The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, was the guest of honour last night at the Vittorio Emanuele Theatre in Messina on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Gazzetta del Sud and the 50th anniversary of the Bonino Pulejo Foundation.
The President of the Sicilian Region, Nello Musumeci, welcomed the President “on behalf of all Sicilians and especially the people of Messina for his first official visit to the city in the Strait of Messina”. The governor, together with the extraordinary commissioner of the Municipality of Messina Leonardo Santoro, the president of the Bonino Pulejo Foundation Pasquale Morgante and the president of the Vittorio Emanuele Theatre Orazio Miloro, accompanied President Mattarella and his daughter Laura on a visit to the exhibitions set up inside the theatre, including “Communication and its forms in art”, curated by the Messina Regional Museum (MuMe): an evocative itinerary through eighty specially selected exhibits.
Mattarella received the “Uberto Bonino and Maria Sofia Pulejo” international award: “It is a source of prestige to receive this award. I had the opportunity to know Uberto Bonino and to meet him and, for this reason too, this event is particularly dear and significant to me. I thought I would receive the award in Messina as a former President of the Republic, as a Senator for life and no longer as President of the Republic. But this role allows me to significantly underline the importance of the anniversary we are celebrating today,’ he began.
The President then dwelt on the importance of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which he said is a historic opportunity to make our country more modern and efficient. This commitment for young people and the South is particularly important. With a South that is relaunched through the new generations, Italy can become completely and utterly more modern”.
Finally, the Head of State called for reflection on the function of information, which is also delicate “in the unpredictable and unexpected scenario of the war on our continent”: “Here too there are attempts to spread false news, to conceal the truth, to hide reality, to conceal the facts. Hence the importance of the press and independent media. An information system that does not preclude any voice but is not subjected to its fakes, that knows how to inform and stimulate a critical, autonomous capacity of its readers on the facts of reality’.
This was the wish of the President of the Republic during his visit to Messina.