When he was 12 he began to attend the Ranchibile salesian oratory in Palermo. There were two regular highlights on Sunday: in the morning his prayers and Mass without fail, in the afternoon with his ear glued to the radio, Inter. He loved music, dancing, basket-ball (he was 1,82 tall), and table football. Out of the blue his illness struck in the summer of 1973. In July he had an unexpected attack: headache, vomiting, a flushed face. Amid great anxiety he was rushed to hospital and the attack passed, but the doctors’ diagnosis was terrible: leukaemia. They tried the impossible: Ninni with his mother went to a hospital in Paris. There he became a firm favourite providing entertainment and comfort for the other children who like him were fighting for their lives. To some he read and explained the life of Dominic Savio that he kept under his pillow, others he taught how to suffer and to make sacrifices. His strange way of speaking French made them laugh but they were all charmed by his smile. In that place where there were not a few atheists, he used to say his prayers with his mother. Ninni loved to pray, especially with other people because, “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” He often went to Communion but he didn’t want it to become just a habit: he wanted to savour it each time.

After the first period of treatment in Paris, he began a stage of intensive and painful therapy in the isolation of a sterile ward cut off from the world. One day, the specialist seeing how much he was suffering told him: “Let yourself go; say a few swearwords! How is it you never complain? What have you done to God?”. Ninni’s reply was classic and quite amusing: “What has God got to do with it? Didn’t Our Lord suffer a great deal? Any way, swearwords won’t help, they’ll only come out sterilized by the sterile ward.” The stay in Paris came to an end when there was no longer any hope of a cure. He went home to Palermo to pass his last months of life there. He still wanted to live, to study, to play basketball, to listen to music, to dance... At a party in his honour to everyone’s surprise he joined in enthusiastically. It was his last dance. On 23 January 1974 he flew to heaven, his face relaxed, serene, and with a smile on his lips.

Xavier grew up in a family where when he was home from school he gave a hand in the little family shop. When he was 15 he got to know the Salesian Youth Centre at Martí-Codolar and it soon became the focus of his growth as a person and as a Christian. Such is the formation potential of an oratory or of a group when they working as they should! Xavier, in fact, joined a formation group where he became aware of his Christian vocation and developed the desire to respond to it totally. The result was a plan of life which in a short time helped him to take giant strides in the process of his spiritual development and maturity.

On 19 July 1974, he writes in his diary: “My current task could be summed up like this: living my life in its various contexts (family, school, friends, my parents’ shop, the group) which requires faith... a commitment to daily prayer – which for me consists in reading the Word of God, praying for friends and relatives – and thinking about my life or some particular situation.” As one can see, a modern day version of Dominic Savio’s plan of life! Open to everyone! The group, in which he is the leader, encourages him to be more committed towards the little ones, and as a member of a social action group belonging to the Centre to devote his main efforts to a poor district.

It is relatively easy to live the Christian faith within a formation group. It is more difficult to put it into practice in the family where relationships and trust are not without their difficulties for a teenager, and in a state school with companions not much interested in religion and with only a superficial faith. Xavier knows that he has to show himself to be a real Christian: it is hard work, but it is also stimulating. He decides to talk freely at home, to overcome his shyness at school and to get involved in social work, all in the name of Christ. And he says so loud and clear to everyone. Xavier’s is a normal life, but God makes His voice heard in it: “Looking at my life and without knowing why, since there is nothing special about it, it seems God has attracted me and called me; on my part I’m trying to follow his path in spite of the difficulties,” he wrote on 18/9/1974. This call becomes more urgent in a formation session in the summer of 1975: “I believe that Christ has called me; I’ve got to answer Him... If He were not with me I would be a poor lad, alone and ignorant… With His help I want to live more and more as a Christian... This is the purpose of my life.” (29/7/’75).

Xavier fully satisfied his desire for God’s fullness on 4/10/1975, feast of St Francis of Assisi. On his way back from a trip to the mountains with three friends, Xavier unexpectedly fell and died, and so entered the day of the Lord that has no end. 