Eugenio Scalfari dies, he was 96 years old

Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Repubblica, has died: he was 98. The newspaper he founded announced the news. "Goodbye, Editor," reads the slogan on the website's homepage.

Born in Civitavecchia on April 6, 1924, Scalfari was the first director-manager of Italian publishing, father of two 'creatures', 'L'Espresso' and 'Repubblica', born from nothing but which in a few years not only reached the heights of circulation and left an indelible mark.

After his youth in Sanremo, where he had Italo Calvino as a classmate at the classical high school, he began to write for some fascist magazines, only to be expelled because he was considered a shirker. In the early '50s he began with Pannunzio's 'Mondo' and Arrigo Benedetti's 'Europeo'. In '55 with the latter he founded 'L'Espresso', the first Italian weekly of investigation. Scalfari worked there in the dual role of administrative director and collaborator for the economy.

And when Benedetti left him the helm in '62, he became the first Italian director-manager, a figure that was completely new for Italy at the time. This dual role would later also be one of the factors in the success of 'Repubblica'. In recent years, after a very long career at the helm of the newspaper, he dedicated himself above all to writing, also with an autobiography published for his 90th birthday in 2014 attached to the newspaper.

In his first novel, 'Il labirinto', published in 98, the relationship between feelings and reason, the role that thought plays in man's daily existence and the contrast between deep aspirations and reality were the themes at the centre of his reflection, which he then developed further in 'L'uomo che credeva in Dio', 'Per l'alto mare aperto', 'Scuote l'anima mia Eros', 'La passione dell'etica', 'L'amore, la sfida, il destino'.

To his speech on faith and secularism, he who has always declared himself an atheist, responded Pope Francis, with a letter to Repubblica published on September 11, 2014. The meeting became a book in 2019 "The One God and Modern Society. Meetings with Pope Francis and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini".