Aldo Moro

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Aldo Moro

12 Published BooksAldo Moro

Aldo Romeo Luigi Moro (Italian: [ˈaldo ˈmɔːro]; 23 September 1916 – 9 May 1978) was an Italian statesman and a prominent member of the Christian Democracy (DC). He served as 38th prime minister of Italy from December 1963 to June 1968 and then from November 1974 to July 1976. Moreover, he was appointed Minister of Justice and of Public Education during the 1950s. From March 1959 until January 1964, Moro served as secretary of the Christian Democracy.

Moro also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from May 1969 to July 1972 and again from July 1973 to November 1974; during his ministry he implemented a pro-Arab policy, which characterised Italy during the 1970s and the 1980s.

He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, leading the country for more than six years. An intellectual and a patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his own party, during his rule, Moro implemented a series of social and economic reforms which deeply modernized the country. Due to his accommodation with the Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer, known as the Historic Compromise, Between 1976 and 1977, Berlinguer's PCI broke with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, implementing, with Spanish and French communist parties, a new political ideology known as Eurocommunism. Such a move made an eventual cooperation more acceptable for Christian democratic voters, and the two parties began an intense parliamentary debate, in a moment of deep social crises. The allegation, with the aim of politically destroying Moro and avoiding the risk of a DC–PCI–PSI cabinet, failed when Moro was cleared on 3 March 1978, 13 days before his kidnapping on 16 March 1978 by the far-left terrorist group Red Brigades and killed after 55 days of captivity.

The Moro's affair remains one of the most mysterious cases of Italian history for its possible implications made through the years that actually the United States (which feared that the cooperation between PCI and DC might have allowed the communists to gain information on strategic NATO military plans and installations) were involved with the help of the philo-fascist network Opeation Gladio.

Aldo Moro is always regarded as one of the greatest Prime Ministers in the history of Italy. As a Christian democrat with social democratic tendencies, he is widely considered one of the ideological fathers of modern Italian centre-left. During all his political life, he implement numerous reforms which deeply changed Italian social life; along with his long-time friend and, at the same time, opponent, Amintore Fanfani, he was the protagonist of a long-standing political phase, which brought the social conservative DC towards more leftist politics, through a cooperation with the Italian Socialist Party first, and the Italian Communist Party later.

Due to his reformist stances but also for his tragic death, Moro has often been compared to John F. Kennedy and Olof Palme.
According to media reports on 26 September 2012, the Holy See has received a file on beatification for Moro; this is the first step to become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.