The Friend of the Sick

15 June 1927 saw the first issue of the monthly L’Amico degli Infermi. As a journalist Don Lolli was well aware of the importance of giving a voice to the activity of the Opera, making it known and in a sense celebrating it. It was through this publication that the Opera learned how to tell its story to the city, weaving a relationship that would become ever more intense. With these pages, filled with trust in Providence, with stories, lives of suffering, requests for help, but catechesis and prayers too, a sort of simple, direct evangelisation, Don Lolli gave the Opera a voice and restored dignity to its guests. In part thanks to his unusual literary sensitivity, the “last” became protagonists, as they still are today, for the Amico degli Infermi has never ceased to be published and propagated.
The good Samaritan no longer confined himself to taking care of people, but had found a way to communicate and involve many others in his flight.

“We have created a holy mission of finding our way into the homes of suffering and affectionately reaching out a hand to many people, whom life and the world have abandoned to a sad descent into squalor and tears.”
Don Angelo Lolli
(from the Editorial of the first issue “Amico degli Infermi”)

“Reading Don Lolli’s speeches, his stories of home, the editorials of L’amico degli Infermi, I was struck by his eagerness to make the charity increasingly Operational, and I was moved by his fatherly, unlimited love for the Guests, especially the most wretched in body or mind, those whom he considered the most important graces sent by the Lord to live in his House, always open to the last and least, always growing. His affectionate descriptions, the sense of humour, kindness, patience but shrewdness with which he considered people and facts, make it possible to read, almost without stopping to take breath, the sequence of pages that do such good to the spirit.”
Monsignor Lorenzo Ghizzoni, Archbishop of Ravenna-Cervia
(from the preface to the book Una casa rifugio per gli abbandonati)