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With Mario Primicerio goes a Man of Peace.

Professor of Rational Mechanics, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics for very long years, mayor of Florence from 1995 to 1999, member of the Accademia dei Lincei, president of the La Pira Foundation, he was a great man of peace and dialogue with everyone.

We remember at this time of mourning his many trips to Palestine and Israel, his meetings with Israeli and Palestinian mayors to try to build bridges of peace.

We also remember a meeting he had with President Yasser Arafat in Gaza: Primicerio invited him to Florence. The president of the Palestinian National Authority accepted, came here, and from that meeting came a concrete attempt to try to build with him and the Israeli government a path to peace in Palestine, based on the prospect of two states and two peoples.

This commitment to peace was also recognized a few weeks ago by the Florence City Council, the city's highest authority, which awarded him the Golden Lily precisely for his tireless work for peace.

And this commitment of Mario Primicerio to peace is a valuable legacy that, as the city of Florence, we must carry on today more than ever.

We embrace his wife and family as well as the La Pira Foundation in this bereavement, remembering the occasions when as the John Paul II Foundation we collaborated with Primicerio in the common goal of dialogue and peace, also in the name of the great friendship that bound him to our founder and first president Msgr. Luciano Giovannetti.