“Thanks, I’m one of you” he said at a PizzAut event marking the opening of the pizza-making group’s second restaurant after Milan, at Monza, on World Autism Awareness Day.
“This is a compliment for me because I am one of you,” he said.
PizzAut is not just a restaurant, but a laboratory of social inclusion and a model that offers work, training and dignity to people with autism.
In Italy there are more than 600,000 people with the condition.
PizzAut was created to offer people with autism dignity and employment, and to help build their futures.
In happy, celebratory scenes, the young workers repeatedly sang the chorus “Mattarella one of us” to him – a phrase that was also written on the apron they presented to the president.
During the lunch, Mattarella tucked into a pizza dubbed Article One after the first article of the Italian Constitution which says Italy is a republic founded on work.
“Italy is a democratic republic also founded on our work,” the children and youths said.
Organiser Nico Acampora said “dining and supping with Mattarella is an extraordinary thing, be jealous of us because we are talking in a wonderful way”.
A young waiter with autism played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the European anthem, for the president.
Mattarella was glowing in his praise for the excellent work being down by PizzAut.
“I would like to thank Nico Acampora because what he dreamt and intuited he conceived while everyone thought it impossible and improbable, is now a reality.
“This is a place not only of example but of normality because those who work here, work as everyone does,’ he added.
“Each person has his or her own way of expressing themselves, of realising themselves, of experiencing a sensibility, no one is the same as another, so it means that everyone must have the opportunity to be able to express themselves and realise their ambitions”.
ANSA
