesthood and those where he knew his mother, questioning witnesses and acquaintances. And, in the end, he also finds the courage to tell the dad of the book he will write about him.
“Radical choices are complicated, because they question consciousness and even lead to questioning the rules,” Pini tells us. «It is not a painless passage, because the choice is equivalent to a renunciation. By choosing my mother (but the same goes on the contrary), my father gave up many things. There is only a force capable of making you leave everything and it is love: a very powerful force, which frightens, even. And that’s why we tend not to see it. In my book I quote Sant’Agostino who in a homily on the love of God for us (speeches, n. 34) wrote “love does not see nobody”. It is so. There is nothing like the love that manages to question everything. I too tended not to see this love, despite having it under the eyes. Indeed, despite being the fruit of that love “.
(photo above: Yuma Martellanz)
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