Emma Bonino, who rose to prominence as a leader of campaigns by the Radical Party that legalized abortion and divorce in the 1970s in heavily Roman Catholic Italy, has died.
asserted
that → rise → Italy
Bonino was famed for pushing for change against the objections of the Vatican.
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Bonino → fame → Vatican
She was 78, her party, +Europa, announced her death.
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party → announce → death
“Her life was a long struggle against everything that denies freedom: against clandestine abortion, world hunger, the stranglehold of party politics, female genital mutilation, punitive justice, genocide, and every form of authoritarianism,” the party said.
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party → deny → authoritarianism
Even after the Radicals’ political star faded, Bonino remained a key political figure and human rights campaigner active in Italy for over five decades.
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Bonino → fade → decades
She served as a European commissioner for then premier Silvio Berlusconi and was a co-founder of the death penalty watchdog Hands Off Cain.
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She → serve → watchdog
But her bid in 1999 to become Italy’s first female president failed.
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bid → become → 1999
She remained known to younger generations as a sought-after political pundit, appearing frequently on Italian TV with her sharp wit and cutting insights.
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She → know → wit
After her cancer diagnosis in 2015, she invariably appeared in public wearing colorful headscarves.
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she → appear → headscarves
Born on March 9, 1948, in Bra — not far from the northwestern Italian city of Turin, where carmaker Fiat’s factory drove the economy — she spent her childhood on a farm, where she was often tasked to pasture pigs, a lifestyle she described as “deadly boring” in a 2023 TV interview.
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she → bear → interview
Bonino first got involved in Italian politics because she wanted to change the law.
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she → involve → law
At 26, she became pregnant and had an abortion, even though it was illegal at that time.
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it → become → time
Recalling the experience as one of the most humiliating of her life, in 1975 she was among the founders of the Information Center for Sterilization and Abortion, an organization that provided information and performed abortions before they were legalized.
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they → recall → abortions
The following year she was elected to the Italian parliament for the maverick Radical Party, a bastion of anticlericalism, civil libertarianism, feminism, liberalism and radicalism in Italy.
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she → elect → Italy
The party proposed itself as the strongest opposition to the Italian political establishment, seen as corrupt and conservative, and to the Catholic Church’s extensive influence on Italian society.
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party → propose → society
In 1978 abortion was legalized.
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abortion → legalize → 1978
That particular campaign may have been over, but Bonino had found her vocation: Politics was her life, and she became one of the most active leaders of the Radical Party and its successors.
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she → find → Party
A veteran legislator in Italian politics and an activist for various reform policies, she was elected six times as Lower House lawmaker and two times as senator.
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she → elect → senator
In 2017, she became the leader of +Europa, a liberal, European federalist party slate she launched ahead of the 2018 Italian general election.
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she → become → election
An explosive presence in politics during her 50-year-long career, Bonino was one of the few Italian political figures who scored important achievements both at home and internationally.
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who → score → home
Bonino won European exposure in a role she owed to then center-right Premier Silvio Berlusconi who, in 1995, offered her one of Italy’s two seats in the European Commission.
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who → win → Commission
As a Commissioner she forged the EU’s consumer protection policy and created the European Commission Humanitarian Office, which is now the primary European humanitarian arm.
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which → forge → Office
It was this last portfolio, the humanitarian affairs, she felt the most.
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she → feel → ?
She traveled to war zones -- former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Afghanistan -- and convinced Europe that humanitarian assistance couldn’t be an excuse for lack of political or military intervention.
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assistance → travel → intervention
In June 1999 she headed a slate named after her — Lista Bonino — at the European elections.
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she → head → elections
It was an overwhelming success: The party got 8.5% of the votes and became Italy’s fourth political force.
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party → get → votes
Bonino served as foreign minister, trade minister and EU affairs minister in Italian center-left governments of the 2000s and 2010s.
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Bonino → serve → 2000s
“My passion is humanity,” she said in May 2025, when her hometown Bra granted her honorary citizenship.
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hometown → say → citizenship
“I’ve got roots, I’ve got a homeland, a family, but precisely all that allows me to be a citizen of the world.”
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me → get → world
Getting involved with Arab women’s battle for equity, at the end of 2001 she started spending half her time in Cairo.
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she → get → Cairo
She became fluent in Arabic — she had graduated in foreign languages at Milan’s Bocconi University — and built a network of intellectuals, politicians and prominent civil society figures.
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she → become → intellectuals
Never married, she maintained strong bonds with her family in Piedmont.
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she → marry → Piedmont
“My father died before I could show him I could accomplish something,” she recalled in a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair.
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she → die → Fair
“He never understood my restlessness.
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He → understand → restlessness
He used to tell me: Emma, you are like Japanese poetry: beautiful, but I can’t understand it.”
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I → use → it
In January 2015, she announced on Radio Radicale she was suffering from lung cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy but didn’t plan to stop her political activity.
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she → announce → activity
In May of the same year, she said her cancer was in complete remission and eight years later appeared on a popular TV interview program announcing she was healed.
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she → say → program
Over the years, Bonino cultivated a deep friendship with the late Pope Francis, despite their conflicting views on key ethical issues, including abortion and euthanasia.
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Bonino → cultivate → abortion
In November 2024, Francis paid a home visit to Bonino — who had been just released from the hospital after treatment for respiratory problems — bringing her a bouquet of roses and chocolates.
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who → pay → roses
A photo posted by Bonino on social media showed them both sitting in wheelchairs on her sun-drenched terrace in Rome.
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them → post → Rome
…and 3 more, not listed.
