«I will never take off the rosary, Our Lady is part of my life»

«Jesus took me by the hair. I was so desperate that I even started attending Buddhist meetings in an attempt to seek peace there.” It is the testimony of faith of the Rai journalist Marina Nalesso, presenter of Tg1 and Tg and since 18 November spokesman for the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiulianowho spoke about it in an extensive interview with the weekly Mary with you, on newsstands from Thursday 8 December, in which she also recounted the reason why she does not give up, even when it goes on video, the rosary worn with pride and conviction, even when it was overwhelmed by controversy. It was 2016, she hosted her first Rai newscast. The rosary of controversies actually returned to the fore in 2019 and, more recently, at the end of October this year. Same story. Marina Nalesso shows up on Tg2 with her rosary. And she restarts the carousel of attacks, of more and less politicized comments, each of her says something about her. On the other side is her. She that she doesn’t back down a millimeter and she explains to Mary with you: «I never, ever take it off and I have no intention of doing so in the future. It never occurred to me, even for a second, to take it off or hide it before going on the air. Why would I ever do that. He tells of my love for Mary and Jesus. Every now and then they discover that I wear the rosary around my neck and the delirium explodes again, but I am absolutely serene. Our Lady came into my life hand in hand with my inner awakening. I often beg you to give me the strength not to act on impulse, not to reply to the actions of others, especially in circumstances of aggression or prevarication.’

TO Mary with you the journalist recounts her troubled conversion journey: “After meeting Don Antonio, the Rai chaplain, another meeting arrives to change my life, this time permanently,” she said, “a friend invites me to her birthday dinner and here I meet another priest, young and outspoken, with whom I start talking for hours. An enlightening, dazzling dialogue, I dare say. Who opened the doors of faith and love for Christ to me. It is as if, out of the blue, my heart and brain had opened up and, in the same way, I began to feel the need to go to church, to pray, to go to mass every day. If I don’t do it now, I’m sick: I have to go to mass, even if I have to do it early in the morning before going to work. If I didn’t meet Jesus every day, I would no longer be able to live”.

After this journey, Marian devotion also blossomed: «Mary arrived hand in hand with the growing desire to share, to pray together with someone. And the void was filled, once again, thanks to an encounter with a consecrated person: a Franciscan friar, Father Christopher Amanzi, founder of a community, the Franciscan Fraternity named after Mary Mother of Reconciliation and Peace, whose spirituality I fully embraced. It is thanks to them, to the brothers and sisters who are part of it, that after Jesus I discovered Mary…».

Finally, he reveals that his “place of the heart” is Medjugorje: “It’s my second home. I went there for the first time in 2007 with Don Antonio, the Rai chaplain, and I go back whenever I can also because my Fraternity, to which I belong as a lay person, has a spiritual house right there».