A packed church in Militello Val di Catania bid farewell to Pippo Baudo, who died on Saturday, August 16, at the age of 89. The funeral of the Sanremo Music Festival host and record-holder, held in the Church of Santa Maria della Stella, was presided over by the Bishop of the Diocese of Caltagirone, Monsignor Calogero Peri, along with the parish priest, Giuseppe Luparello. Pippo Baudo's spiritual director, Father Giulio Albanese, delivered the homily, which was greeted with rapturous applause from the many people who watched the service outside on giant screens and then saluted the coffin.
In the front row are his children Tiziana and Alessandro, who arrived from Australia.
The ceremony began with the Madonna della Stella polyphonic choir singing "Eccomi." Then, the bishop of Caltagirone, Calogero Peri, began by wishing Pippo Baudo "may he shine not only in the firmament of men but in the firmament of God, where one shines only through the concrete love received and given. Because only love endures and lasts forever."
The homily: "He always happily entered the homes of Italians."
"We are here to pay our last earthly farewell in the light of the faith that unites us," said Don Albanese in his homily, recalling the "seeds of goodness that he sowed in his life." Pippo " always happily entered the homes of Italians," and we We must not experience this moment as a separation with no return, but as a farewell in the hope of resurrection. We are in his homeland, and the welcome given to Pippo tonight was moving, concluding his earthly journey in the land of his birth. In a society like ours, often polluted by so many viruses, his conduct on many occasions affirmed goodness, generosity, and the gift of himself to the poor. He often told me: success—and he had plenty of it—is not enough to fill the heart, it is not enough to make people happy.
The spiritual father: "The last days of great suffering"
" These were weeks, especially the last ones, of great suffering. He was on morphine, but lucid, and for him, in any case, it was a time—these are his words—of purification, of liberation ." Father Giulio Albanese said this outside the church: "Pippo told me to remind his children that he loved them. He constantly repeated it to me: 'Perhaps at times I struggled to be direct and explicit, but one thing I can say: I have always loved my children.' " The reason Baudo wanted to return to Militello, he explained, was because "his roots are here, and he expressed a debt of gratitude to this city that not only gave him birth but also shaped and formed him in terms of values. And he has always been proud of this."
(Unioneonline/D)