Teresa Giudice just lost someone important to her: her beloved father, Giacinto Gorga. He was only 76 years old when he passed away on April 3, Teresa confirmed in a post on Instagram, which you can see HERE. She shared then news with her fans just hours after Giacinto passed, and wrote the most touching message to him. “My father, my protector, my hero, God took you early this morning to be with mommy, I saw you peacefully pass & I know you kept fighting for my daughters and I,” she wrote. See the full message embedded below.
Giacinto’s health struggles were not unknown to the public, and neither was Teresa’s unwavering support. Fans first became aware of Giacinto’s health problems in Oct. 2017, when Teresa detailed her dad’s previous stays at the hospital (for reasons including that he was “coughing up blood” and had “trouble breathing”) in her memoir, Standing Strong. A month after the book’s release, Giacinto was reportedly hospitalized for pneumonia. He then returned to the hospital — two visits in one week — in October of the following year, 2018. “He’s alright, a little bit of pneumonia again,” Teresa’s brother and Giacinto’s son, Joe Gorga, told Radar Online at the time.
In the months afterwards, fans were distracted by Joe Giudice’s fight against an impending deportation order to Italy, but Teresa updated fans on her father’s health in Nov. 2019: sadly, he was going back to the hospital. The Real Housewives of New Jersey star revealed this on day three of BravoCon, which she had to excuse herself from for the family emergency. “Sorry, BravoCon fans. I had to leave. My dad doesn’t feel well. I’m taking him to the hospital,” Teresa announced in a video, which showed an ambulance in the background. Like the previous cases, Joe confirmed that pneumonia had befallen his father again, in an interview with Page Six.
By Jan. 2020, Teresa had even more bad news: her father was admitted to the hospital once again, which she revealed on her Instagram Story. Despite Giacinto’s persistent health problems, the family man never lost his spirit and humor. In one video taken at the hospital that January in 2020, Teresa tells her dad, “You are so funny! Look at him putting on his cologne. You want to smell good for the nurses?” Giacinto’s response? “Yeah! The one that I like.”
Teresa has had to face many major life changes in recent years. In addition to the loss of her father, she was physically separated from her husband, Joe, while he served a prison sentence for multiple fraud charges between March of 2016 to March of 2019. Not yet a free man, Joe was moved to custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after his prison release, and finally left after opting to wait on the results of his deportation appeal in Italy in Oct. 2017. Not long after, reports surfaced of Joe and Teresa’s split in December of that year — however, Joe declared that he “love[s] being married” in an Instagram comment in Jan. 2020. Whatever may be happening in the personal lives of the Giudice family, our thoughts are with Teresa, Joe and their four daughters as they mourn Giacinto.