Mayor says UN rapporteur failed to show “institutional sobriety”; Albanese responds by saying she will return the city coin
The mayor of Modena says his meeting with Francesca Albanese was a mistake he wouldn’t repeat, adding that she fails to uphold “the institutional role of sobriety” and “the principle of not embracing fanaticism.”
Albanese fired back on social media, saying she will return the symbolic replica of a medieval Modena coin that she received during her visit to Modena’s City Hall.
Mayor Massimo Mezzetti revealed he had doubts from the start about meeting the controversial UN rapporteur last September, when she was presented with the souvenir at Modena’s City Hall.
“To be honest, I had doubts about receiving her from the very beginning,” Mezzetti recalled, also revealing that “there was strong public pressure and the aforementioned parliamentarians showed up at my office, even though they weren’t invited,” Mezzetti said in the city council chamber.
“The climate was that way, and the request was to grant Albanese ordinary citizenship” of Modena, but “I limited myself to a closed-door meeting. I admit frankly that a week later, after the events in Reggio Emilia” — when Albanese rebuked that city’s mayor for having called for Hamas to release hostages — “I wouldn’t have done even that.”
“Albanese failed to uphold the institutional role of sobriety to which she was called, and to the principle of not embracing fanaticism. That phase is certainly behind us today, and if it were to arise again, it would be handled differently.”
Albanese Responds: “The Time Has Come to Return the Coin”
“The time has come to return the city coin the mayor gave me: a memento that will serve him more than me.” This is how Francesca Albanese responded on social media to Modena Mayor Massimo Mezzetti’s regret regarding the September meeting at City Hall.
Albanese’s supporters are outraged:
More than five months after that meeting—which, moreover, was held privately and without any formal act of institutional recognition—the mayor deemed it appropriate to publicly declare that he would not make that decision again. This statement appears all the more incomprehensible and unfounded. It is worth remembering that the City of Modena did not grant honorary citizenship or any other honor to the UN Rapporteur. It was simply an institutional meeting, behind closed doors, with a figure who holds a high-profile international role within the United Nations. A gesture of normal institutional dialogue that, in a democratic and pluralistic city, should not be denied to anyone—let alone a UN representative engaged in monitoring human rights. Therefore, it is surprising that the mayor now feels the need to reopen an issue now archived in the local public debate, declaring that, with hindsight, he would not even have granted that meeting. A distancing statement made “out of the blue,” without any supervening circumstances to justify it. We wonder then if the mayor would have the courage to say these same words while looking Francesca Albanese in the eye.
