COSSIGA AND NOT TO CELEBRATE BIRTHDAY
Pray for my good life!
In two days I will do eighty years, and so I go back to the Final Judgement in respect of which most hope in the mercy of God in justice, for the first will be saved because of my merits, but not of His free grace, and the second would be condemned.
I lived as a Catholic, some sinner, but as a Catholic faithful of the Roman Catholic Church, in obedience to the things he thought of having to obey, even bending my opinion that the Pope and the bishops, aware that the verdict of man, if it is not illuminated by faith, even in the intellectual capacity to know its strengths with some the truth is always tainted by the passions and the error undermined the wound it has inflicted on the man with original sin. But I always tried to honor the principle of the supremacy of conscience, which I tried to make well-educated and well informed.
I could not as I wanted to become a lawyer. From patriotic democratic, republican and anti-fascist, I tried to serve the Republic, the Italian nation and also my "little unfinished nation and homeland": Sardinia. Well I know that it was not a man of government nor a statesman, but I hope I was not a useless or worse, harmful, although some modest servant of the Republic. The occasion of my eightieth birthday does not deserve nor any ceremony or celebration. Who wants to
generosity and kindness to formulate wishes, do not. If you are a believer in God, Christian, Muslim or jew, you pray for my good death. And if someone, not having read this almost my obituary, I will send out the cards, not overshadow if I did not write it for you! Unfortunately I have to think about the game of chess for a long time I'm playing with death!
I could not as I wanted to become a lawyer. From patriotic democratic, republican and anti-fascist, I tried to serve the Republic, the Italian nation and also my "little unfinished nation and homeland": Sardinia. Well I know that it was not a man of government nor a statesman, but I hope I was not a useless or worse, harmful, although some modest servant of the Republic. The occasion of my eightieth birthday does not deserve nor any ceremony or celebration. Who wants to
generosity and kindness to formulate wishes, do not. If you are a believer in God, Christian, Muslim or jew, you pray for my good death. And if someone, not having read this almost my obituary, I will send out the cards, not overshadow if I did not write it for you! Unfortunately I have to think about the game of chess for a long time I'm playing with death!
Francesco Cossiga (Time, July 24, 2008)
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