Sergio Mattarella was sworn in for his second straight term as Italian president on Thursday afternoon.
The 80-year-old Palermo-born former Constitutional justice and three-time ex-minister was re-elected Saturday after six days of stalemate among Italy's political parties forced them to beg him to reluctantly set aside his retirement plans.
Mattarella, the second most-voted president after ex partisan Sandro Pertini in 1978, is the second Italian president to be re-elected after Giorgio Napolitano stepped back in after similar deadlock in 2013.
It is not known whether Mattarella intends to serve a full seven year term again.
Napolitano, 87 when he started his second term, only stayed on for a couple of years.
Former leftwing Christian Democrat Mattarella, whose brother Piersanti was slain by Cosa Nostra in 1980, delivered an inaugural address that focused on keeping up the COVID fight to give Italians "concrete" anwers and boosting Italy's role within the EU.
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