Former royals return to Italy after 56-year exile
ROME (AFP) - The son of Italy's last king paid a flying visit to Rome with his family on Monday, expressing "indescribable emotion" at being allowed to return after 56 years in exile imposed for the royal family's support for the wartime fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, who was nine when he left Italy and is now 65, came from his home in Geneva, Switzerland, in a specially chartered plane accompanied by his wife Marina Doria and their 30-year-old son Emmanuel Filiberto, five months after the Italian parliament passed a law allowing them to return to Italy.
Only hours after their arrival, and after an audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, the former royal family returned to Switzerland, with Victor Emmanuel telling journalists at Rome's Ciampino Airport that he felt an "indescribable emotion" at the visit.
"I have come back to Rome after 56 years and I cannot find words to express my feelings at this moment," he said.
A papal spokesman said Victor Emmanuel had told the pope he saw his return as "a page of history" being turned.
The spokesman said the pope told the family to "be welcome," and Victor Emmanuel replied: "Thank you very much indeed. For us, this audience is very important. For us it is almost a page of history."
The family then had a 20-minute audience with the pontiff in his private library.
On his departure Victor Emmanuel told reporters the pope had encouraged him to "come back as soon as possible." He quoted the pope as saying: "You will always be welcome here."
The Italian royal family, the House of Savoy, was banished as Italy became a republic in 1946, over its links with Mussolini's fascist regime.
Former king Victor Emmanuel III, grandfather of the current head of the family, co-signed Mussolini's racial laws in 1938 including those authorising the deportation of 8,000 Jews from 1943 onwards.
The young Victor Emmanuel was taken into exile in Switzerland by his father Umberto III, who himself ruled for just 27 days before the family's male heirs were condemned to exile. Umberto died in 1983.
A law passed by the Italian parliament in July and which came into force November 10 allowed Victor Emmanuel and Filiberto to return to Italy.
Opponents of their return failed to gather the 500,000 signatures required to put the issue to a referendum, and Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi signed the law.
The family had lobbied for their return, renouncing all claims to the throne in a formal letter to the Senate earlier this year and obtaining the support of the European Parliament.
Victor Emmanuel is still undergoing treatment for a serious back injury sustained in an accident during a car rally in Egypt last year.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi also supported the family's return in a spirit of national reconciliation over Italy's divided wartime past, making an end to their exile one of his campaign pledges.
As Rome began preparing the legislation, 74 percent of Italians said in a survey the Savoys should be allowed to return, on condition they swear allegiance to the republican constitution.