Pippo Baudo, the funeral in Militello: “For us it was what Maradona is for Naples”

After the burning room in Rome, which for two days saw the moved tribute of colleagues, friends and fans, Pippo Baudo returns to his Sicily. In Militello in Val di Catania, The Baroque village that saw him born 88 years ago, today Baudo’s funeral are celebrated, The king of Italian television. The ceremony will be held from 4 pm in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Stella, not an ordinary church: here Baudo He had done the clerics And as a teenager, he had taken his first steps on the oratory stage.

The country for six thousand inhabitants on the slopes of Etna has proclaimed the city mourning. In Piazza Municipio a giant screen was set up to allow everyone to follow the ceremony. Expected friends, colleagues, relatives, but above all the community that Baudo has never abandoned: in Militello He continued to vote, he returned to the patronal feasts, and he loved to get lost in the alleys of his childhood in the evening, They tell friends.

“For us Pippo was what Maradona is for Naples,” The mayor Giovanni Burtone recalled. A constant presence, every corner of the country retains a memory. And again: the school performances, the first narrator improvisations, the piano that twenty years ago gave the sanctuary where the funeral will be celebrated today. “He was a man who did not forget,” continues Burtone, “the truth is that Pippo has never gone away”.

In these days, at the Teatro delle Vittorie, colleagues and friends they wanted to deliver the last memory. Michele Placido He spoke of his “tender curiosity”, Ambra Angiolini He thanked him for “putting it back on track when he needed it”, Giorgio Panariello He called it “the patron saint of the variety”. Fiorello He greeted him as “a pride for our island”, Carlo Conti he said that he “turned off with him”, while Amadeus He called him “unrepeatable”. Lino Banfi He tried to play down, remembering the legendary “4 B” – Banfi, Baudo, Berlusconi and Bergoglio – confessing with melancholy that now “he has remained”. But it is the unpublished interview published by Heather Parisi who returns the most intimate humanity of the conductor. Sitting on the sofa, lying and barefoot, Heather challenged him lightly: “Ask me everything, how we were on a psychiatrist’s bed”. Pippo smiled, open and disarming. He confessed his fear of “disappearing”, not to leave a mark: “I am worried about the idea of no longer being there … I would like to return to the form of a butterfly, the beautiful colorful ones “. And he drew his tv ideal with simple words, far from vulgarity: “A wrinkle is a sign of time: those who age with you wants you better”.

Today, however, the final applause is here, in the alleys of Militello. Where Pippo is not only the king of television: he is, and he will remain, one of them.