AN 80-YEAR-OLD retired teacher who lives on his own near Tivoli has put himself up for adoption as a grandfather.
Giorgio Angelozzi, whose wife died 12 years ago, is even prepared to contribute €500 (£335) a month, one third of his pension, to a family prepared to welcome him as one of his own. He placed an advertisement in newspapers and says that he has been inundated with inquiries.
Signor Angelozzi, who lives in the hilltop town of San Polo dei Cavalieri, said that he had “had enough of solitude” and could be “socially useful” by serving as grandfather to a family that did not have one.
After his wife died, his only daughter, Loredana, joined the charity Médecins sans Frontières as a doctor. “I think she is in Afghanistan at the moment,” he said.
Signor Angelozzi taught Latin and Greek for 40 years at the Julius Caesar Lyceum, one of Rome’s top secondary schools, until 1991.
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He now spends his days with his seven cats listening to Liszt and Chopin. “When the heat goes out of the sun I take a chair into the garden and sit in silence with my thoughts,” he said.
His advertisement pointed out that he could help to educate children or grandchildren in the family. “Loneliness is a kind of illness,” he told Corriere della Sera. “Everyone needs contact with other human beings.”
Signor Angelozzi’s plight has highlighted a growing problem in Italy, which has one of Europe’s lowest birth rates. More than ten million Italians are aged over 65 and three million of them live alone.
Eurispes, a social research institute, estimates that the number of over-65s will rise to 15 million in the next 20 years. Fabrizio Caccia, a writer on social issues, said the traditional image of the Italian family was of a closely knit network uniting all generations, with grandparents valued and included.
But “the pressures of modern life” meant that the fate of elderly people in southern Europe increasingly resembled that of their counterparts in northern Europe. Divorces and separations have risen by one third in Italy over the past ten years, leading to a breakdown of family ties.
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According to one recent study, elderly people in Italy spend six hours a day in front of the television, one of the highest figures in Europe. Signor Angelozzi preferred to listen to music or enjoy the fresh air of the hills of San Polo dei Cavalieri, noted for rare orchids and its medieval castle, once a stronghold of the Knights of St John in Malta. But he was lonely.
“Mind and body are intimately linked,” he said. “When the mind suffers, so does the body.” He had developed a tremor in his hands, but doctors had said that he did not have Parkinson’s disease. “It is simply not having anything useful to do,” he said.
“In the evening of your life you start to age — but that is not the end of dreams and desires. You tire more easily, but you still have a contribution to make.”
His motto is Quidquid calcaveris rosa fiat: “Wherever you tread, a rose will bloom.”
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