Silvio Berlusconi: Italy says farewell with state funeral that has split the country

Silvio Berlusconi’s 33-year-old partner wept as the former Italian premier’s coffin was carried into Milan’s vast Gothic Duomo today for his state funeral.

Marta Fascina – alongside Berlusconi’s’ children – could not hold back her tears as pallbearers carried the coffin down the cathedral’s aisle as the ceremony began.

The occasion has proved controversial in Italy, with many furious that such an honour is being bestowed upon a three-time Prime Minister and media mogul tarnished by scandals – including his famous Bunga Bunga sex orgies.

Nevertheless, thousands of the tycoon’s supporters gathered in the square in front to watch the proceedings live on giant screens, and applauded as the casket was carried up a flight of stairs and through the cathedral’s doors.

A further 2,300 people – including his family, world leaders, key allies and other high-profile acquaintances – filed into the Duomo ahead of the ceremony.

Today is also national day of mourning to mark the passing of the man that most Italians identify as the most influential figure in Italy over recent decades.

The media mogul, soccer entrepreneur and three-time former Prime Minister – adored and loathed by Italians in equal measure – had been ill for several years, though he remained the official head of his right-wing Forza Italia party, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government.

Berlusconi’s legacy – positive or negative – was being hotly debated among Italians in the run up to the event. Italians are split over whether the three-time former premier merits all the fuss and ceremony that will be on display in Milan.

His family held a private wake Tuesday at one of Berlusconi’s villas near Milan, the city where he made his billions as the head of a media empire before entering politics in 1994. 

On Wednesday, Large wreaths in the colours of the Italian flag stood along the front of the Duomo, where the ceremony was to begin at 3:00 pm (1400 GMT), presided over by Archbishop Mario Delpini.

Despite his controversial legacy, thousands of Italians filled the piazza outside Milan’s Duomo to follow the funeral on two maxi-screens.

Among them was Lucia Adiele, a member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia who travelled nearly 1,000 kilometres from her home in Altamura, southern Italy, to bid farewell to her favourite politician.

‘I was lucky enough to be a part of Forza Italia for 18 years. I was also lucky enough to meet him. The least I could do was to be here and say goodbye for the last time,’ she told Reuters TV.

Meanwhile, family members, political allies and opponents will gather inside. Around 2,300 people are expected to be inside the cathedral in total.

Berlusconi is survived by his 33-year-old girlfriend, Marta Fascina, with whom he held a fake wedding last year and who was at his bedside as he succumbed to a rare type of blood cancer.

She is expected to be joined in the front pews by Berlusconi’s two ex-wives and five children, some of whom helped run his empire, recently estimated to be worth around $7 billion.

‘You were a great man and an extraordinary father to our children,’ his first wife Carla Dall’Oglio wrote in a eulogy Tuesday.

Hungarian President Viktor Orban is among the highest-ranking of the foreign dignitaries whose attendance at the funeral is confirmed.

Meloni, who got her first government experience as a minister in a Berlusconi coalition, also will attend, along with League leader Matteo Salvini, whose party has long been allied with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. 

Italian President Sergio Mattarella will also be in attendance, while the European Union will be represented by its economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni.

Opposition politicians also are expected in a show of respect for a political figure with whom many had sparred.

AC Milan legend and former England manager Fabio Capello was seen arriving.

The longest-serving premier in Italy’s postwar history, and re-elected to the Senate last year, Berlusconi was famed for controversial gaffes on the international stage.

Political opponents are questioning not only the decisions of Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government to hold a state funeral – an honour that can be afforded to all former premiers – but to also declare a national day of mourning.

National days of mourning are more rarely invoked. 

As part of the latter, flags were lowered to half mast on all public buildings from Monday in tribute to a leader whose influence extended well beyond politics, thanks to his extensive TV, newspaper and sporting interests.

Parliament was suspended for three days and the government declared a national day of mourning for Wednesday – the first time for an ex-prime minister.

But the decision was criticised by Berlusconi’s detractors, who accused him of cronyism, corruption and pushing through laws to protect his own interests.

Senator Andrea Crisanti said he was ‘strongly against’ such national honours for ‘someone who had no respect for the state’, pointing to Berlusconi’s definitive conviction for tax fraud in 2013.

Rosy Bindi, former head of the Antimafia Commission, said it was ‘inopportune’ for ‘a person as divisive as Berlusconi’.

Repubblica daily said the ‘institutional shutdown’ was ‘extreme’ and compared it to Britain’s protocol for Queen Elizabeth II’s death.

‘Berlusconi split Italy, he insulted adversaries for 30 years, he criminalised the magistrates and he didn’t recognise laws. What are we talking about?’ journalist Marco Travaglio, a long-time Berlusconi critic and co-founder of the il Fatto Quotidiano daily, told private La7 TV on Monday.

Berlusconi is widely recognized as a precursor to the type of populist politics that later would bring Donald Trump to power in the United States.

Both used their high profile as businessmen to springboard into the political arena, upending politics as usual along the way.

Supporters of Berlusconi’s legacy cite his success in unifying the Italian center-right after the collapse of the post-war political landscape with the 1990s ‘Clean Hands’ corruption scandal. 

They also see his years as leader as periods of stabilisation, after years of quickly rotating governments, while admiring his bold rule-breaking and irreverence, perhaps especially in the face of other global leaders.

‘He did many big and small things, while suffering a mediatic and judicial aggression that only Craxi before him had endured,’ Stefania Craxi, a senator in Berlusconi’s party and the daughter of late Italian leader Bettino Craxi told private TV La7.

Her father died in exile in Tunisia in 2000 after being convicted in absentia for involvement in illegal party financing.

Berlusconi’s detractors’ list of political damage is long.

It includes conflicts of interest relating to his media empire, dozens of trials mostly for business dealings, revelations of sex-fuelled Bunga-Bunga parties at his villa near Milan and questionable associations.

The most controversial is his enduring friendship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who is subject to an international arrest warrant and cannot travel to Italy.

‘He is not a leader who helped us grow,’ said Beppe Severgnini, a long-time foreign correspondent and writer for Corriere della Sera. ‘He tapped all of our weaknesses: moral, fiscal, sexual, everything.’