Eighty years after the first session of the Constituent Assembly, the Chamber of Deputies hosted a commemorative ceremony marking the anniversary, attended by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. The President of the Republic paid tribute— in the presence of the Presidents of the Council of Ministers and of the Constitutional Court— to the women and men who, within the Constituent Assembly, in this very Chamber where its proceedings took place, were able to give shape to the freedom and democracy of the Italian people in the aftermath of the referendum that chose the Republic as the form of State, and who ensured its independence.
President Mattarella recalled the words of the President of the Assembly, Umberto Terracini: “At its very dawn, the Republic wished to extend its indulgent hands and turn its kind and serene gaze toward many who had not hesitated to wound the Italian homeland, to ally themselves with its enemies, to strike its most heroic sons. The renewed gesture of friendship that you have promoted today seeks to express the spirit that has guided our work— in each of us, regardless of where we sat or the ideology to which we adhered. The Assembly conceived and drafted the Constitution as a solemn pact of friendship and fraternity for the entire Italian people, to whom it entrusts it so that they may serve as its vigilant guardians and disciplined implementers.”
Opening the work of the Constituent Assembly, President Saragat had urged: “Let the face of the Republic be a human face,” President Mattarella emphasized.
President Sergio Mattarella concluded his remarks with the following words: “The face and the soul that we have inherited— and that citizens recognize as their own— is that of the Constitution. The work of an Assembly of free women and men. Long live the Republic, long live the Constitution.”
Read the full speech of the President of the Republic here.
