Italy – The book "don Alberto Maria De Agostini, the last explorer of the end of the world" presented at Turin book festival
Turin, Italy - May 2023 - Presentations of the volume Don Alberto Maria De Agostini, l'ultimo esploratore della fine del mondo 1883-1960), edited by Francesco Motto (LAS 2023), continue. After the national presentations in November in Padua and in March in Rome, and abroad in Patagonia (Rio Grande) in April and Buenos Aires on May 6, a presentation took place on May 22 at the prestigious "Salone del Libro" in Turin; specifically in the booth reserved for FUIS (Federazione Unitaria Italiani Scrittori). Presented by the Federation's President, Natale Rossi, the following spoke: Prof. Nicola Bottiglieri of the University of Cassino, writer and lecturer in South American literature, Dr. Daniela Berta, director of the Mountain Museum in Turin, and Prof. Silvano Oni, lecturer in history at the Salesian University, Turin section. Each speaker, from his or her particular point of view, emphasized some particular aspects of the multifaceted figure of Father Alberto De Agostini, who made the Antarctic’s nature known in Italy in the first half of the 20th century through books, photos, and films on the flora, fauna and Fuegian Indians. To the south of the south, almost off the map, still in the first decades of the 20th century, there existed a world that few people knew about and few or no one had ever stepped on. Fr. De Agostini, or Fr. Patagonia, as he was nicknamed, made it known in words, images, and sounds. The figure of the Salesian, well known in Argentina and Chile, is less so in his homeland, Italy, and the volume presented aims to revive his memory, also in the perspective of the 150th anniversary of the first Salesian missionary expedition to Latin America (1875-2025).