Rome, September 7, 2026 – Hours of concern for Emma Bonino. The historic radical leader, 78 years old, was rescued after a sudden illness while she was in her Roman home and transported in critical condition to the Santo Spirito hospital in the capital. The ambulance ride took place this afternoon, around 6 p.m. Her condition is reported to be “serious.” Bonino is still alert and lucid. According to her attending physician Claudio Santini, she underwent examinations following a “worsening of respiratory function.” The former parliamentarian will be kept tonight in intensive care, “as a precaution,” it is specified, for monitoring of vital signs.
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The previous hospitalization and the battle against cancer
Already at the end of 2025, the leader of +Europa had been hospitalized in the same hospital, in the intensive care unit, following a sudden illness, again due to respiratory failure. Stabilized, the next day she was transferred to San Filippo Neri, where she stayed for a week.
In 2015 Bonino, a historic face of civil rights in Italy and one of the most respected voices in European diplomacy, revealed she had a tumor in the lung, a small cell carcinoma. She has always faced the illness head-on, with her direct and straightforward style. By making her battle against cancer public, she clarified that she would not leave politics: “You cannot resign from a passion,” she said.
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Civil and political activism has always characterized her career, since the years when, alongside Marco Pannella, Bonino became a protagonist of the great referendum seasons of the country, of the battles for the legalization of abortion and divorce, for the rights of prisoners and for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide.
