Rome’s mayor Ignazio Marino gave up his struggle to stay in office and announced his term was over on Friday night following the resignation of more than half of the city council.
The move has raised questions over Pope Francis’s role in an affair that ended three turbulent weeks during which Mr Marino first offered his resignation, only to withdraw it this week, thus forcing his own party, the Democratic Party (PD) of prime minister Matteo Renzi, to vote him out of office.
At any time, the role of the mayor of Italy’s capital is an important one. On the eve of a Holy Year of Mercy expected to attract up to 30 million pilgrims to the Eternal City, it is a particularly sensitive one. Security arrangements, public contracts and a wide variety of infrastructural preparations need to be put in place in readiness for an event, over which the shadow of threatened Islamic extremist violence continues to make itself felt.
Former transplant surgeon Mr Marino, an independent, not much-loved figure within the PD, was elected mayor with a 64 per cent share of the vote in the summer of 2013. Having won the mayoral elections with only lukewarm support from the PD, Mr Marino has in the meantime rarely appeared to benefit from the backing of either his party or its leader Mr Renzi.
While he has generated important initiatives in public transport, refuse collection and the creation of a partly pedestrian zone around the Roman Colosseum, Mr Marino did not much help his cause with some imprudent behaviour that suggested he did not have his finger on the Roman pulse.
Critics accuse him of eating out with his mayoral credit card and of going on holiday to the US at the very moment that Rome witnessed the spectacular and embarassing public funeral of mafia godfather Vittorio Casamonica. Finally, people asked why did he have to spend public money to take part in the pope’s visit to America last month, given that he lives in the same city as Pope Francis.
Arguably, it was this last mentioned shortcoming that cost Mr Marino most dear. On the papal flight on the way back to Italy, Pope Francis was asked by Sky Italia if he had invited the mayor to Philadelphia. In emphatic and clearly annoyed tones, Pope Francis said that neither he nor any other Holy See figure had issued such an invitation, adding: “Chiaro [is that clear]?”
Mr Marino had never claimed that he had been invited to the US by the pope. Rather he had said that his presence there was as a result of an invitation from Philadelphia’s mayor, Michael Nutter, who visited Rome this spring. The question about a papal invitation was clearly a trick question, a trap into which Pope Francis fell, knowingly or unknowingly.
As the mayor who instituted Rome’s first ever register of same-sex marriages, Mr Marino had clearly not gone out of his way to endear himself to the pope. Furthermore, Vatican sources suggest that he was just a little too “invasive” in his dealings with the pope.
Papal putdown
Be that as it may, the firm nature of the unprecedented papal putdown was quite clearly the final blow for the Mr Marino. At that point, prime minister Renzi and his aides were able to call for the resignation of their own party man.
However, Mr Marino hung on until the last, even to the point of this week withdrawing his resignation of three weeks ago. In a dramatic news conference tonight, he claimed that there were no good political reasons for voting against him. He also said that he had been disappointed by the behaviour of his party which had opted to sack him by drawing up a notary’s document rather than by having an open debate in Town Hall.
In reference to those who voted against him, Mr. Marino also said: “I have been stabbed by 26 people, controlled by one man.”
That man, clearly, is his party boss and rival Mr Renzi. It is expected that an emergency commissioner will be appointed either tonight or tomorrow to govern Rome. His role will be to oversee Rome until such time, probably in the spring, when new elections for mayor can be held.
We do not know what Pope Francis has made of tonight’s developments. What we do know is that his Holy Year has started on a note that seems anything but merciful.