Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, aged 86, left a hospital in Milan on Friday where he had been hospitalized six weeks ago with leukemia and a lung infection, AFP reported.

Silvio BerlusconiPhoto: Massimo Di Vita / Zuma Press / Profimedia

After lunch, Berlusconi left the San Raffaele hospital in the capital of Lombardy, where he had been receiving treatment since April 5, in a sedan car with tinted windows. He was admitted to a prestigious hospital to treat weakness related to a lung infection, but his doctors discovered that he was suffering from chronic leukemia.

He first addressed his supporters in a video message from his hospital room in early May, sitting at a table with a party flag and an Italian flag behind him.

Berlusconi has been hospitalized several times in recent years, most notably after contracting Covid-19 in 2020.

The career of this champion of return, whose political death was often announced prematurely, is intertwined with the Italian history of the last thirty years.

A three-time prime minister between 1994 and 2011, he is now a senator and president of his right-wing Forza Italia party, the minority partner in the coalition government of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney.

Maloney visited him in hospital on Sunday, saying he was “in great spirits” and continuing his work “without a break”. Forza Italia’s number two, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, and his coalition ally Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration League party, also attended.

“Welcome home great Silvio,” Matteo Salvini wrote on Twitter on Friday. “We’re all glad you’re back home, welcome president,” Tajani also wrote.

Football enthusiast Silvio Berlusconi was president of AC Milan for 31 years, winning the Champions League five times, before selling the team in April 2017 to Chinese investors. He is the current owner of Monza.

His career has also been marked by scandals and legal problems, which in the last decade have mainly been related to his famous “Bunga Bunga” sex parties.

The octogenarian, whose partner Marta Fashina is 53 years his junior, caused another scandal in December 2022 when he promised his players before a match that he would bring a “bus full of whores” to the dressing room if they won.