ROME, Dec 23: The son of Italy’s last king paid a flying visit to Rome with his family on Monday, expressing “indescribable emotion” at being allowed to return after 56 years in exile imposed for the royal family’s support for the wartime fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, who was nine when he left Italy and is now 65, came from his home in Geneva, Switzerland, in a specially chartered plane accompanied by his wife Marina Doria and their 30-year-old son Emmanuel Filiberto, five months after the Italian parliament passed a law allowing them to return to Italy.

Only hours after their arrival, and after an audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, the former royal family returned to Switzerland, with Victor Emmanuel telling journalists at Rome’s Ciampino Airport that he felt an “indescribable emotion” at the visit.

“I have come back to Rome after 56 years and I cannot find words to express my feelings at this moment,” he said.

A papal spokesman said Victor Emmanuel had told the pope he saw his return as “a page of history” being turned.

The spokesman said the pope told the family to “be welcome,” and Victor Emmanuel replied: “Thank you very much indeed. For us, this audience is very important. For us it is almost a page of history.”

The family then had a 20-minute audience with the pontiff in his private library.

On his departure Victor Emmanuel told reporters the pope had encouraged him to “come back as soon as possible.” He quoted the pope as saying: “You will always be welcome here.”

The Italian royal family, the House of Savoy, was banished as Italy became a republic in 1946, over its links with Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Former king Victor Emmanuel III, grandfather of the current head of the family, co-signed Mussolini’s racial laws in 1938 including those authorising the deportation of 8,000 Jews from 1943 onwards.—AFP