Bernardo Mattarella - Early Life and Political Career

Early Life and Political Career

Bernardo Mattarella was born in Castellammare del Golfo, in the province of Trapani in western Sicily as the eldest of seven children in a family of humble origins. His father was a sailor. In 1924, he became the secretary of the Italian People's Party (Partito Popolare Italiano), the predecessor of the Christian Democrat party (DC), in Castellammare.

An anti-fascist, he graduated in law in Palermo, where he lived until the Allied invasion of Sicily. He moved to Rome, where he took part in the founding of the DC in May 1943 with Alcide De Gasperi. After the invasion of Sicily by allied forces in July 1943, he moved back to Palermo where he became one of the co-founders of the DC on the island and was nominated in the municipal council of Palermo by the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT).

Read more about this topic:  Bernardo Mattarella

Famous quotes containing the words early, life, political and/or career:

    In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)

    I have scarcely felt greater pain in my life than on learning yesterday from Bob’s letter, that you had failed to enter Harvard University. And yet there is very little in it, if you will allow no feeling of discouragement to seize, and prey upon you.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

    What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)