Napolitano, the hypothesis of secular funerals. When he visited Sardinia in 2012 and cried for the workers
The funeral home of the President Emeritus, who died at the age of 98, will be set up in Palazzo Madama. Eleven years ago the trip to the islandThe funeral chamber for the President Emeritus of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, who died yesterday at the age of 98 after a long illness, will be set up at Palazzo Madama, probably as early as tomorrow. As for the state funeral , the family is thinking of a secular ceremony , like the one Pietro Ingrao had in front of the Palazzo di Montecitorio.
The former Head of State died at 7.45pm in the Salvator Mundi Clinic, on the Janiculum in Rome: he had been hospitalized for 4 months. Next to him are his family - his two sons Giulio and Giovanni and his wife Clio Maria Bittoni, 89 years old - and the communications consultant, lifelong friend, Giovanni Matteoli. The senator for life had their breathing machines disconnected at the beginning of the week, but his heart continued to beat for days before stopping . He had had health problems for some time: in 2018 he was admitted to the San Camillo hospital and underwent surgery to dissect the aorta. In May 2022 a new hospitalization, this time at the Spallanzani hospital, for an abdominal operation.
President of the Chamber, senator for life, President of the Republic: he was the first in the history of the Republic to be re-elected at the Quirinale, in 2013, after the first time in 2006. Ninety-eight years of life and the last 70 lived as a protagonist of Italian history and European, in which he stood out for "his ability to dialogue with all political cultures" and his loyalty to the Constitution, is the tribute of his successor Sergio Mattarella. Who doesn't give up a more personal message: "His death pains me deeply."
The last of the leaders coming from the large group of Togliatti supporters of the PCI who in the 1960s looked towards the Soviet Union, it was the confrontation-dissent between him and Enrico Berlinguer that guided the main choices of the PCI . In the Seventies the future tenant of the Colle played the very delicate role of "Foreign Minister" of the party: he was the first Italian communist invited to the United States for an official visit. It was 1978, when the PCI entered the government majority (with the watershed of the assassination of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades), until its return to opposition in contrast above all with Bettino Craxi's emerging PSI.
«He loved Sardinians and Sardinia», recalls Pietro Catzola, the Quirinale chef originally from Triei.
And it is impossible to forget his emotion in 2012 during the meeting in Cagliari with the delegations of workers overwhelmed by the industrial crisis. The stories of workers no longer employed, of families overwhelmed by the industrial crisis, had cracked the soul of a man who for decades had embodied the figure of the cold and rational politician.
During the meeting at the Palazzo Regio in Cagliari with the unions, Napolitano responded to the workers with a broken voice, aware of the seriousness of the problems that were explained to him. That day he spoke in the Regional Council, welcomed by the governor Ugo Cappellacci and the president of the assembly Claudia Lombardo; and greeted with great affection the mayor of Cagliari Massimo Zedda, whom he had met as a child through his friendship with his father, a communist militant.
(Unioneonline/D)
