Aldo Moro: life, political career and tragic epilogue of the kidnapping of the Red Brigades

The beginnings

Born in Maglie, in the province of Lecce, in 1916, son of a school inspector and an elementary teacher. His involvement in politics began early during his studies. He was president of the FUCI from 1939 until he was called to arms and then head of the Catholic Graduates Movement. He contributed as a founder to the birth of the Christian Democracy, of which he was one of the representatives in the Constituent Assembly. He was part of the Commission of 75 which was responsible for drafting the parts of the Charter relating to human and citizen rights. In all legislatures he sat in the Chamber of Deputies. Parallel to politics, he continued his academic career. He graduated from the University of Bari with a thesis on "Criminal legal capacity" and later became a professor of criminal law at the same university between 1948 and 1964 and subsequently of institutions of criminal law and procedure in Rome. In 1945 he married Eleonora Chiavarelli, with whom he had four children: Maria Fida born in 1946, Anna in 1949, Agnese in 1952 and Giovanni in 1958.

Political career

In the fifth government De Gasperi held the role of undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, expressing closeness to Dossetti's positions. At the beginning of the 1950s he presided over the parliamentary group of the DC, holding the position of Minister of Justice in the Segni government and of Public Education in the Zoli and Fanfani governments. 1959 was an important year in which he was elected secretary of the DC, as he was a mediation figure between the Fanfanian and Dorothy currents. In this position he found himself at the head of the party in the complex years of the crisis of centrism and the debate on the opening to the left to the socialists. A line established with the Christian Democratic congress in Naples in 1962. As Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968, he led three consecutive governments in which the centre-left project was established although with the crises of 1964 and 1966 the propulsive and reformist drive faded. He returned several times in the role of Foreign Minister and again Prime Minister in the two-year period 1974 -1976), reinforcing the line already formalized in '69 as a "strategy of attention" towards the communist party, with an eye towards the prospect of the "historic compromise" between the two opposing parties. His role as mediator was consolidated in the years in which he held the position of president of the national council of the DC, starting from 1976) against the background of the government of national solidarity, also called "of no confidence" (July 1976 - March 1978).

The kidnapping and death

On 16 March 1978, the day of the launch of the fourth Andreotti government which was about to receive the vote of confidence with the external support of the PCI, at the end of a complex political crisis linked to the entry of the communists into the majority, he was kidnapped in Rome, in via Fani, by a commando of the Red Brigades who killed the men of the escort. During the kidnapping, which lasted 55 days and which had the aim of hitting what they defined as "the heart of the State" by blocking the expansion to the communists, Aldo Moro wrote more than four hundred pages including letters, notes, wills, notes and the memorial, made up of the answers to the interrogations of the Red Brigades and which never arrived in original form. Faced with the kidnapping, politics and the press were divided between those against and those in favor of negotiations with the terrorists. The appeals for clemency, including that of Paul VI who addressed the Red Brigades using the expression "I beg you on my knees", and of the Secretary General of the UN, and of the Italian Socialist Party, which was the main pro-negotiation political force, remained unheard. The line of firmness prevailed and the investigative activity was not conclusive. Moro's body was found on 9 May 1978 in the trunk of a red Renault 4 in via Caetani, in the center of Rome.