The photo published on Emma Bonino’s Instagram profile is one of the most powerful. It’s a shot that gives some indication of this old and sick time that loses sight of the glories of the past. This morning Pope Francis went to visit the radical leader, who had recently been released from intensive care, and brought him a bouquet of roses and some chocolates. The two of them sit in their respective wheelchairs and talk like two old friends. After the visit, the Pope reassured the then flocking journalists: “I found it very good,” he said before getting into the car.
“A big surprise that fills me with joy”
A gesture from bygone times, sincere. The two spent time on the terrace of the +Europa president’s penthouse apartment in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori district, under the warm sun of an autumn that was no longer cold. “This morning, to my great surprise and emotion, His Holiness paid me a very pleasant visit. The extraordinary human side of Pope Francis always comes through. He wanted to give me a wonderful bouquet of roses and some chocolate from those who were already there. From our common roots “I was touched by the strength and understanding her typically Piedmontese ‘waxy’ greeting showed me, and when she told me she was ‘an example of freedom and resistance,’ it filled me with joy,” Bonino wrote. He posted the photo of the meeting on his Instagram profile.
The respect between Emma Bonino and the Pope is not a new fact and there have been many meetings over the years. The two have often talked about welcoming immigrants and have expressed very similar positions on the subject on many occasions. In 2016, Pope Francis mentioned him in his list of “today’s greats of Italy”, along with former President Giorgio Napolitano and then-Lampedusa mayor Giusi Nicolini. To justify the choice, Bergoglio said: “He offered Italy the best service to get to know Africa.” To those who pointed out that on other issues the historical representative of the Radicals held positions that strongly contrasted with those of the Church, the pope replied: “Be patient, we must look at the people, what they are doing.”
Unusual relationship between Bergoglio and radical leaders
The relationship of respect and friendship between Pope Francis and the historical representatives of the Radical Party has marked the various periods of his papacy. In 2014, during a hunger and thirst strike to condemn the situation in Italian prisons, Marco Pannella received a phone call from Bergoglio; After Bergoglio publicly stated that he shared this fight, he invited him to stop so as not to compromise his position. Health. And it was Pannella himself who, shortly before his death, sent a touching letter to the Pope, who was in Lesbos at the time and welcomed the immigrants at the refugee center on the island. “Dear Pope Francis – wrote Pannella – I am writing to you from my room on the top floor – close to the sky – to tell you that I was actually close to you on Lesbos when you embraced the tortured flesh of those women, those children and those men whom no one in Europe wanted to welcome. This is the Gospel that I love and want to continue living, at least with the people everyone rejects.”
Source: Today IT
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
