Pope Francis presents Mattarella with the Paul VI award on May 29

Pope francesco will deliver the international award Paul VI to the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella next May 29th.

“The Paul VI Institute of Brescia”, announced the president, don Angelo Maffeis“has decided to award the Paul VI International Award to the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella and that the award will be made by the Holy Father Pope Francis on 29 May 2023, the day dedicated to the liturgical memory of Saint Paul VI and shortly before the sixtieth anniversary anniversary of his election to the Pontificate (June 21, 1963)”.

Riccardi: Mattarella is not used to accepting prizes

“The award intends in particular to recognize the cultural fruitfulness of the Christian message, capable of promoting authentic humanism”, underlined the priest, and the awarding of the award to the head of state “intends to underline how political action and service to the good common in the exercise of the various institutional functions are one of the significant areas in which this can take place”. The historian Andrew Riccardia member of the scientific committee of the institute, underlined that “there was a reflection on whether to take back the award and whether to offer it to President Mattarella, who, it seems to me, is not usual to accept prizes and awards”, but the choice was made “for a consonance, a continuity between these two figures, also distant in time and with extremely different existential curves”.

Assistant Fuci during fascism, Substitute and bishop

“The one carried out by Paul VI was undoubtedly an ecclesial ministry, to which it would be wrong to attribute an immediate political value”, underlined don Maffeis. “But there is no doubt that Pope Montini went through the twentieth century with great participation in Italian and international events. As an ecclesiastical assistant of the Fuci, in a context dominated by the fascist regime, he contributed to forming in freedom the young students he met in the universities scattered throughout Italy; as Substitute of the Secretariat of State, after the Second World War, he accompanied the growth of the young Italian democracy; during the Milanese episcopate he measured himself against the profound transformations taking place in the cultural and social fields; finally, as Pope, he continued to follow the Italian events, with absolute respect for the autonomy of the civil sphere and, together, with intimate personal participation, both in the fervid conciliar climate and – recalled the president of the Paul VI institute – in the dramatic years bloodied by terrorism”.