Paolo Signorelli Returns to Lollobrigida's Office Two Years After Resigning Over Messages With a Slain Ultras BossPaolo Signorelli is once again head of communications for Italy's Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, stepping back into the exact role, and the exact office, he resigned from in June 2024. His return comes after Edoardo Garibaldi, who had held the position since Signorelli's departure, left to take a job with Italian state broadcaster RAI in Puglia, his home region.Lollobrigida confirmed the reappointment directly to Corriere della Sera, framing it as a natural continuation rather than anything requiring particular justification. He said that two years on, nothing had emerged that could call into question Signorelli's personal integrity or professional competence, and that when he asked him to fill Garibaldi's vacated position, Signorelli accepted. What He Resigned Over Signorelli's original departure wasn't over a policy dispute or a routine reshuffle. It followed the publication of private chat messages between him and Fabrizio Piscitelli, the Lazio ultras leader known as "Diabolik," a convicted drug trafficker who was shot dead in Rome's Parco degli Acquedotti in 2019. The messages, exchanged between 2018 and 2019 while Signorelli was working as a sports radio host, surfaced as part of the prosecutorial file investigating Piscitelli's murder. Investigators ultimately found the conversations criminally irrelevant and Signorelli entirely unconnected to the case itself. Their content was still damaging enough to force his resignation. In one exchange, after Piscitelli complained that Roma football fans were disproportionately Jewish, Signorelli responded in kind, agreeing with the sentiment. In another, after Piscitelli forwarded him an article about German soldiers who died as American POWs during World War II, Signorelli replied with a vulgar expression of sympathy for both the German dead and, in the same breath, Jewish people generally, a comment widely read as an antisemitic slur layered onto Holocaust-adjacent context. Il Post also noted a biographical detail that added weight to the controversy at the time: Signorelli's grandfather and namesake was a prominent figure in Ordine Nuovo, the neofascist organization that emerged from the postwar Italian Social Movement, the party that gathered fascism's political heirs after World War II. Signorelli's Own Account Speaking to Corriere della Sera about his return, Signorelli framed the two-year gap as itself the vindication he needed, saying that with time now an objective fact behind him, nothing had surfaced capable of undermining either his personal reputation or his professional standing. Lollobrigida echoed that framing almost exactly in his own comments, stating there was nothing standing in the way of Signorelli resuming a role for which, in the minister's words, he embodies all the substantive and formal qualities required. Not Everyone Agrees The reappointment has drawn immediate political criticism. Marco Grimaldi, deputy floor leader for the left-wing Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (AVS) in the Chamber of Deputies, called the decision scandalous and politically indecent, recalling that his party had explicitly called for Signorelli's removal back in 2024 following the publication of what he described as gravely antisemitic language in the chats. Grimaldi urged Lollobrigida to reverse the appointment immediately, and suggested, pointedly, that the minister's real communications problem isn't finding someone to manage his messaging, but finding someone capable of stopping him from generating further controversies of his own. Commentary from Articolo21, a press-freedom advocacy publication, was similarly sharp, characterizing the reappointment not merely as an awkward institutional footnote but as a political statement in its own right, one suggesting that for Italy's current governing majority, past controversies aren't condemned so much as temporarily shelved until public attention moves elsewhere. A Pattern Bigger Than One Reappointment Signorelli's return fits into a broader pattern critics of Italy's current government have flagged repeatedly: officials or aides sidelined by controversy quietly returning to public roles once media attention fades, rather than facing lasting professional consequences. Whether this specific case draws sustained political pressure, or simply settles into the news cycle the way Signorelli's own comments suggested he expected it would, is likely to depend on how loudly opposition figures like Grimaldi continue pressing the issue in the weeks ahead, and on whether Lollobrigida shows any sign of reconsidering a decision he has so far defended without hesitation. Ph: ErreRoberto / Shutterstock.com

Paolo Signorelli is once again head of communications for Italy's Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, stepping back into the exact role, and the exact office, he resigned from in June 2024. His return comes after Edoardo Garibaldi, who had held the position since Signorelli's departure, left to take a job with Italian state broadcaster RAI in Puglia, his home region. Lollobrigida confirmed the reappointment directly to Corriere della Sera, framing it as a natural continuation rather than anything requiring particular justification. He said that two years on, nothing had emerged that could call into question Signorelli's personal integrity or professional competence, and that when he asked him to fill Garibaldi's vacated position, Signorelli accepted. Signorelli's original departure wasn't over a policy dispute or a routine reshuffle. It followed the publication of private chat messages between him and Fabrizio Piscitelli, the Lazio ultras leader known as "Diabolik," a convicted drug trafficker who was shot dead in Rome's Parco degli Acquedotti in 2019. The messages, exchanged between 2018 and 2019 while Signorelli was working as a sports radio host, surfaced as part of the prosecutorial file investigating Piscitelli's murder. Investigators ultimately found the conversations criminally irrelevant and Signorelli entirely unconnected to the case itself. Their content was still damaging enough to force his resignation. In one exchange, after Piscitelli complained that Roma football fans were disproportionately Jewish, Signorelli responded in kind, agreeing with the sentiment. In another, after Piscitelli forwarded him an article about German soldiers who died as American POWs during World War II, Signorelli replied with a vulgar expression of sympathy for both the German dead and, in the same breath, Jewish people generally, a comment widely read as an antisemitic slur layered onto Holocaust-adjacent context. Il Post also noted a biographical detail that added weight to the controversy at the time: Signorelli's grandfather and namesake was a prominent figure in Ordine Nuovo, the neofascist organization that emerged from the postwar Italian Social Movement, the party that gathered fascism's political heirs after World War II. Speaking to Corriere della Sera about his return, Signorelli framed the two-year gap as itself the vindication he needed, saying that with time now an objective fact behind him, nothing had surfaced capable of undermining either his personal reputation or his professional standing. Lollobrigida echoed that framing almost exactly in his own comments, stating there was nothing standing in the way of Signorelli resuming a role for which, in the minister's words, he embodies all the substantive and formal qualities required. The reappointment has drawn immediate political criticism. Marco Grimaldi, deputy floor leader for the left-wing Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (AVS) in the Chamber of Deputies, called the decision scandalous and politically indecent, recalling that his party had explicitly called for Signorelli's removal back in 2024 following the publication of what he described as gravely antisemitic language in the chats. Grimaldi urged Lollobrigida to reverse the appointment immediately, and suggested, pointedly, that the minister's real communications problem isn't finding someone to manage his messaging, but finding someone capable of stopping him from generating further controversies of his own. Commentary from Articolo21, a press-freedom advocacy publication, was similarly sharp, characterizing the reappointment not merely as an awkward institutional footnote but as a political statement in its own right, one suggesting that for Italy's current governing majority, past controversies aren't condemned so much as temporarily shelved until public attention moves elsewhere. Signorelli's return fits into a broader pattern critics of Italy's current government have flagged repeatedly: officials or aides sidelined by controversy quietly returning to public roles once media attention fades, rather than facing lasting professional consequences. Whether this specific case draws sustained political pressure, or simply settles into the news cycle the way Signorelli's own comments suggested he expected it would, is likely to depend on how loudly opposition figures like Grimaldi continue pressing the issue in the weeks ahead, and on whether Lollobrigida shows any sign of reconsidering a decision he has so far defended without hesitation. Ph: ErreRoberto / Shutterstock.com