Nicknamed “the immortal” for his longevity in politics, the former head of the Italian government Silvio Berlusconi, 86, left the Milan hospital on Friday where he had been admitted six weeks ago for leukemia and a lung infection.
• Read also: Silvio Berlusconi with chronic leukemia
• Read also: Silvio Berlusconi in intensive care for a heart problem
Silvio Berlusconi rushed into a sedan with tinted windows which left the San Raffaele hospital in the Lombard capital at midday, where he had entered on April 5, noted an AFP photographer.
He had been admitted to this prestigious establishment to treat a state of weakness linked to a lung infection but his doctors had revealed that he suffered from chronic leukaemia.
He had addressed his supporters for the first time in early May, in a video message, from his hospital room.
Elegantly dressed, seated behind a desk with the party banner and the Italian flag behind him, he thanked his supporters for their support, “which more than anything helped me overcome a very dangerous pneumonia”.
After dominating Italian politics for decades, Silvio Berlusconi now appears physically diminished during his rare public appearances.
Among the richest men of the peninsula with a fortune estimated by Forbes at 6.4 billion euros, Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalized several times in recent years.
In January 2022, he was admitted to San Raffaele to treat a urinary tract infection. The previous April, he had also been hospitalized for more than three weeks for “Covid-19 sequelae” which he had contracted in September 2020.
He had also undergone major open-heart surgery in 2016, then an operation to treat an intestinal obstruction in the spring of 2019. In 1997, he had been operated on for a malignant tumor in the prostate.
Scandals
The journey of this eternal ghost, whose political death has been wrongly announced many times, merges with the Italian history of the last 30 years.
Prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011, he is currently a senator and president of his right-wing party, Forza Italia, a minor partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government.
Ms Meloni had visited him in hospital on Sunday, saying he was in ‘excellent spirits’ and continued to work ‘tirelessly’.
“We are waiting for you on the ground to fight our battles together,” the far-right leader reacted on Friday.
Forza Italia’s number two, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, and his coalition ally Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration League party, also paid him a visit.
“Welcome home great Silvio,” Matteo Salvini tweeted on Friday. “We are all happy to have you back home, welcome president,” Tajani also wrote.
Football fan Silvio Berlusconi chaired AC Milan for 31 years, which won the Champions League five times in his era, before selling in April 2017 to Chinese investors. He is the current owner of the Monza club.
His career has also been marred by scandals and legal issues, which over the past decade have focused on proceedings related to his infamous ‘Bunga Bunga’ sex parties.
The octogenarian, whose partner Marta Fascina is 53 years his junior, caused a scandal again in December 2022 by promising his players before a match to bring a “bus of whores” “into the locker room” in the event of victory.
The philorussian declarations of the media magnate, friend of Vladimir Putin, also regularly embarrass Giorgia Meloni, who was his Minister of Youth from 2008 to 2011.
But for millions of Italians it represents a golden age of the transalpine economy. His family’s holding company, Fininvest, includes television channels (MediaForEurope), newspapers and Mondadori publishing.