The second day of the G7 intersperses the sessions – starting with a roundtable on immigration – with many bilateral meetings. On June 14, around 12 pm, Pope Francis arrived in Borgo Egnazia, in Puglia. He will be the protagonist today and his agenda includes, in addition to the speech on the ethics of artificial intelligence, ten face-to-face meetings with some of the leaders present. The pontiff’s participation in a G7 summit is considered historic, an unprecedented development for the diplomatic relations that the Vatican establishes with the rest of the world. However, the arrival of Pope Francis in Puglia is causing several controversies regarding the draft conclusions that will be released in the evening.
Yesterday, June 13, it was Francesco Lollobrigida who floated the hypothesis that the absence of a direct reference to abortion had been excluded from the draft for reasons of expediency, given the presence of the pontiff. Today, Bloomberg has seen a draft of the final statement which lacks any reference to the protection of “gender identity and sexual orientation” of the LGBTQIA+ community. This indication was instead present in the conclusions of the G7 in Hiroshima. The American agency blames the presence of the Pope for the distance between the final statement written in Japan and the one being defined in Borgo Egnazia.
