Andrea Purgatory died at the age of 70 from a “full-blown” disease. Goodbye to the voice of the free press

Shield his last steps with silence. A bad prognosis foreshadowed the worst, and he suddenly closed contact with everyone, reinforced by the embrace of his three sons. So his life was shattered Andrew Purgatory, today a famous face of La7 with Atlantis but for nearly half a century a reporter on race, investigative journalist for Corriere della Sera who got into it very young after a Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia University in New York, author of film, films, documentaries and talk shows. The director, screenwriter, as an author is committed on all fronts of the show. Andrea Hoss had an obsession: “Seeking the best possible version of the truth.”

Andrea Purgatory, horrific illness and death in hospital. He disappeared and turned off all the phones.

A line of conduct made by time and experience a master, timid, outspoken, and hostile to the easy heroines of fame, always determined to seek facts as they happened rather than as fit to tell them. There was in him an obstinacy that was never ostentatious in the search for evidence, fueled by the conviction that a trade must have the courage imposed by circumstances even when the subjects were Mafia members, terrorists, and criminals who could not afford intrusions. care of sources, always keeping out of drafts, strength to toil day and night on the most impregnable and dangerous paths, rigor and manners which can make one smile for how moody and without nuance.

mockery

But also sarcasm sometimes tinged with irony against clichés and certain stereotypes of the trade, dark circles shattered from indomitable restlessness, hair tousled as if from gusts of unwise wind, cigars, half-Tuscan, perhaps extinguished to play. With lips, hands and a lot of cigarette smoke as an inseparable companion of a lot of work-related stress. On television he appeared scowling, even angry, almost menacing in presentations for episodes of Atlantis, a format that perfectly mirrored his method of journalistic work, with a straight back, with a respectful sense of all ideas so long as they were expendable in the face of facts.

writing

Andrea was an uncomfortably sweet fellow, always around, gifted with a wonderful memory, generous with others, and much less with himself. He had a writing dry, nervous, full of references, never pompous or complacent, aimed at hitting the target that is the heart of the news, often of scoop: hundreds of articles bearing his signature are enclosed in the collections of the Corriere della Sera where he and I worked opposite each other for twenty years.

Granite

The Ustica massacre with its secrets and mysteries and the rubber-granite wall of the army, the Moro affair with all its infinite ramifications, the Magliana gang and its complicity up to the Vatican, then the horrific season of mafia massacres, the assassination of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the indescribable web of silence and complicity wrapped in the cloak of mysterious forces: a fan entwined with the recent history of our country, entwined with blood, chills and complicity in which Andrea Purgatori lives as a witness He spent his time, dedicating the most fruitful and committed part of his career.
The intense and supervised sobriety with which this Italian journalist lived and practiced contains risks, when recounted, of some exaggeration or accentuation caused by the pain of mourning. Because a great journalist has left us, that’s for sure. In any case, his scholastic curriculum, cut short at the age of seventy by a fierce and hasty illness, bears witness to a red thread of civic commitment which gives this profession, even sometimes justly mistreated, a value that becomes an indispensable guarantee of legitimacy.