The Italian Constitution grew out of
a need to overcome and banish hatred as the measure of human
relations, President Sergio Mattarella said on Friday.
"Human civilisation requires us to defeat that hatred in
relations between people, by severely sanctioning their
behaviour and thus creating the basis for the rules of our
coexistence," Mattarella told his audience at the annual Meeting
of Catholic evangelical organisation Communion and Liberation
(CL) in Rimini.
The president recalled how in the post-war Constituent Assembly
"different opinions met in a spirit of sharing to affirm the
values of dignity and equality of all people, of peace, of
freedom".
"This is how our Constitution was born: with friendship as a
resource to draw on, in order to overcome barriers and obstacles
together, to express our true humanity," he continued.
Mattarella also warned against the use of "pretexts" to "stir up
divisions".
"There is never a shortage of pretexts for stirring up
divisions, be it the invocation of ideological differences,
ethnic characteristics, deceptive class struggles or the desire
to revive anachronistic nationalism. What is happening on our
European borders following the invasion of Ukraine by the
Russian Federation is a dramatic example of this," he said.
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