“Elderly retired school teacher seeks family willing to adopt grandfather. Will pay.”
Lonely Giorgio Angelozzi, 79, published his appeal in the classified pages of daily Corriere della Sera over the weekend, tugging on heart strings across family-loving Italy.
The classics teacher has lived alone outside Rome with seven cats since his wife died in 1992 but on Monday he had received dozens of replies from across the country.
“So many families want to adopt me as their grandfather,” said Angelozzi who promised 500 euros (around $604) a month to the family who took him in. “So many families answered my appeal and want me to teach their children and their grandchildren about Horace and Catullus.”
Among those who responded -- from southern Catanzaro to northern Milan -- was much-loved Roman popular music singer Antonello Venditti, one of Angelozzi’s former students.
“I was not expecting so much warmth, so much interest in my story,” Angelozzi told Corriere on Monday. “But remember that my problem is one that affects so many elderly people in Italy.”
Italy has long been famed for the central role of the family in society. But in recent years, as the divorce rate rises and families move more easily from city to city, elderly relatives are frequently left on their own.
In the record heat of summer 2003, 4,175 elderly people died. Many of them had been left to sweat out July and August in Italy’s sweltering cities where many pharmacies and food stores close down and basic services are cut back