During his speech at the Ivo Chiesa Theatre in Genoa, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Italy’s Liberation, President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella called on citizens not to give in to political disengagement and voter abstention.

“We cannot surrender to civic disengagement, to voter abstention, to a low-intensity democracy,” said the Head of State, recalling the sacrifices made by the Italian people to reclaim their freedom and rights.
Mattarella paid tribute to several key figures of the Resistance associated with Genoa – a city awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor – including Archbishop Cardinal Pietro Boetto, recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust, the partisan leader Aldo Gastaldi (“Bisagno”), Paolo Emilio Taviani (“Pittaluga”), Russian volunteer Fiodor Andrianovic Poletaev (“Fiodor”), and Action Party member Luciano Bolis.
The President highlighted that after the wars unleashed by fascism, the Italian people's deepest aspiration was peace. This desire was shared across Europe and laid the groundwork for the idea of a united Europe, now embodied in the popular sovereignty expressed by the Strasbourg Parliament.
Quoting Pope Francis’s Fratelli tutti, Mattarella stressed the need to overcome “anachronistic conflicts” and emphasized that each generation must “take up the struggles and achievements of previous generations and lead them to even greater goals.”
“There can be no peace for the few, no prosperity for some while leaving others in poverty, hunger, underdevelopment, and war,” he concluded.