Aldo Cazzullo

We all have to face death sooner or later. And you are never prepared. I started reading the Bible at my father's bedside. Reading it, I did not regain my faith, but the more I think about it, the more hope comes to me. It is not only the sacred text of two religions, Christianity and Judaism, and a very important text for Islam as well. Especially in the part of Ezekiel, in the book of Wisdom, there are words of a beauty that send shivers down your spine. And, although it is true that the picture of man that comes out of the Bible is terrible, from fratricide to sexual violence, civil war, incest, there are also the roots of hope, of love, of resurrection.

The best of Italy are the young people who do not whine, get involved, go abroad, learn other languages, study, win scholarships, work. Fabrizia Di Lorenzo's path was interrupted by Islamist terrorism in Berlin; that of another girl of her generation, Valeria Solesin, was broken a year earlier at the Bataclan. But many other Italians will follow their example. Instead of denigrating them, the government would do well to create the conditions for those who wish to do so to return home.

The demand for justice, rising from the families of the victims of paedophile priests in America and beyond, must be answered. And the Church itself in the past has not done everything possible to punish and prevent, sometimes preferring to hush up and cut short. But if there is one Pope who has not hidden in silence and embarrassment, but has strongly denounced crimes and omertà, it is Pope Benedict XVI. His ‘Letter to the Catholics of Ireland' is the most courageous document the Vatican has produced on the subject in its history.

I know Naples well . I frequent it because I like it. It is a city with a very strong identity. On Saturday I was in the historic centre, I visited that marvel of the Veiled Christ for the umpteenth time. But I want to point out a danger: we must be careful not to turn that area of Naples into a showroom, a tourist salon. I do not like oleography, but identity is one thing and oleography another. The historic centre of Naples has its charm because the people are still there. Without the people, it becomes something else. Naples must not lose its soul, it is a danger that I see.

Talking about the Bible today is an act of resistance that is also incumbent on the laity. The most formidable of novels.

(About Jeanne Calment) Born in 1875, she was already a wife at the time of the Dreyfus affair, a mother when General De Gaulle was in primary school, a grandmother before the 1929 crisis. She had evidently taken a liking to it, got into the part: she told of having been at Victor Hugo's funeral, of having known Van Gogh - 'dirty and sickly' -, of having danced with Joséphine Baker. She was given a solemn funeral. The President of the Republic, who was then Jacques Chirac, had sad words for the 'grandmother of the fatherland'.