Naples – “Finally we are here. In the last council with the presidency of Maria Coppola, the majority, of the center-right, and the opposition agreed on my proposal which passed unanimously. The presidency Troaino was also enthusiastic about it. Everything passed to the toponymy and there was an initial ok, but the resolution was missing. I did not encounter any resistance, but the process, which began almost two years ago, was extended due to Covid”. So to Dire Vincenzo Mancini, Democratic councilor of the Municipality 7 of Naples, who proposed changing the toponym of Piazza della Milizia to Piazza Edith Stein, in Miano.
Stein, saint and then patroness of Europe by the will of Pope John Paul II, a Christian nun, philosopher and German mystic of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, was a victim of the Shoah. A Jew who converted to Catholicism, she was arrested by the Nazis and locked up in Auschwitz-Birkenau where she was killed in 1942 together with her sister Rosa, a Discalced Carmelite tertiary.
For Mancini, Stein “represents the new Europe” and the change of toponym “is a sort of retaliation for a place that first bore the name of Benito Mussolini and now of the Militia. It is a revenge against that culture of death that has crossed Europe and Italy”.
The ceremony for the name change of the square is scheduled for tomorrow, on the day of Remembrance, at 13:30 pm with the participation of the mayor of Naples Gaetano Manfredi, the president of Municipality 7 Antonio Troiano, the parish priests of the neighborhood and the boys and girls of the high schools.
Mancini's goal is to ensure that "the figure of Stein, together with all the victims of the Shoah, indicates a path of peace and tolerance between peoples. It must not only be a look towards the past, but also and above all towards the future".
Article published on 26 January 2023 - 17:55
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