Falcone Lucifero

[1][2][3][4][5] On 4 June 1944 Umberto of Savoy, Lieutenant-General of the Realm, appointed him as Minister of the Royal House, replacing Pietro d'Acquarone.

During the following two years Lucifero was thus the main liaison between the royal family and the government; after the end of the war, he organized the campaign in favor of the monarchy in the run-up to the institutional referendum of 2 June 1946.

On 4 September 1969, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Umberto II appointed him a Knight of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation; the only case in nearly forty years, along with that of Vittorio Cini, of granting the highest honor of the House of Savoy to a personality who was neither a head of state nor a member of a royal dynasty.

During his final years he published essays, biographies, literary and theatrical works, collaborated with newspapers and periodicals, and remained a staunch monarchist to the end, always claiming that the 1946 referendum was invalid, in interviews given as late as 1996.

He died in Rome in 1997, and as dictated in his last will, he was buried in the monumental cemetery of Crotone, to whose municipal library, named after his father Armando Lucifero, he had donated his voluminous private correspondence in 1996.