Giuseppe Piagnatone, magistrate and current president of the Vatican City Court, and Carlo Cottarelli, economist and leader of the International Monetary Fund until 2013 spent a sunny afternoon in Piazza Castello debating the concept of justice, together with Professor Vincenzo Satta, researcher at the Cattolica University in Milan. Cottarelli, citing his book All’inferno e ritorno, expressed his view of justice, understood as equality of opportunities. Pignatone, on the other hand, sought to describe justice as a judicial system, suggesting how it is particularly difficult to pursue in Italy due to the excessive number of norms and inquiries. The author, describing passages from his book Fare giustizia, stated how politics has to support and ease the judiciary of social problems, such as the mafia, to reduce the number of cases. Subsequently, both Cottarelli and Pignatone shared the urgency to simplify the bureaucratic procedures with the goal of reaching higher level of justice. However, Cottarelli outlined how this simplification is not easy because of the overload of norms that have been accumulated by the legislature over the years.

The final topic discussed by the authors was corruption. On the economic side, Cottarelli explained the principal damages caused by corruption, such as the waste of public money and the weakening of economic competition. On the juridical aspect, Pignatone referred principally to the mafia, showing how it involves not just corruption, but the use of violence. The two guests ended the event by saying that education is the key to putting the country on the right path towards social justice.