Exiled monarch dies

Press, 21 March 1983, Page 9

Exiled monarch dies

NZPA-Reuter Rome The death in exile of King Umberto, banned from Italy despite a last request to return, brought bitter recriminations from politicians yesterday as news of his passing made itself felt. While the Pope and the Italian President, Mr Sandro Pertini, sent personal messages of condolence to Umberto’s widow, Queen Marie-Jose, the small Italian monarchist union attacked Parliament for uselessly prolonging his 37-year exile.

The Communist Party newspaper, “L’Unita,” on a more acrimonious note, published a page of wartime memories of suffering and injustice in Fascist Italy under the Royal house of Savoy. Italy’s last monarch died on Saturday in Geneva, aged 78, after a long illness. A Republican deputy, Oscar Mammi, who had formally urged Parliament to allow him to return, said that politicians had missed a chance to make a humanitarian gesture that would have honoured the Italian Republic. A final journey home would have required a change in Italy’s Constitution, which Umberto’s son, Prince Vittorio Emanuele, last month appealed to Parliament to make. The King’s death overtook the long process which might have led to, final Parliament approval k for a new law;

Umberto ruled Italy for barely a month in May, 1946. He left the country in June after a referendum he had pledged to respect rejected the monarchy. The president of Italy’s highest Constitutional Court said yesterday that his death was a landmark in the gradual consolidation of Italy’s post-war democratic republic. It “ends a historical cycle which has witnessed the progressive consolidation of the democratic republic,” said the president of the Court, Magistrate Leopold Elia. “It must be acknowledged that Umberto of Savoy lived his long exile with great dignity and with deep participation in our affairs.” His. family says that he will be buried on Thursday at the Abbey of Hautecdmbe in France, alongside-*- the

graves of many other members of the Royal house of Savoy. Umberto’s exile, and that of his male descendants, was written into the Republican Constitution of 1947. He lived for the rest of his life in Portugal, in a seaside villa overlooking the Atlantic.

For the last months of his life he underwent constant hospital treatment in London- and Geneva for bone cancer and his illness set off a wave of sympathy in Italy, leading to a movement to allow him home to die.

The last word he uttered was “Italia,” said Falcone Lucifero, former head of the Royal household. Umberto’s estranged wife, Marie-Jose, and their four children were with him when he died. The Queen has lived in Switzerland

since 1948, but she brought him to Geneva to die three weeks ago after he was released from a London hospital. Umberto’s father, Victor Emmanuel 111, reigned in close collaboration with Italy’s Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, and abdicated in his son’s favour on May 9, 1946, in a bid to save the monarchy from the antiFascist blacklash after the war.

The manoeuvre failed. On June 2 the Italians voted 12.7 million to 10.7 million to abolish the monarchy and exile the King. Last year, after his cancer became terminal, he requested permission to return and see Naples, Rome and Turin for the last time.

King Umberto was born on September 15, 1904. He studied at the Rome Military College and the Modena Military Academy, joined the Army, studied law and married Princess Marie-Jose, a daughter of King Albert I of Belgium. A commander in the Army when Mussolini entered World War II in 1940 on the side of Nazi Germany, the Crown Prince served on the French border, but Mussolini refused to let. him fight outside the country because of his Royal status. But for many Italians, the ill-fated “May King” was too distant a figure to mourn.

There were those yesterday, .young and old, who had not ifeard of him.