Italy Buries Emma Bonino, and the Interior Counts What She Won

Emma Bonino, the Italian feminist, activist and former government minister, has died aged 78, and Italy's political world turned out on Tuesday for her state funeral, according to The Local Italy. The Guardian's obituary records that in 1974, when she was already a prominent campaigner, she became pregnant after a doctor had told her she was sterile, and that she attempted to obtain an abortion at a time when the procedure was still largely closed to Italian women.

That episode runs through the foreign coverage of her life. The Guardian frames her as a politician who joined the Radical party and fought a long battle for women's rights, and it treats her career as a campaign that ran from the abortion referendums of the 1970s through to ministerial office and a term as a European commissioner.

The Local Italy reports that tributes came in from across the political spectrum, and that the funeral drew the country's political class. Both outlets present her as a figure claimed well beyond any single party, which is unusual in a press that normally sorts Italian politicians by coalition.