Italy Bids Farewell to Emma Bonino at Secular Funeral in Rome
A lay funeral at Rome's city hall brought Italy's highest authorities together to mourn activist and politician Emma Bonino, who died at 78.
Italy's senior political figures gathered at Rome's city hall on Tuesday morning for a lay funeral honouring Emma Bonino, the veteran politician and human-rights campaigner who died on Friday at the age of 78.
President Sergio Mattarella, Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were among those present as the coffin, bearing a portrait of Bonino, was carried into the ceremony. A trumpeter played as mourners assembled, and relatives of the deceased were seen holding hands. The hearse was later met by family members as the coffin was brought out.
Bonino, whose party +Europa announced her death, first came to national prominence in the 1970s by leading a campaign to legalise abortion in Italy, taking on the Vatican's opposition. Her party described her life as a long struggle against forces that deny freedom, listing clandestine abortion, world hunger, party politics, female genital mutilation, punitive justice, genocide and authoritarianism among the causes she fought.
Speakers at the ceremony included Romano Prodi, a former president of the European Commission, who said the trajectory of the European Union's institutions had ultimately aligned with Bonino's conviction that citizens abandon democracy when it fails to change their lives.
Enrico Letta, a former Italian prime minister, recalled her rapport with younger generations, saying students she addressed were reluctant to let her leave, and that she answered each of them with patience, curiosity and attention.
Carla Taibi, Bonino's personal assistant, said her "always" had been reserved for what Bonino called the privilege of doing politics, and urged those present to keep her history, human legacy and political commitment alive. "Let's mobilise, let's act because, as she always loved to emphasise, if you can change, you must try," Taibi said.
Marco Cappato, a Radical Party activist and former EU and Italian MP, said the protection of liberal democracy and of global and European federalism had been Bonino's guiding light. He expressed hope that her legacy would inspire future battles, above all the defence of the International Criminal Court — which he described as her main international political achievement and which, he said, is under attack from autocrats and dictators around the world.
Riccardo Magi, an Italian MP and national secretary of +Europa, said the best way to remember Bonino was not to repeat what she had done but to continue fighting for the causes she would have pursued, beginning with a federal Europe and a United States of Europe.
Radical Party activists and political colleagues joined the highest offices of the Italian state in paying their final respects at the secular ceremony.