He was among the hundreds of people who gathered today outside the Church of the Artists in piazza del Popolo for a last farewell a Maurice Costanzothe journalist and television presenter who died at the age of 84. Antonio Buoninconti, 61 years old, he did not want to miss the funeral of the man who – according to him – saved his life in the 80s after hearing his appeal during the “Maurizio Costanzo Show“, whose initials welcomed today the coffin’s exit from the church.
To tell the story of Buoninconti, Neapolitan of origins, is the newspaper Repubblica with the correspondent Romina Marceca who intercepted the man outside the Church of the Artists, visibly moved.
“To that man I owe my life. It was 1984 when – recalls the 61-year-old – I was in the audience of the Maurizio Costanzo Show and I stood up in full transmission. I told him my story. I needed one brain surgery for a tumor but I didn’t have the money and he listened to me”.
At the end of the broadcast Costanzo “put me in touch with a surgeon who made himself available, he too was in the audience like me that evening. He operated on me a few weeks later at San Filippo Neri. I went up and down from Naples. Costanzo paid for the hotel and gave me 500,000 lire“. That evening, however, Costanzo himself begged the man not to advertise his help.
The surgery went well and since then – recalls Buoninconti – he hasn’t had any health problems.