Scalfaro was born in
Novara,
Province of Novara, on 9 September 1918, son of Guglielmo, Barone Scalfaro (born
Naples, 21 December 1888) and wife Rosalia Ussino. He was raised in a religious atmosphere. He became a member of the association Azione Cattolica (Catholic Action) at the age of 12 and kept its badge on his lapel until his death. after a two-week stalemate of unsuccessful attempts to reach agreement. The killing of anti-Mafia magistrate
Giovanni Falcone prompted his election. His mandate ended in May 1999, and he automatically became a lifetime member of the
Senate. : President Scalfaro with
Pope John Paul II in November 1992 On 7 April 1994, Scalfaro co-officiated at the
Papal Concert to Commemorate the Shoah at the Sala Nervi in Vatican City, along with
Pope John Paul II, and Chief Rabbi of Rome
Elio Toaff. In recent times, Scalfaro was the chairman of the committee that advocated the abrogation, in the
referendum of 25 and 26 June 2006, on the constitutional reform that had been passed in parliament the previous year by the former centre-right majority. Along with all the centre-left (and a few centre-right personalities, too), Scalfaro considered it to be dangerous for national unity and for other reasons. The opponents of the reform won a landslide victory in the referendum. Scalfaro was the oldest surviving former Italian president and the second-oldest member of the Senate, after
Rita Levi-Montalcini. He consequently took the temporary presidency of the newly elected assembly which followed the
2006 general election, as Levi Montalcini refused the role because of her age. This made him one of the three politicians in Italian history to have presided over the three highest-ranked offices in the Italian Republic: President of the Republic, President of the Senate, and President of the Chamber of Deputies; the others are
Sandro Pertini and
Enrico De Nicola. A staunch
Catholic, and in the past, a rather conservative and
anti-communist politician, Scalfaro nevertheless distrusted many members of the DC who changed support to
Forza Italia, and was consistently on bad terms with
Silvio Berlusconi. He openly supported the
centre-left coalition, which included
Democratic Party of the Left, which won the 1996 and 2006 elections. Despite his age, he also actively campaigned for the "No" side in the
June 2006 referendum on a constitutional reform. This reform had been proposed by Berlusconi's
House of Freedom coalition during its control of the government. During the Second World War, in 1944, Scalfaro lost his 20-year-old wife
Maria Inzitari, by whom he had a daughter, Marianna. He never married again. After the
2008 parliamentary election, he was again asked to preside as
pro tempore Speaker of the Senate after
Rita Levi-Montalcini again refused the post, but this time he also declined to serve. Scalfaro died on 29 January 2012 in Rome. ==Honours and awards==