Premier-designate Paolo
Gentiloni has ancestors of Italian nobility that were from the
Marche town of Tolentino,
The town was among the worst hit by two big earthquakes that
shook central Italy at the end of October, two months after a
devastating quake claimed almost 300 lives.
Mayor Giuseppe Pezzanesi said Gentiloni returns to the area
rather often.
The family residence is near St Nicholas Basilica, which was
seriously damaged in the earthquake.
Gentiloni visited the basilica recently and called it "a
world symbol".
The former foreign minister in the government of ex-premier
Matteo Renzi, who resigned last week, has maintained close ties
to the town that was the birthplace of his ancestors, where he
was been granted honorary citizenship last summer.
Gentiloni is a descendant of the Gentiloni Silveri family, on
whom the Duke of Parma, Ferdinand I, bestowed the title of count
in 1778.
The Gentiloni Silveri family has left its mark on Tolentino
in the form of several buildings commissioned over the course of
time by Gentiloni's ancestors, according to the town's website.
Among them are the premier's great-great-grandfather Count
Domenico Silveri, who was a musician and the town's first mayor.
There was also Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni, a trusted
confidante of Pope Pius X and the promoter of a "pact" under
which Catholics voted in 1913 elections.
Gentiloni's great-grandfather Aristide was an archaeologist,
and his father Stefano an engineer who worked on important
buildings including Palazzo Sangallo.
His cousin Francesco Gentiloni Silveri Massi, a former
regional councillor and currently the regional coordinator for
the New Centre-Right (NCD) party, said Gentiloni had "told me
Renzi would become important even when no one knew who he was".
The premier-designate is "thoughtful and open to dialogue",
he added.
"He is a person Italy needs: humble, extremely competent, and
with a balanced character that looks deeply into issues," the
mayor of Tolentino said. "He is someone with a great deal of
culture and suitable for a fundamental role at a very delicate
moment, such as the one those stricken by the earthquake are
going through".
Gentiloni, 62, is a journalist by trade who ran a Green
magazine in the 1980s before becoming press secretary to then
Rome mayor Francesco Rutelli in 1993 and later communications
minister in Romano Prodi's centre-left 2006-2008 government.
He unsuccessfully stood in Democratic Party (PD) Rome mayoral
primaries in 2012.
During his time as foreign minister since 2014, he has
managed sensitive cases such as two marines accused of killing
two Indian fishermen; and the murder of student Giulio Regeni in
Cairo earlier this year.
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