Gentiloni, a nobleman as premier

(ANSA) - Macerata, December 12 - 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.