Aung San Suu Kyi picks up honorary Rome citizenship

ROME – Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi has picked up an overdue honor from Rome, a city she fondly recalled enjoying, along with its gelato, 40 years earlier.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner received Rome’s honorary citizenship Sunday night in City Hall on the ancient Capitoline Hill.

In 1994, Rome conferred the honor in absentia on Suu Kyi, a champion of democracy who spent years as a political prisoner in her homeland.

She and her National League for Democracy party were frozen out of politics by the military regime that governed until 2011, and last year she and several dozen party members won parliamentary seats. Sunday, she recalled visiting Rome while a student at Oxford University.

She meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican today.