Livorno, 6 May 2024 – “I greet the citizens of Livorno and Collesalvetti who have long been waiting for the cleanup of the most polluted areas. Let’s pray for them.”
Word of Pope Francis, who yesterday in the post Regina Coeli greeted the citizens of Livorno and Colle live worldwide from the window of his study in the Apostolic Palace. Something like this has never happened to our communities. The news went around Livorno and its surroundings in a flash, arousing surprise and positive comments, but also the hope that, after this authoritative intervention, “politics – the comments yesterday in Livorno – will move once and for all to resolve the problem of remediation of industrial sites”.
The bishop of Livorno, Monsignor Simone Giusti: “Those of the Pope are wonderful wishes which I hope will move the Ministry of the Environment to allocate resources for reclamation which the territory does not have”.
There are those who swear that behind this intervention by the Pope there is the hand of the White T-Shirt movement, which is based in all the industrial territories classified as Sin (Site of National Interest), where reclamation actions are planned, but “where they are started and proceed slowly. – say the White T-shirts – Nothing significant appears to have been done yet in Livorno and Collesalvetti, except for the asbestos removal”.
The White T-Shirt movement for several consecutive Sundays he showed up in Rome for the Angelus with a banner. He also did it at the end of December 2023. Yesterday, for the last time, he displayed a banner with the words: “We hope for the reclamation of the Sin sites” including “Livorno and Collesalvetti”.
The White T-Shirts intervened on Saturday to lend support to the Livorno Porto Pulito Association during the demonstration in Piazza Grande in Livorno, against the nuisances that have been felt throughout the city several times since March. And on which, declaring it to ‘La Nazione’, the municipality’s environmental councilor Giovanna Cepparello has made the commitment to “bring together the joint table with the competent institutions (Municipality, Arpat, Local Health Authority, Fire Brigade and Port Authority ) to identify the source, or sources, of the odorous emissions that I myself noticed”.
Monica Dolciotti
