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I admired the existential faith of my friend, which had very little to do with religion, if with this word we conventionally mean subservience and duty, full of liturgical obligations, to a very powerful and pretentious God, immune from human suffering: it was a faith that he expressed concretely in doing good for others, following the example of his tormented evangelical Master who, according to Vittorio, had spoken about God’s loving feeling in the world. "Of course," he had said to me once, "when a person treads the path of love in regard to one's neighbor, as far as he is able, it is impossible that it doesn’t continue after death, in Eternal Love."

Unfortunately, unlike my friend, I was not and am not a believer; I say unfortunately because, being no longer a young man, I think more often of death and its putrefaction than I did in the past and, if is there is only nothing after our last breath, the tragic futility of life. In any case, it had been precisely this pessimistic feeling that, from a young age, led me to that same desire for justice that drove my friend, even if for me it was a justice that could only be earthly. Convinced as I was that in the cosmic tragedy in which I had a part, complete solidarity between humans was at least indispensable according to the ethos I considered timeless, which every person honors, I had the highest disdain for those who consciously curtailed the gift of life of others, already so brief, and towards violent people in general who caused anguish to human beings during the few years on earth which they were granted.