by In Trieste
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, participated in the inauguration of the academic year at the University of Trieste this Monday, 28 March.
The rector of the university, Roberto Lenarda, president of the region, Massimiliano Fedriga and mayor of Trieste, Roberto Dipiazza, were present to welcome the president of the Republic.
President Mattarella opened his speech at the inauguration ceremony of the 2021-2022 academic year of the State University of Trieste, by making an appeal for peace in Ukraine. “I would like to thank everyone for being here. Special greeting goes too all of the professors and students of this university. The fact that many students have graduated despite the ongoing pandemic shows how great this institution is. It is important to underline that there are many Ukrainian students here. Trieste has suffered a lot in the past and it’s no surprise that the city is opening its doors to the incoming refugees.”
Mattarella added that Covid “was not an extraordinary stress test just for the university, it was for everyone, in every part of the world and it is good to keep the attention on what happened above all because when the emergency is behind us it will be good not to always remember what happened and learn from it.”
“What we learned from the difficult experiences of the past years”, continued Mattarella, is that “everyone needs the others, each of us needed everyone else and vice versa, and this is a criterion that we hope will not be removed.”
President Mattarella finished his speech by bringing the attention back to the peace in Ukraine. “It is intolerable, and it should not even be conceivable, that in this new millennium someone wants to behave according to the power criteria of past centuries. Aggressive national egoism is unacceptable in this century. We must respond with opening doors to Ukrainian refugees. This return to the past and a huge step back for civilization should be stopped immediately, decisively. All this brings us back to the importance of knowledge and cultural exchange. Culture is, indeed, the engine in today’s world.”
