Quotes

[on Annie Personnaz, Sergio's first wife, being responsible for the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation in Genova, Switzerland] I find it incoherent that the person who spent the last years of my son's life fighting against him in a litigious, bitter and spiteful divorce process, will be responsible for promoting his memory.

[on Sergio Vieira de Mello going to Iraq] He did not want to go to Iraq. This is very important. Because he had been appointed, eight months earlier, to the post of High Commissioner for Human Rights, and was already very involved with the job. So, he wanted to continue with it, and not go to Iraq. I asked him a lot: "Don't go, my son". He intended to do what he always did: visit every city to communicate that he was there to help. And he asked all the time for a grassroots movement to be formed with Iraqis, not foreigners. But it was very difficult.