Goodbye to Nello Arena the “missionary surveyor” who loved rugby

His dream didn’t stop even with the change of room. Nello Arena, former president of Amatori Rugby Messina, born in 1960, passed away due to an illness that unfortunately left him with no escape, leaving his family and all those who, thanks to the oval ball, came across him and appreciated him for his human and professional qualities astonished. The “missionary surveyor” had populated the “Le Storie” column of the Gazzetta del Sud on 26 March 2023.
The images of Cutro were still alive in his heart and his commitment to his migrant brothers had brought him to the village of Conakry, in Guinea, with the dream of building an orphanage and an oratory, to allow the little ones to smile, pulling kicking a ball, or passing the oval ball to each other. But the goal has not disappeared. And the witness, in what is only apparently the last farewell, was promptly welcomed by his daughter Anna Maria, who, lovingly, decided to continue his father’s generous steps and to collect not flowers, but offerings, which will be donated to the voluntary association “Il Giardino dell’Eden”. And his words echo, like a moral testament: “We are rich only by giving.” A lesson in love, which he had inherited in the church of Gravitelli Inferiore, from father Giacomo Fazio and from the teacher of Italy and Africa, Angela Cardile: «Before the pandemic – he said – in Togo, in the House of the Canossian Sisters, we had created a maxillofacial operating room and a dental facility. And it all started like this. We also expanded a secondary school by adding a new addition. And the same thing, even in the tailoring profession, one of the most important in Central Africa. We also had to set up a first reception hospital, but after Covid there was a setback». A project he was carrying out with friends Fortunato Oteri And Gianluca Portale and with Father Marcel Haba Desiree.