Prime Minister Edi Rama was awarded the Order of Minerva by the leading ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy, after the unanimous approval of the university’s academic senate for his contribution to the Italian state in the awake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Academic Order of Minerva was established by the ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University in 1986 at the proposal of then university rector, Professor Uberto Crescenti, in order to assign academic recognition to researchers and prominent world personalities in culture, economy and science. The order comprises a gold medal and the honors are conferred by the University rector during an academic ceremony.
At the inauguration of this academic year, the University rector Sergio Caputi proposed Prime Minister Edi Rama for his contribution to the Italian state during the COVID-19 pandemic. The honour has been previously awarded to prominent people worldwide, such as Pope Benedict XVI, Piero Angela, Sergio Marchione, Bruno Vespa, etc.
The award was conferred to the Premier Rama at a special ceremony hosted at the ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University by rector Sergio Caputi, who expressed profound gratitude for the solidarity shown to Italy during the extremely difficult COVID-19 pandemic.
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Rector of University, Sergio Caputi: Dear Prime Minister, after the unanimous approval by the academic senate of this university, it is my pleasure to honor you with the “Order of Minerva”, our highest honor.
I would like to recall here that during the spread of the coronavirus, which triggered the state of emergency in Italy and that we were all through, as the video images we just watched also showed, remind us of something we are already forgetting, the Albanian government made available a team of doctors and nurses, who shared with us their courage, passion and professional skills in dealing with a health emergency.
We would like to express to Prime Minister Edi Rama our deepest gratitude for the solidarity with our country.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Dear Rector,
Dear lecturers and student representatives,
Dear friends,
I am opening my remarks with a parenthesis; it is never a good idea to invite someone from the Balkans and set him a time limit to speak. Anyway, I’ll try not to be boring even though I’m very excited and I believe my voice speaks volume.
It was with great pleasure that I received the invitation to participate in this session of the academic year at the leading ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University of Chieti, Pescara, but I would like to confess that I was overwhelmed by a sense of shyness and almost insecurity when I was told that I would be awarded the Academic Order of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and patron of knowledge. Wisdom is a quality, which, as you know, does not always characterize those involved in politics. I would even dare say that quite the opposite is true. This is a euphemism, because it never actually characterizes a politician.
Quite frankly, I am not really convinced whether the Albanian government decision back then had anything to do with knowledge or wisdom, but instead I would term it as an instinctive, human, simple gesture, a moral instinct similar to the one inspiring the modern Hippocratic Oath, mobilizing doctors and medicine to ceaselessly serve life and health, despite the fact it was about lives here or beyond the state borders, on this side or the other side of the Adriatic. It was a symbolic help, definitely an insufficient one to actually change the course of the vicious war against the invisible enemy, yet a vital one as a sign of love and solidarity to show Italy we were there with our hearts and whatever we could offer and provide, being fully convinced and aware that Italy would have done precisely the same, as it has already done in previous periods.
The history of Italian-Albanian relations is an early one, but also complicated and deeply ingrained, with history not always being generous to our peoples and, nevertheless, despite sometimes painful events, it is a history featuring significant gestures of love and mutual solidarity.
What Albania did during Italy’s pandemic emergency is insignificant compared to what Albania owes to Italy, but it has done a lot given what the country could really afford. Albania did so without asking for praise or gratitude in exchange. It did it on a smaller scale, but totally identical to what its daughter, Saint Mother Teresa had done for humanity on a universal scale over decades. Through a small team of doctors and nurses, Albania sent “misionari della carita” of not a charitable soul, but of fraternal support. This is a historical moment that showed us that exactly when you need to give more, solidarity is put to the test.
We also did it to show that egoism between states, although taken for granted, is not indispensability, since Europe is built through facts and not compromises and abstract formulas. By facts I mean everyday gestures of altruism.
The destinies of Albania and Italy have always been intertwined in search of what would be defined as Europe’s authentic spirit, a spirit of non-exclusion, but of the search for a model of justice and common good, beyond international borders.
It was not the first time when our country set an example of solidarity and altruism. Albanians have done it before, for example, during the World War II, when this small and predominantly Muslim country took in thousands of Jews expelled from all over, thus becoming the only country in Europe where the population of Jewish origin had increased rather than diminishing at the end of World War II, because no Jews were left in the hands of the Nazis. Not a single one!
We did it again, even after the energy from the pandemic when NATO withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. Albania was the first country and unfortunately one of the few countries that welcomed Afghan refugees.
People, men and women, families, children who have stayed with us, with all the NATO countries, who believed in us, who have exposed themselves on our behalf and with that withdrawal, there were many who wanted to leave them behind. This was unacceptable to us, although it was not us the one to provide solutions. However, I am proud that while rich NATO members refused to welcome those people, who betrayed themselves fearing that electoral balances could be compromised and fearing they could not win some more votes . Albania did not backtrack. We have saved several thousand human beings.
Europe is divided today by the dams of war, the integration conflicts and the crisis of its institutions. I believe that this is exactly what is needed, these simple signs of humanism. To look up and see a human being suffering, without looking down and thinking about itself only. Italy is the cradle of humanism and the Renaissance and I am confident that finally, in the hands of two women, one in the government, the mother of a daughter, and the other in the opposition, the daughter of the “Rainbow” revolution, the spirit of humanism and the culture of what has always nurtured and inspired Albania, will return it to the spirit of an Italian Renaissance and through Italy which has always taught Europe in a humane European Renaissance.
Thank you.
