Scalia was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Scalia was a native of Trenton, and a devout Italian Catholic.. Scalia grew up with a devout mother, He had a portrait of St. Thomas More, the martyr and patron saint of lawyers, in his Supreme Court office. One of his nine children, Paul Scalia, is a Catholic priest in the Arlington diocese of northern Virginia.On September 10, 1960, Scalia married Maureen McCarthy.They had nine children, five boys and four girls.
The family resided in McLean, Virginia. Catholics are now the bench’s majority. Five others are also Catholic: Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas. In 2002, Scalia analyzed the morality of the death penalty in an article written for First Things, a journal for religion and public life. “a matter of great consequence to me,” he wrote. “The death penalty is undoubtedly wrong unless one accords to the state a scope of moral action that goes beyond what is permitted to the individual,” he explained.
Scalia died in his sleep on February 13, 2016 of natural causes, after a day spent hunting quail at Cibolo Creek Ranch, Texas. He is famously quoted as saying:
"God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools...and He has not been disappointed....If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."
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