In Boston, for Republic Day, I didn’t just attend a celebration with more than 1,200 people in a tricolor river never seen in a celebration of our holiday before.
I saw an Italian community that doesn’t need rhetoric to move: families, children, grandchildren, stories of sacrifice, roots that crossed the ocean and that still keep Italy alive today with a strength that moves, an excellence that leaves one speechless.
Because Italy abroad is not an office.
It’s not a stamp.
It’s not a desk to feel important behind.
It’s a house.
And a house, when it is public, has no masters: it has keepers.
For this I want to sincerely thank the Consul General of Boston and his entire team: because the right sense of the institutions is felt here. It is clear that the Consulate is not someone’s private living room, it is not the fiefdom of those who confuse an appointment with a deed of ownership, it is not the small kingdom of those who think that their compatriots should tiptoe.
In Boston, I saw the opposite: I saw respect, service, attention, community.
And let me say it clearly: our best diplomats are not those who feel like hosts. They are the ones who have the intelligence, elegance and humility to understand that that house belongs to the Italians.
As a parliamentarian elected by Italians abroad, I return from Boston with even more conviction: we don’t represent buildings, we represent people. We must not account to someone’s living rooms, hierarchies, or vanities.
The only true master of the house is the Italian people.
And when a community like Boston reminds everyone of this with this dignity, this passion and this love for Italy, then Republic Day becomes something more than a ceremony
It becomes a promise.
To serve.
To listen.
To defend.
To never forget where we come from.
Long live Boston’s Italian community.
Long live Italians in the world.
Long live Italy
