No man in Italy has accumulated more defeats in his life than Falcone. […] Criticized as an investigating magistrate. Criticized as prosecutor in Palermo. Criticized as a candidate for the Council of Magistrates. And he would have been criticized as the national anti-mafia prosecutor as well, if he had not been killed. […] And yet […] every year we celebrate Giovanni’s life as if he had been awarded public recognition or esteemed for his excellence. Another paradox. No man has had his trust and friendship betrayed with greater determination and malice.

These words should never leave our minds. They have never left my heart at any rate. Because it is important to remember what was done to a talented man, and it is especially important to remember him when things go wrong, when you don’t think you can make it, when you have the feeling that the worst individuals always advance, when you’re afraid to step forward for fear of becoming the target of the mudslinging machine. At difficult moments like that I think about the skill and strength of Giovanni Falcone, a man who, despite defeats, despite betrayals, never stopped believing in the power of the law. The dream of a different Italy was the energy that made him feel alive. All the friends and journalists who were close to him say that Falcone loved life, he wanted to live. But he knew that you can only be happy if others can be happy too. And that the law is the only premise for happiness.

7.

Piero and Mina

It may be somewhat unusual for me, but I would like to tell you a love story that got to me, and hasn’t left me. Which is what happens with meaningful stories that you read or hear about.

It is the spring of 1973. A long time ago, before I was born. A girl on an excursion with her parish, a young woman from Alto Adige, gets lost in the streets of Rome, perhaps the biggest city she’s ever been to in her life. She has to get to Piazza Venezia and Campo de’ Fiori, and doesn’t know the way. She sees a gentleman sitting nearby and asks him for directions. The young man is wearing a fringed jacket and has long blond hair. He looks like a hippie. He stands up; he’s very tall, over six feet. He not only gives her directions, but offers to walk her there. She notices that he’s limping and tells him: ‘No need, I’ll find it by myself.’ ‘No, I’ll walk you.’ And so Piergiorgio Welby and Wilhelmine Schett, known as Mina, head towards Piazza Venezia together. On the way, they talk about everything you can possibly talk about in just a few minutes. He, a worldly protester from ’68, has toured Europe, writes and paints. She, a practising Catholic, on a parish trip to Rome. Yet these two worlds, so seemingly distant, come together.