The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, pays his last tribute to Francisco Pinto Balsemão at the funeral mass taking place at the Jerónimos Monastery.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa spoke this Thursday at the Jerónimos Monastery, in his final farewell to a “visionary” man mainly “doing for others”.
The President of the Republic highlights how Balsemão has always guided his life: “Knowing, thinking, choosing freely, communicating, sharing in solidarity, anticipating times and ways, breaking barriers, exploring horizons, building futures with inventiveness and flair. Fighter. Fighter promoting causes, from the next closest to the most national, to the most European, to the most universal, to never give up, to prefer the solitude of resistance to the dictates of submission, with courage and a taste for risk.”
In addition to being a fighter, Marcelo reminds us of an “eschatological optimist” who believed “always in tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after the day after tomorrow.”
“I started over day after day, to the limit of the impossible, strictly speaking, beyond the limit of the impossible with unshakable hope and faith”, he described.
Marcelo adds that “theyes it was [Balsemão] more than six decades, in a closed Portugal”, but which “helped to open up to freedom and democracy”.
“Sometimes so naturally that your steps seemed not to be changing Portugal, but they were. They changed and changed the lives of others, the lives of all of us“, the head of state also highlighted.
For the President, Balsemão “was never an island” because “I always wanted to fulfill myself for others and with others.”
“And that, which was a lot… which was everything, Portugal will never forget“, he concluded.
