A lonely Italian retiree puts himself up for adoption

Seven cats and a modest book collection are all that 79-year-old Giorgio Angelozzi has for company on most days.

High up in the hills east of Rome, the retired teacher lives in a humble two-room flat overlooking a valley of rolling olive groves. The house is tidy, except for a layer of cat fluff that reappears after the cleaning lady's weekly visit. In a side cabinet sit Greek dictionaries and works by Horace and Pliny.

Things are quiet, too quiet.

After 12 years alone since the death of his wife, this summer Mr. Angelozzi became so desperate for human contact that he put himself up for adoption. In a newspaper classified, he offered to pay 500 euros to live with a family and teach their children.

"The days went by and I used to count," he says. "There were some days when I counted zero. I had not said a word all day."

Angelozzi's story has triggered a nationwide attack of guilt and public debate over how best to care for the elderly. While families and officials try new solutions, Angelozzi took matters into his own hands. After all, he wasn't getting any younger - and neither is Italy, which has the world's oldest population.

A recent report from the research group Censis said 49.1 percent of Italy's over-65s, roughly 6 million in a country of almost 60 million, are living alone.

The days of pew-length Italian families are long gone. In recent decades, families have broken up in search of work. Divorce and separation have risen steadily, and working parents have had fewer children, making Italy's birth-rate one of the world's lowest.

"In the past, grandparents have always had a major role to play in the traditional large Italian family model," says Roberto Menotti, research fellow at the Aspen Institute in Rome. "There was always a mutual commitment. Families needed grandparents; they relied on them to keep things going. Now some meet only twice a year, not once a week."

Angelozzi has not spoken to his 53-year-old aid-worker daughter since Easter, when she rang from Afghanistan.

Nor does he have much contact with neighbors. Upon retiring, he moved from Rome to a dead-end road on the edge of town. The difficult walk up and down the hill, as well as an aversion to "meaningless conversations" with people at church or in the public square, kept him an outsider in the village.

He made one monthly outing, a taxi ride to Tivoli for groceries, where he would stock up on sausages and 90 tins of cat food. On his 1,400 euros ($1,700) pension, Angelozzi ate sparsely, drinking Nescafe at the end of the month when he could not afford real coffee.

In Rome, commercial services are emerging to step in where the state and the family are absent.

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