Carlo Camillo Amato

Baron Amato was born in Rome, Italy, in 1938. He was the son of Baron Giuseppe Amato Chiaramonte Bordonaro and Countess Fernanda Giannini Paolini.

Don Carlo was a very accomplished person. He was the president and founder of Old World International Enterprises since 1968; served as the minister plenipotentiary at large for the Republic of San Marino from 1983 to 2000; and was the editor-at-large at Conde Nast Publications in Italy and France from 1984 to 1991. Don Carlo was a member of the Board of Directors at Gesfid International in Lugano, Switzerland as a financial advisor from 1984 to 1994 and director of foreign relations from 1984 to 1998. He was the founder and president of Old World Galleries in New York from 1977 to 1984. Additionally, he was certified by the Appraiser Association of America in 1978. From 1971 to 1981, Don Carlo was an assistant professor of biology at Georgia State University. In 2018, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Connecticut's University of New Haven.

Baron Amato was a member of the Knickerbocker Club since 1975 and an emeritus member of the Explorers Club. He was an avid conservationist interested in wild boars that led him to write the book "The Wild Boar: History Husbandry the Hunt." He was an ambassador for the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and Malta to the countries of St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines from 1983 until his death.

Don Carlo received awards and accolades for his achievements. He was recognized with a Certificate of Appreciation from the City of New York in 1977. He was honored as Man of the Year by the World Institute for Scientific Humanism by Fordham University in New York in 1982. In addition, he was the recipient of the Knight of Grace and Devotion from the Sacred Military Order of Malta in 2000. He also was designated as a Knight Commander of St. Maurice and Lazarus by the Savoy Order in 1999, a Knight of Real Cuerpo de la Nobleza de Madrid by the Nobility of Castilla in 1998, and to the Order of the Trinity by the Imperial House of Ethiopia in 1997.

Baron Amato was a highly sophisticated, enormously charismatic man with a bigger-than-life personality, brilliant, wise, witty, and lovable. He had excellent sensitivity to the arts and was uncommonly creative. Don Carlo enjoyed learning, traveling, had a curious and expansive mind, and above all, loved nature. He studied landscaping design as well as architecture as he had a very inventive mind. He designed his summer home, Shangri-la, a wonderful and dreamy property located in the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia. He not only enjoyed the pristine natural surroundings, the ocean breeze, the wildlife, the sound of the silence, but also the laughter and shared meals with family and friends for more than sixty years. He was a generous, courteous, and free-spirited person, and his ability to be fluent in five different languages helped him create more solid and beautiful friendships worldwide. His number one passion was the art of gastronomy and enology. In Shangri-la, his friend and restauranteur Sirio Maccioni and his wife, Egidiana, threw ingredients at hand with their Italian spontaneity, and Pasta Primavera was born. Above all, he treasured his friends, whom he loved all with a generous heart.

He is survived by his lovely wife, Baroness Irela Fabiola Amato. He was the widower of Lorraine Manville-Dresselhouse, who predeceased him in 1998.

He lived, he loved, he was much loved, he gave, he received, he had fun and lots of it. He will be deeply missed by those who knew him but will forever live in the hearts of those he touched.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta celebrated a memorial mass at St. Hugh Catholic Church on November 5th, 2021.

A Month's Mind Mass for the eternal repose of his soul will be held at The Our Lady of Charity National Shrine (Ermita de la Caridad) in Coconut Grove on Saturday, November 20th, 2021, at 11:30 am.