Salvatore Marchese, better known as Sal Marchese, is a primary school teacher, founder of the Charismatic Catholic Association “I seguaci di Maria” (“The followers of Mary”), poet and writer, singer-songwriter, musician, author and composer of songs and freelance journalist (Association of journalists).
He was born in Sicily in Canicattì (Agrigento), in May 1976. When he was very young he began, playing in piano-bars, his artistic career, which led him during more than 25 years of activity to publish 2 collections of poems, even translated into English (one of which has the preface written by the son of the Nobel Prize Salvatore Quasimodo), and a collection of fables for children. He has written and composed more than 70, some of which are translated and recorded even in Spanish, and he collaborated during some years with a printed magazine writing articles about culture and Christian spirituality.
He has been in the USA and in Canada where he did some singing performances and poetical recitals at the Universities and cultural centres of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Edmonton. Since November 2008, after a short experience in the prayer group “Rinnovamento nello spirito” (“Renovation in the spirit”) of his town, and in other Catholic groups in Milan, Marchese began a quick conversion path which led him to make some Faith travels in the course of these last years (Loreto, Medjugorje, Lourdes, Assisi, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Jericho).
Furthermore he made many experiences of spiritual retreats in Franciscan and Benedictine hermitages and monasteries not only in Italy (Camaldoli, Nicolosi, Rovio – Switzerland). He gave many interviews and testimonies of Christian life to TVs, radios, newspapers and web sites alla around the world, among which “Radio Maria” and “R.A.I International”, both in New York. He lives and works in Milan since 2000.
“I could write the most beautiful song and/or poetry; I could cross the seas, the oceans and scale the summits of mountains; I could walk for the roads of the cities of the world; I could gain the most prestigious prizes and competitions in the illusion of the Earthly Glory, but if I did not believe in God and the love towards my fellow men, my life would have been useless”.
S. Marchese