Navarro-Valls Award for Leadership and Benevolence assigned

By Michele Raviart

“Benevolence means contributing to the growth of the person in his or her humanity,” said Joaquìn Navarro-Valls, historic spokesman for Pope St. John Paul II, who served as director of the Holy See Press Office from 1984 to 2006.

This compassionate disposition towards others, combined with a leadership position, was a quality of the late Spanish doctor and journalist, to whom the “Joaquìn Navarro-Valls International Award for Leadership and Benevolence” was dedicated.

The award was established in 2023 by the Biomedical University Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome and the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital Foundation that Navarro-Valls himself helped to create in 2015. It is awarded to “eminent personalities” with the aim of “promoting models that contribute to the improvement of society through solidarity and benevolence for a more responsible, sustainable and inclusive world.” Furthermore, the aim of the initiative is also the creation of ten scholarships for the most deserving students of the Bio Medico Campus. The second edition of the award took place on Monday, July 8, in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol, seat of the Rome administration.

The winners

The winner of the senior category this year is Lina Tombolato Doris, who in 2022 created the Ennio Doris Foundation in memory of her husband, founder of the Mediolanum bank, who died the previous year.

According to the Biomedical University Foundation, Ms. Tombolato Doris has promoted “several projects in favor of disadvantaged children, university scholarships and technical training offered to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as support activities for families and the elderly who wish to accompany those in need.”

Nicolò Govoni, 30, president and founder of the NGO “Still I Rise”, won the award in the junior category. Govoni created his association in 2018 on the island of Samos in Greece to respond to the educational emergency of migrant and vulnerable children. I rise again The association now also operates in Syria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Colombia and India and has supported the education of around 20,000 children. “Nominated for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, Nicolò Govoni has demonstrated generosity and human consistency over time in his commitment to education issues and support for children and adolescents in vulnerable situations,” said the Biomedical University Foundation

In memory of the “Portavoz”

During the ceremony, several personalities shared their memories of Mr. Navarro-Valls, who died on July 5, 2017. According to Valentina Alazraki, the dean of the Vatican press corps, Mr. Navarro-Valls was “El Portavoz” (spokesperson, editor's note) par excellence. He shared with the pope the same idea of ​​institutional communication and a professionalism and leadership united with humanity, she added, recalling Navarro-Valls' emotion in front of his colleagues in the press room a few hours before the death of Saint John Paul II, she said.

Gisotti: Navarro-Valls taught us how important information is for the Church

It is not surprising that since 2019 the journalists' room of the Holy See Press Office has borne the name of Navarro-Valls himself, noted Alessandro Gisotti, deputy director of the Dicastery for Communication and in 2019 director of the press room. With his successor Father Federico Lombardi, Sj -, he said, he taught us that information is also important for the Church and the Holy See, that there are no good or bad questions, but only interesting and uninteresting questions, and the importance of cordiality with all colleagues, in which different roles never become a distance.