Prof. Rocco Buttiglione

Prof. Rocco Buttiglione was born in Gallipoli on June 6, 1948. In Catania, he encountered the youth of the Gioventù Studentesca and successively studied jurisprudence in Turin, which at the time, was a city intensely pervaded by the ideas of great liberal lay thinkers.

He became an ordinary professor of political science at the University of St. Pius V in Rome, concerning himself with philosophy, social ethics, economy and politics also at the International Academy of Philosophy of Principality of Leichtensteini, of which he was pro-rector. He held lectures and seminars in ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin which granted him a degree honoris causa in philosophy in May of 1994. He frequented the American Enterprise Institute of Washington DC, directed by M. Novak, the Ethics and Public Policy Center of G. Weigel in Washington DC, the Action Institute of R. Sirico in Michigan, Illinois, and the Religion and Public Life of R. Neuhaus in New York. He has been a member of the editorial council for numerous Italian and foreign journals as well as editorialist of various dailies. He writes in diverse languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish. From 1984 to 1989, he was consultant of the Pontifical Commission Justitia et Pax. From 1993, he is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, as well as member of the Accademia Scientiarum et Artium Europae.

In 1994, he was elected to Parliament and was confirmed both in 1996 and in 2001 to the House of Parliament. In the last elections, he was elected senator. In June 1994, he was elected secretary of the Italian Popular Party. In 1995, he was elected secretary of the CDU- United Christian Democrats, and is a member of the bi-chamber Commission for constitutional reforms. In 1999, he became member of the European Parliament and member of the European Commission for liberty and citizens’ rights, justice and internal affairs. In 2001, he became minister for Community Politics of the Berlusconi Government.With the renewal of the European Commission, he was designated as an Italian candidate for commissioner.

In 2005, he was nominated minister for cultural goods and activities. In less than a year, he completed the Code of Cultural Goods, especially regarding landscaping, the abolition of silent assent for cultural goods, and innovative norms on preventative archaeology for the great works.

Rocco Buttiglione has written and published about ten volumes, over 130 scientific essays (many of which are in different languages) and hundreds of articles on the Italian and foreign press.