Former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (2006-2015), historic leader of the Communist Party and promoter of European construction, died on Friday at the age of 98.
The entire political class of the peninsula paid tribute to this Neapolitan born under Mussolini on June 29, 1925 and who experienced numerous governments as head of state in an Italy with chronically unstable executives.
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Giorgia Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party and “president of the council” since October 2022, soberly presented “the deepest condolences” from her cabinet to the family of the former president.
The current President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, recalled the European commitment of the former member of the Parliament of Strasbourg who led “important battles for social development, peace and progress in Italy and in Europe”.
In a telegram to his widow, Pope Francis, traveling to Marseille, saluted a man who had devoted his political action to preserving the “unity and harmony” of his country.
For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron saluted the memory of an “eminent figure in Italian politics and (a) convinced European” and sent his “sincere condolences to the Italian people”, in a message published on X ( ex-Twitter).
A “guarantor of stability”
Considered for years as the guarantor of Italy’s stability, Giorgio Napolitano was elected in 2006. He planned to retire at the end of his first seven-year term in spring 2013, after the legislative elections. But the results of the elections, which were too close, and the inability of the main parties to agree on a possible successor, had forced him to return to service.
But from his inauguration speech, particularly harsh towards political leaders whose “deafness” he had denounced in the face of the country’s demands, he announced that he would not stay for seven more years and had in fact resigned in January 2015.
Moderation, prudence and sense of state
From the resignation of Romano Prodi in 2008 after only two years in government to the arrival of Matteo Renzi in February 2014, including the resignations of Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti and Enrico Letta, Napolitano managed a particularly turbulent phase in Italy.
Recognized for his moderation, his prudence and his sense of the State, he had been integrated into the Fascist university groups like most of the students under Mussolini, but had at the same time engaged, from the age of 17, in a group of communist resistance fighters, before joining the party in 1945 and being elected to Parliament for the first time in 1953.
Perceived as a reformist, he nevertheless approved the repression of the Budapest insurrection crushed on November 4, 1956 by Soviet tanks. Napolitano went to Budapest in 2006 to pay his respects at the grave of the leader of the uprising, Imre Nagy.