Former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi dies, funeral to be held on Wednesday

Berlusconi, 86, had been admitted last Friday, three weeks after being discharged after spending 44 days hospitalized for pneumonia, which was aggravated by leukemia that he had suffered for some time.

At the moment there is no official confirmation, but according to the same sources, his death occurred this morning, shortly after his five children and his brother, Paolo, went to the hospital.

That raised all the alarms about his state of health, which worsened last night.

Sick with leukemia for a long time

The former prime minister’s brother and his eldest daughter, Marina, were the first to arrive at the medical center at around 9:30 a.m. (7:30 GMT), where they joined their partner, Marta Fascina, 53 years his junior and who has stayed by his side until the last moment. Then his other children did, Eleonora, Barbara, Pier Silvio and Luigi.

Last Friday, his doctors assured that Berlusconi had been admitted to the San Raffaele Hospital to undergo “scheduled controls for his known hematological pathology” and that his admission did not respond “to any critical aspect or alarm.”

Berlusconi thus returned to the hospital three weeks after being discharged, after spending 44 days hospitalized for pneumonia that was aggravated by leukemia that, according to his medical team, he had suffered for a long time.

The medical report of his trusted doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, revealed that the Italian tycoon was being treated for a “lung infection” caused by “a chronic hematological condition that he had been carrying for a long time: chronic myelomonocytic leukemia.” .

Chronic myeloid leukemia is a form of blood cancer that can appear especially in people over 60 years of age and the doctors then specified that he was undergoing “specialized cytoreductive treatment” and chemotherapy.

surrounded by friends During the time he was admitted, Berlusconi was accompanied at all times by his girlfriend, the deputy Marta Fascina, 53 years younger, and received visits from his closest collaborators, from his partners – among them Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, and of his family. From the hospital, the tycoon even appeared in two videos: one to encourage Italians to vote in local elections and another to intervene in his party’s convention, in which he claimed to be “ready” to return to battle. . Over the years, Berlusconi had been hospitalized on several occasions. In one of them a pacemaker was implanted. He had to be admitted for covid-19 and in one of the most recent, in January 2022, for a urinary infection.

Berlusconi’s funeral will be Wednesday at Milan Cathedral The funeral of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will be officiated this Wednesday in the cathedral of Milan (north), after a two-day funeral chapel in his mansion and at the headquarters of his television, Mediaset.It is expected that they will be state funerals since he was three times prime minister, among other positions. From today the coffin of the deceased tycoon will be exhibited in his Villa Martino de Arcore mansion, a town near Monza, north of Milan, and tomorrow at the Mediaset headquarters. The mayor of the Lombard capital, Giuseppe Sala, has offered the town hall facilities, very close to the temple, for the obsequies. In Rome, the city where he developed his historic political stage, the Italian flag flies at half mast in the Senate, where he held a seat since the last elections in October 2022.Agency