Letter to a great journalist who lived 85 years

Dear Franco, it is hard for a layman to believe, but I hope that from the heavens above you will be able to read these lines, a tribute to your professional and personal life. You represented, for those who knew you, an example of ability, commitment, rigour. But above all, as a rocky Calabrian transplanted to Milan, you were living proof of how the most important choice, as a journalist and as a man, is to put a virtue first: knowing how to keep your back straight even in difficult moments, which sooner or later always come.

Life is often a torrent and there is no time to devote to too many people. For me, despite this, you have always been a point of reference, even in the 18 years you spent as president of the Lombardy Regional Order, through seven elections. I will miss your phone calls, which certainly became less frequent during the years of your illness. But, at least at Christmas, they were an unmissable appointment. And now that you have come to the end of your rope, I will have to resign myself to no longer counting on you.

You have held high the flag of a profession, that of journalist, which for us has always been the most beautiful and rewarding profession in the world. On one condition: avoid being turned into pen-pusher. We will remember of you the experience of a judicial reporter of yesteryear (who knew the law like few others), the attachment to the flag of Il Sole 24 Ore (and previously of Il Giorno, for you a training ground for journalism with editors such as Italo Pietra, Gaetano Afeltra, Guglielmo Zucconi), the absolute determination to fight private interests in acts of office, the necessity of the distinction between the sacred and the profane (putting the reader in a position to understand when the sirens of publicity break the banks), the categorical imperative represented by the protection of the secrecy of sources (to be considered an absolute value, even beyond criminal law).

You have always been on the side of the young, who have been the strength of your leadership, against the bureaucrats of the profession. Generations of practitioners have studied from your manuals. Until the last minute when you were in a position to do so, you informed us with a formidable newsletter, documenting the facts and misdeeds of journalism. I am proud to have had your esteem and respect over many, many years. I like to hope that you, an old-fashioned socialist, are running to other meadows. Perhaps continuing to teach law and journalism.