Romano was born in Coatbridge in 1936, to Maria and Johnny Sambucci.

• He attended St. Patricks before going on to boarding school at St Joseph’s College, in Dumfries, until he was 18.
• He achieved a high academic standard and excelled at rugby, athletics, cricket, and football.   He achieved a Merit from the London school of music in Piano Forte at age 12.
• He went on to train as a Chartered Accountant in Glasgow from late 1955. And that year met Anna his wife of 64 years.
• By 1958 he took no great pleasure in accountancy and found his passion lay in everything relating to food and wine. He embarked on a year-long journey discovering European cuisine in France, Germany, Poland, and Italy, before opening Epicures Delicatessen in Glasgow.
• He married Anna in 1962, and they have two sons Giancarlo and Marco. Two daughters-in-law, Lorraine, and Sandra and one grandson Marcus.
• Romano went on to be president of the St. Joseph’s Past Pupil Association and was a lifelong member.
• Romano was passionate about Celtic, golf, and skiing. His Ski’s or golf clubs went everywhere with him, and for many years during Jock Steins tenure Romano went everywhere with Celtic.
• Romano adored his family and being in business. Between 1964 and 1977 Romano’s restaurant, entertainment and property business interests expanded dramatically.
• By 1989, aged 53 he was able to retire from his active business interests and pursue a more leisurely pace of life.
• He took Anna on a world tour for her 60^th – golf clubs in tow.
• He acted as a consultant for several businesses who valued his views on catering, food, and wine produce.
• He and Anna embarked on residing in Spain 6 months of the year and did so for 15 years, which was a wonderful adaptation to retired life for them both.
• From humble, loving beginnings he created a small West of Scotland food and beverage empire that helped change the culinary appetites of generations of its inhabitants and served the displaced European peoples who settled peacefully in Scotland after World War 2.

Believe it or not, I guessed that the family would pick Isaiah 25 as the first reading. “Fine strained wines”, “feast of rich food”: these references in the reading sum up Romano’s working life! But what really is this fine wine and rich food if not Christ Himself? What is the Prophet’s mention of the “veil covering over all nations”, if not death? And how does the Lord “remove the tears from all faces”, if not by his own death and resurrection?

None of this denies or eliminates the catastrophe which death represents for anyone. Nor does it dismiss the heart-breaking grief of those left behind. Christ is too compassionate with our human condition to want us to pretend that death doesn’t matter. And for that very reason He personally embraced it, He truly owned it in His humanity so that even in death we could know His presence and trust in His power to deliver us out of it. Since He took the domain of death away from our enemy and claimed it for Himself, it can no longer have the final say on who we are, or on what we mean to ourselves, to our loved ones or to God.

Romano will not come back to us, but we shall go to him provided we too die as he did in faith and trust in Christ. It is not now our enemy who takes us through death, but our greatest Friend and Lord. “When I have gone and prepared you a place, I will come and take you [through death] to myself so that where I am you may be, too.” He could have added, “so that where I am and where all your loved ones who have died in me are, you may be too.”

In a world of AI, of seemingly unlimited scientific and technological progress and prowess, of globalization, of personal self-fulfilment unhindered and unbridled, our sense of purpose and direction, our spiritual and moral compass, have largely gone haywire. As Pope Leo tells us, we are forgetting our magnificent humanity. We need the humility and realism to refocus on the truth of our human condition, which is not one endless spiral of ever new and more exhilarating experiences: no, it is that we are born and we die, that we need to be loved and to love, that we need forgiveness and redemption. Yet, if we think we are our own fulfilment, we will never be any better than dust and ashes. The Good News of salvation is that we are not our own fulfilment: dust and ashes though we may be, the Father of Jesus has destined us to become eternal and divine in our magnificent humanity, in both body and soul. Our destiny is to become fully human in God. And while death marks the final doorway to that destiny, it is resurrection from the dead which will confer on us its fulfilment.

It is not for us to judge anyone, be it in this life or most certainly not in the next. We simply surrender Romano trustingly, prayerfully and hopefully to the merciful judgment of Jesus Christ, the only judge of the living and the dead. But I think we can safely say that though he was in his life a man of the world and of his time, he was also a man of faith, of family and of deep realism. In him, I am confident that Christ finds a real friend and disciple and that therefore Christ’s love will purify him to be able to stand with humble confidence before the throne of God. If we wish, this can be our destiny, too. It’s what the Lord wants for each of us. May it also be what we want for us!