His face was covered with tumours from a rare condition, Neurofibromatosis 1. He was well used to being shunned, for example, by someone refusing to sit next to him on a bus.
When Vinicio Riva went with a group from his hometown in Northern Italy to a public morning audience by Pope Francis in 2013, he expected to be just one in the crowd. But the Swiss Guard motioned him and his aunt Caterina forward until they were in the front row.
“He went straight to Vinicio and embraced him tightly,” Caterina told CNN. “I thought he wouldn’t give him back to me he held him so tightly. We didn’t speak. We said nothing but he looked at me as if he was digging deep inside, a beautiful look that I would never have expected.”
“My heart was bursting,” Riva told Corriere della Sera.. When the pope hugged him tight, “I felt like I was in paradise.”
And the Riva returned to his job at a home for the elderly, collecting and throwing out the trash, running odd jobs. He died in 2024.