Italy must show solidarity for migrants but make sure they respect the law, President Sergio Mattarella said at the annual meeting of the influential Catholic lay organisation Communion and Liberation Friday. "We must not allow ourselves to be defeated by fear," Mattarella said.
The Italian president added that "we will defeat terrorism with our civilisation".
He said the "utmost severity must be shown" for people traffickers. Italy must also patch up social wounds to show more solidarity, he said. "Our country is marked by age-old fissures," he said. "To these have been added new divisions, produced by the natural change in conditions, not always managed in a balanced way, and those provoked by the long economic crisis of the past years. "We must work hard to patch up the wounds and make Italy more robust, more supportive, more competitive, and more important for European construction. "Saying that a country that was "not united becomes weaker," Mattarella also observed that "selfishness does not generate a civic renewal". He warned against a growing tendency to close oneself away on the Internet, only "connecting with those who think the same way, in restricted and closed circuits".
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