Sergio Mattarella

Biography

Sergio Mattarella was born in Palermo in 1941, the son of the Christian Democrat politician Bernardo Mattarella. He studied law at Sapienza University of Rome and became a jurist. The Mafia's murder of his older brother Piersanti, President of Sicily, in January 1980 changed the course of his life, and he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1983.

A leading figure of the Catholic left in Christian Democracy, he served as minister for parliamentary relations (1987-1989) and minister of education (1989-1990). When the party broke up in 1994 he helped found the Italian People's Party, and he was deputy prime minister in 1998-99 and defence minister from 1999 to 2001. He later joined The Daisy and was a founder of the Democratic Party in 2007, leaving politics in 2008. Parliament elected him a judge of the Constitutional Court in 2011.

Parliament elected him President of the Republic in January 2015, on the fourth ballot. He was re-elected in 2022, only the second president to serve a second term, and became the longest-serving president of the Italian Republic. His tenure covered the migrant crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and repeated government crises, in which he blocked a eurosceptic finance minister in 2018 and appointed Mario Draghi to head a unity government in 2021.