Mario Scelba (5 September 1901 – 29 October 1991) was an Italian politician who served as the 33rd prime minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955. A founder of the Christian Democracy, Scelba was one of the longest-serving Minister of the Interior in the history of the republic, having served at the Viminale Palace in three distinct terms from 1947 to 1962. A fervent pro-Europeanist, he was also President of the European Parliament from March 1969 to March 1971. Known for his law and order policies, Scelba was a key figure in Italy's post-war reconstruction, thanks to his drastic reorganization of the Italian police, which came out heavily disorganised from the war. Early life Scelba was born in Caltagirone, Sicily, in 1901. His father Gaetano Scelba was poor sharecropper on land owned by the priest Don Luigi Sturzo, while his mother Maria Gambino was a housewife. The couple had five children, one of whom died during his young age. Scelba grew up in an observant Catholic family. At only 12 years old, he was forced to leave school and to help his family's finances. However, in 1914 Don Sturzo took steps to guarantee an education to Scelba, who began attending the first class of the lower gymnasium in Caltagirone. The outbreak of the World War I forced the institute to suspend lessons and Scelba recovered the lost years by studying as a privatist and achieving the classical diploma in 1920. He then studied law and graduated at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1924, with a thesis on regional decentralization. During the university, he was selected by Sturzo as his private assistant and secretary. Since 1919, Sturzo was in fact the leader of the Christian democratic Italian People's Party (PPI) and one of the most important politician in the country. When the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini rose to power, suppressing all the other parties, including the PPI, Sturzo was forced into exile, while Scelba remained in Rome as his informer. During the regime, Scelba wrote for the newspaper Il Popolo ("The People"), but when it was banned in 1925, he founded a clandestine weekly newspaper known as L'idea popolare ("People's Idea"). In these years, Scelba started his career as a lawyer in the law firm of Filippo Del Giudice, and when the latter was forced to leave the country to save from fascist repression, Scelba inherited his customers.