Profile: Italian President Sergio Mattarella

BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) — At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Italian President Sergio Mattarella will pay a state visit to China from Nov. 7 to 12.
Mattarella was born in July 1941 in Palermo, Italy, and graduated from the Faculty of Law at Sapienza University of Rome.
He was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1983 and later served as minister for parliamentary relations, minister of public education, deputy prime minister, and minister of defense.
He participated in the founding of the Democratic Party in 2006 and was appointed as a judge of the Constitutional Court in 2011.
He assumed the presidency in February 2015 and secured a second term in January 2022. ■