Berlusconi to do community service with Alzheimer’s patients

Silvio Berlusconi will perform community service working with Alzheimer’s patients, administrators at the centre he has been assigned to say.

The three-time former Italian premier must do the work as punishment for a tax fraud conviction.

Sacra Famiglia director Paolo Pigni said Berlusconi visited the centre yesterday to discuss the work “and we spoke with utmost serenity about the project and his activity”.

He emphasised that the Alzheimer’s patients where Berlusconi will be working are “very fragile” and that volunteers working with them “must participate wholeheartedly and be fully motivated, otherwise it doesn’t work”.

Berlusconi will spend his first two four-hour shifts “watching and listening” to become acquainted with the activities.

He starts on May 9 after his four-year sentence was reduced to one year under a general amnesty.