"As I entered a new century and elementary school, precisely in 1901, my father hired me to work with him as a bricklayer in my free time and summer holidays. I remember earning 5 pennies a week, the equivalent of one Italian lira every four weeks. I liked the trade and I strongly desired to become autonomous. And I viewed all this from an ethical and heroic point of view."

This is how Igino Giordani (or “Foco” as he was called later) starts off relating an adventure that he lived with intensity of thought and ardour of ideals. He had his own personal way of fighting to reach great goals for humanity such as freedom, social justice and peace (at the service of the “need of love between peoples”, he wrote in 1919). To meet these goals he assumed precise cultural and political commitments during the crisis of the old liberal State, in the anguish of the totalitarian regime, and then in the rising Italian democracy. He also gave witness with his life and proclaimed with his pen ecclesial realities that preceded some of the contents of the Second Vatican Council.