Pain, rage, anguish—and a measure of warmth. These are the feelings stirred by reading The Potenzoni Case (Einaudi 2021), Federica Sciarelli's reconstruction of the tragic disappearance of Daniele Potenzoni. He vanished without trace in Rome on June 10, 2015.
You may remember his distinctive face, his slightly flattened nose, and the news stories that followed. Daniele had come to the capital for a few days' outing with a day center he attended back home in Pantigliate, outside Milan. In the crush at Termini station, just before boarding the metro, his supervisors lost sight of him. From that moment, Daniele—who struggles with a mental health condition—simply disappeared. The search began late. It began badly. "We broadcast his photo that very evening," Sciarelli writes, noting "a tragic error." The staff member responsible for Daniele—she directs *Chi l'ha visto?*, the television program that would receive Daniele's father's desperate call—"described what Daniele was wearing incorrectly. In any disappearance, the first hours are crucial. In Daniele's case, those hours were chaotic—far too chaotic." (The staff member was acquitted at trial.) The fact remains: since that June 10, six years ago, Daniele has vanished.
With Francesco, Daniele's father, Sciarelli restores a voice to the missing boy. She traces his childhood, the birth of his younger brothers, his adolescence—when he joined the local Fede e Luce community. A serene life, joyful and full of energy, friends, commitment to others. Then, at seventeen, illness struck without warning. An upheaval in Daniele's life—and his family's—linked to another disappearance: he had left home to work (he'd offered to contribute to the family's finances alongside school), but never arrived. Hours later, his father finds him sitting on a bench, staring blankly into nothing, unable to respond to anything around him. Everything in Daniele's life had to be redefined, reoriented, in light of his illness. Piece by piece—thanks to his family's love and the strength of their community—life resumed. The illness remained, the hard moments with it, but a new, fragile balance took hold. Until that June 10, six years ago.
And now, to the pain of Daniele's illness came anguish (imagining him alone, in a city he did not know, without medication, without money) and, above all, rage at a disappearance that could and should have been prevented.
This case lays bare the carelessness surrounding people with mental health conditions on the part of those entrusted with their care. It is not merely a matter of individual failures, but of the entire system. What criteria govern the care of people unable to fend for themselves? Is the guiding principle the management of "numbers," or the pursuit of genuine relationship with a vulnerable person? When we ask, for instance, how many staff should accompany people incapable of caring for themselves, we reveal how such people are truly regarded. As numbers, not as sick human beings.
Yet listening to Daniele's story also awakens gratitude. There is something beautiful in the warmth surrounding this boy. And the sense of community it reveals. When Daniele vanishes, "fifteen of our young people" set out for Rome. You can almost see them—the young people from Pantigliate who descended on Rome from Lombardy, searching every corner for their friend. "I have rarely witnessed such a tenacious mobilization," Sciarelli observes. Daniele's story shows that this was a mobilization born of years of closeness, care, and shared struggle.
And you can almost see his father, remaining in a foreign city for months on end, ready to act on every sighting; you can see him returning home, but never surrendering. This father feels so present to us. "Will he be cold? Will he be hungry? Please, keep searching."