2015 (EN)
28 April 2015
Tutte le Attività (EN) -
Anno 2015
In October; homage paid at monument at maritime station.
(ANSAmed) - NAPLES - Eight heads of state and government will on October 3 pay homage to the Unknown Migrant at a monument in Naples. The announcement was made by Fondazione Mediterraneo president Michele Capasso. In recent days Capasso received Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) secretary-general Sergio Piazzi, who paid a tribute to the monument located in the city's maritime station. The monument that commemorates the continuing tragedies of migrants who die trying to cross the Mediterranean received praise from EU MPs on the choice of location for its ''symbolic importance, as it is from the square facing the Naples maritime station that millions of people departed last century for a better future''. Piazzi put in the urn at the monument a document attesting to the participation and patronage of the initiative. The plan for the monument, notes a statement from Fondazione Mediterraneo, was presented during the PAM plenary session in Palermo on October 29, 2011. The announcement was then made of a ''Day Dedicated to the Unknown Migrant'' on October 3, approved by the Chamber of Deputies. It is to pay tribute to the memory of the migrants that on July 2, 2014, Fondazione Mediterraneo's international committee (which has PAM observer status) decided to dedicate to them the 'Totem of Peace' containing the remains of the Unknown Migrant. The work by the sculptor Mario Molinari was placed in the square in front of the maritime station of the Naples port. Fondazione Mediterraneo gave the work to the Coast Guard of the port authorities for the 150th anniversary of their founding (1865-2015) to acknowledge the work of the 11,000 men and women who risk their lives every day to rescue the migrants whose boats capsized. The urn with the remains from Lampedusa was made of wood from the boats used by the migrants, the same as was used for the altar at which Pope Francis officiated over mass on the island. It was put in the ''Totem of Peace by Lampedusa Coast Guard commander Giuseppe Cannarile as an act of solidarity towards the victims by Coast Guard personnel.