Franco Roccella

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Franco Roccella (2 January 1924 – 22 December 1992) was an Italian journalist and politician. He was born in Riesi, Sicily, and helped found the Radical Party in 1955, which supported legalizing abortion in Italy.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1979 for Palermo and served until 1983. He returned to Parliament in July 1984 after Giovanni Negri resigned. In February 1986 he joined the Italian Socialist Party and stayed with them until 1987.

Roccella was the mayor of Riesi from November 1991 to September 1992. He was married to Wanda Raheli, a feminist painter, and they had a daughter, Eugenia, who also became a politician and journalist. Eugenia briefly ran with the Radical Party in the late 1970s, returned to politics in the 2000s with socially conservative views including opposition to abortion, and was named Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities in the Meloni government in 2022.