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Aldo Moro (; 23 September 1916 – 9 May 1978) was an Italian statesman and prominent member of Christian Democracy (DC) and its centre-left wing. He served as prime minister of Italy for five terms from December 1963 to June 1968 and from November 1974 to July 1976.
Moro served as Italian 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. He was Italy's Minister of Justice and of Public Education during the 1950s. From March 1959 until January 1964, he served as secretary of the DC. On 16 March 1978, he was kidnapped by the far-left terrorist group Red Brigades; he was killed after 55 days of captivity.
Moro was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war prime ministers, leading the country for more than six years. Moro implemented a series of social and economic that modernized the country. Due to his accommodation with the Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, known as the Historic Compromise, Moro is widely considered to be one of the most prominent fathers of the modern Italian centre-left.
In 1935, Moro joined the Italian Catholic Federation of University Students (FUCI) of Bari. In 1939, under the approval of Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, whom he had befriended, Moro was chosen as president of the association. He kept the post until 1942 when he was forced to fight in World War II and was succeeded by Giulio Andreotti, who at the time was a law student from Rome. During his university years, Italy was ruled by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, and Moro took part in student competitions known as Lictors of Culture and Art organized by the local fascist students' organization, the University Fascist Groups. In 1943, along with other Catholic students, he founded the periodical La Rassegna, which was published until 1945.
In July 1943, Moro contributed, along with Andreotti, Mario Ferrari Aggradi, Paolo Emilio Taviani, Guido Gonella, , Ferruccio Pergolesi, Vittore Branca, Giorgio La Pira, and Giuseppe Medici, to the creation of the Code of Camaldoli, an economic policy plan drawn up by members of the Italian Catholic forces. It served as inspiration and guideline for the economic policy of the future Christian democrats. (2025). 9788874023011, Effatà Editrice. ISBN 9788874023011 In 1945, he married Eleonora Chiavarelli (1915–2010), with whom he had four children: Maria Fida (born 1946), Anna (born 1949), Agnese (born 1952), and Giovanni (born 1958). In 1963, Moro was transferred to La Sapienza University of Rome as a professor of the institutions of law and criminal procedure.
After being appointed vice-president of the DC, Moro was elected in the 1946 Italian general election a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy, where he took part in the work to redact the Italian Constitution. It was during this period that his relations with the Italian Socialist Democratic Party (PSDI) and Italian social-democrats began. In 1946, Moro ran for the Bari–Foggia constituency, where he received nearly 28,000 votes. Elezioni 1946: Circoscrizione Bari–Foggia , Ministero dell'Interno In the 1948 Italian general election, he was elected with 63,000 votes to the newly formed Chamber of Deputies, Elezioni 1948: Circoscrizione Bari–Foggia , Ministero dell'Interno] and was appointed Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in the fifth De Gasperi government from 23 May 1948 to 27 January 1950. Governo De Gasperi V , www.governo.it After Dossetti's retirement in 1952, Moro founded, along with Antonio Segni, Emilio Colombo, and Mariano Rumor, the Democratic Initiative faction, which was led by his old friend Fanfani. Storia della Democrazia Cristiana. Le correnti , Storia DC
On 20 May 1957, Adone Zoli was sworn in as the new head of government and Moro was appointed Italian Minister of Education. Governo Zoli , camera.it After the 1958 Italian general election, Zoli resigned. On 1 July 1958, Fanfani was sworn in as the new prime minister at the head of a coalition government with the PSDI and case-by-case support by the Italian Republican Party (PRI). Governo Fanfani II , senato.it Moro was confirmed as the head of Italian education and remained in office until February 1959. During his tenure, he introduced the study of civic education in schools. L'ora mancante di Educazione Civica , Corriere della Sera Ritorno a scuola, educazione civica in 33 ore , Il Sole 24 Ore Scuola, il Parlamento prepara il ritorno in grande stile dell'educazione civica , Adnkronos
In March 1959, after Fanfani's resignation as prime minister, a new congress was called. The leaders of the Democratic Initiative faction reunited themselves in the Convent of Dorothea of Caesarea, where they abandoned the leftist policies promoted by Fanfani and founded the Dorotei (Dorotheans) faction. Il Doroteismo , In Storia In the party's national council, Moro was elected secretary of the DC and was then confirmed in the October's congress held in Florence. VII Congresso Nazionale della Democrazia Cristiana , Storia DC After the brief right-wing government led by Fernando Tambroni in 1960, supported by the decisive votes of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), the renovated alliance between Moro as secretary and Fanfani as prime minister led the subsequent National Congress, held in Naples in 1962, to approve with a large majority a line of collaboration with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). VIII Congresso di Napoli , Della Repubblica
The 1963 Italian general election was characterized by a lack of consensus for the DC; Elezioni del 1963 , Ministero dell'Interno in fact, the election was held after the launch of the centre-left formula by the DC, a coalition based upon the alliance with the PSI, which had left their alignment with the Soviet Union. Some rightist electors abandoned the DC for the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), which was asking for a centre-right government and received votes also from the quarrelsome monarchist area. Moro refused the office of prime minister, preferring to provisionally maintain his more influential post at the head of the party. Initially, the DC decided to replace Fanfani with a provisional administration led by an impartial president of the Chamber of Deputies, Giovanni Leone. I Governo Leone , camera.it When the congress of the PSI in autumn authorized a full engagement of the party into the government, Leone resigned and Moro became the new prime minister. I Governo Moro , governo.it
Despite mistrust and opposition, particularly when the Italian economic miracle came to an end and the government had to control the rise of inflation, the reforms continued. There was an increase in minimum wage. Two 1966 laws provided traders with insurance. La svolta di Aldo Moro: i governi di centrosinistra , Il Giornale Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States Since World War II. Vol. 4, edited by Peter Flora.
Immediately after the disaster, government and local authorities insisted on attributing the tragedy to an unexpected and unavoidable natural event. Numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded in the previous months and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it. The PCI newspaper L'Unità was the first to denounce the actions of management and government. The DC accused the PCI of political profiteering from the tragedy, promising to bring justice to the people killed in the disaster.
Differently from Leone, who was his predecessor and became the head of SADE's team of lawyers, Moro acted strongly to condemn the managers of the society. He immediately dismissed the administrative officials who had supervised the construction of the dam. Un banco di prova. La legislazione sul Vajont dalle carte di Giovanni Pieraccini (1963–1964)
On 16 July 1964, Segni sent the Carabinieri general Giovanni de Lorenzo to a meeting of representatives of DC, in order to deliver a message in case the negotiations around the formation of a new centre-left government would fail. According to some historians, De Lorenzo reported that Segni was ready to give a subsequent mandate to the president of the Senate of the Republic, Cesare Merzagora, and would ask him to form a president's government composed by all the conservative forces in the Italian Parliament.Gianni Flamini, L'Italia dei colpi di Stato, Rome: Newton Compton Editori, p. 82.Sergio Romano, Cesare Merzagora: uno statista contro I partiti, in: Corriere della Sera, 14 March 2005. This attempted coup, which came to be known as the Piano Solo, only became public in 1967 through the investigative reporting of L'Espresso. Ultimately, Moro managed to form another centre-left majority. During the negotiations, Nenni had accepted the downsizing of his reform programs. On 17 July 1964, Moro went to the Quirinal Palace, with the acceptance of the assignment and the list of ministers of his second government. Governo Moro II , governo.it
In August 1964, Segni had a serious cerebral haemorrhage and resigned after a few months. Segni, uomo solo tra sciabole e golpisti , Il Fatto Quotidiano In the 1964 Italian presidential election, which was held in December, Moro and his majority tried to elect a leftist politician at the Quirinal Palace. On the twenty-first round of voting, the leader of the PSDI and former president of the Constituent Assembly, Giuseppe Saragat, was elected with 646 votes out of 963. Saragat was the first left-wing politician to become president of Italy. Tempers Flare as Italian Parliament Fails to Elect New President , Retrospective Blog I Presidenti – Giuseppe Saragat , Camera dei Deputati
About the pact, Abu Sharif commented: "I personally followed the negotiations for the agreement. Aldo Moro was a great man, a true patriot, who wanted to save Italy some headaches, but I never met him. We discussed the details with an admiral and agents of the Italian secret service. The agreement was defined and since then we have always respected it; we were allowed to organize small transits, passages, and purely Palestinian operations, without involving Italians. After the deal, every time I came to Rome, two cars were waiting for me to protect myself. For our part, we also guaranteed to avoid embarrassment to your country, that is attacks which started directly from the Italian soil." Corriere della Sera, 14 August 2008, p. 19 Aldo Moro, parla Abu Sharif: "Un mese prima del sequestro Moro ho dato io l'allarme a Roma" , Corriere della Sera This version was confirmed by former president Francesco Cossiga, who stated that Moro was the real and only creator of the pact. Corriere della Sera, 15 August 2008, p. 21 Moro also had to cope with the difficult situation which erupted following the coup by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Mastelloni : "Così nel '71 bloccammo un golpe Gheddafi" , La Stampa a very important country for Italian interests not only for colonial ties but also for its energy resources and the presence of about 20,000 Italians. Aldo Moro – Dizionario Biografico , Enciclopedia Treccani
During Moro's second term as prime minister, the government implemented a series of other important social reforms. Aldo Moro: uomo del riformismo e del compromesso , Falsa Riga A bill, approved on 3 June 1975, introduced various changes for pensioners.
Between World War I and the end of World War II, Istria had belonged to Italy for twenty-five years, and the west coast of Istria had long had a sizeable Italian minority population. Some nationalist politicians called for the prosecution of Moro and Rumor, his long-time friend who was the then foreign affairs minister, for the crime of treason, as stated in Article 241 of the Italian Criminal Code, which mandated a life sentence for anybody found guilty of aiding and abetting a foreign power to exert its sovereignty on the national territory. Aldo Moro e la ferita del Trattato di Osimo , Il Piccolo
Between 1976 and 1977, Berlinguer's PCI broke with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, implementing, together with the Spanish and French Communist parties, a new political theory and strategy known as Eurocommunism. Such a move made eventual cooperation more acceptable for DC voters, and the two parties began an intense parliamentary debate in a moment of deep social crises. "Eurocomunismo" . Enciclopedia Treccani. Retrieved 11 September 2023. In 1977, Moro was personally involved in international disputes. He strongly defended Rumor during the parliamentary debate on the Lockheed scandal, and some journalists reported that Moro himself might have been involved in the bribery. 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, thirteen days before his kidnapping.
The early 1978 proposal by Moro of starting a cabinet composed of DC and PSI members, externally supported by the PCI was strongly opposed by both superpowers of the Cold War era. The United States feared that the cooperation between PCI and DC might have allowed the PCI to gain information on strategic NATO military plans and installations. Quanti rimpianti da quella stretta di mano tra Moro e Berlinguer , Giornale Mio Moreover, the participation in the government of communists in a Western country would have represented a cultural failure for the United States. On the other hand, the Soviets considered the potential participation by the PCI in a cabinet as a form of emancipation from Moscow and rapprochement to the Americans.
In the following days, trade unions called for a general strike, while security forces made hundreds of raids in Rome, Milan, Turin, and other cities searching for Moro's location, as places linked to Moro and the kidnapping became centres of minor pilgrimage. An estimated 16 million Italians took part in the mass public demonstrations. After a few days, even Pope Paul VI, a close friend of Moro's, intervened, 1978: Aldo Moro snatched at gunpoint , "On This Day", BBC offering himself in exchange for Moro.Holmes, J. Derek, and Bernard W. Bickers. A Short History of the Catholic Church. London: Burns and Oates, 1983. 291. Despite the 13,000 police officers mobilized, 40,000 house searches, and 72,000 roadblocks, the police did not carry out any arrests.
The event has been compared to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and referred to as Italy's 9/11. Although Italy was not the sole European country to experience terrorism, the list including France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain, the murder of Moro was the apogee of Italy's Years of Lead. Many details of Moro's kidnapping remain heavily disputed and unknown. This has led to the promotion of a number of alternative theories about the events, including conspiracy theories, which remain popular in Italy, where the judicial truth, which attributes responsibility for the operation exclusively to the Red Brigades, has failed to take root in the collective memory of Italians. Alternative theories gained traction with the institution of a special inquiring committee by the Italian Parliament in 2014 that concluded its operations in 2018. The committee concluded that the judicial truth was produced on the basis of the confession of the terrorist Valerio Morucci and that other evidence which contradicted his version was downplayed. Among these, other witness testimonies indicated that more than four people fired at Moro's convoy, multiple sources report that Moro was held captive in the apartment of Via Massimi 91 in Rome (a property of IOR), and then in Villa Odescalchi on the coast of Palo Laziale, and not in Via Camillo Montalcini 8. In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of Moro has in public discourse.
On 2 April 1978, Romano Prodi, Mario Baldassarri, 17 June 1998 hearing of the Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili delle stragi directed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino and Alberto Clò, three professors of the University of Bologna, passed on a tip about a safe-house where the Red Brigades might be holding Moro. Prodi stated he had been given the tip by the DC founders from beyond the grave in a séance through the use of a Ouija board, which gave the names of Viterbo, Bolsena, and Gradoli. During the investigation of Moro's kidnapping, some members of law enforcement in Italy and of the secret services advocated for the use of torture against terrorists; prominent military members and generals, such as Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, were against this. Dalla Chiesa once stated: "Italy is a democratic country that could allow itself the luxury of losing Moro, but not of the introduction of torture."Report of Conadep (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons): Prologue – 1984Quoted in Dershowitz, Alan M. (2003) Why Terrorism Works, p. 134,
During his kidnapping, Moro wrote several letters to the DC leaders and to Pope Paul VI. Some of those letters, including one that was very critical of Andreotti, were kept secret for more than a decade and published only in the early 1990s. In his letters, Moro said that the state's primary focus should be saving lives and that the government should comply with his kidnappers' demands. Most of the DC's leaders argued that the letters did not express Moro's genuine wishes, arguing they were written under duress, and thus refused all negotiations. This position was held in stark contrast to the requests of Moro's family. In his appeal to the terrorists, Pope Paul VI asked them to release Moro "without conditions". The specified "without conditions" is controversial; according to some sources, it was added to Paul VI's letter against his will, and that the Pope wanted to negotiate with the kidnappers to secure the safety of Moro. According to Antonio Mennini, Pope Paul VI had saved Italian lira10 billion to pay a ransom in order to save Moro.
On 9 May 1978, after 55 days of captivity, the terrorists placed Moro in a car and told him to cover himself with a blanket, saying that they were going to transport him to another location. Aldo Moro, 40 anni fa il sequestro del presidente della Dc , ANSA After Moro was covered, they shot him ten times. According to the official reconstruction after a series of trials, the killer was Mario Moretti. Moro's body was left in the trunk of a red Renault 4 on Via Michelangelo Caetani towards the Tiber River near the Roman Ghetto. After the recovery of Moro's body, Cossiga resigned as interior minister. Pope Paul VI personally officiated at Moro's funeral mass.
In 2005, Sergio Flamigni, a leftist politician and writer who had served on a parliamentary inquiry on the Moro case, suggested the involvement of the Operation Gladio network directed by NATO. He asserted that Gladio had manipulated Moretti as a way to take over the Red Brigades to effect a strategy of tension aimed at creating popular demand for a new, right-wing law-and-order regime. (2025). 9782755700206, Editions Panama. ISBN 9782755700206 In 2006, Steve Pieczenik was interviewed by Emmanuel Amara in his documentary film Les derniers jours d'Aldo Moro ("The Last Days of Aldo Moro"). In the interview, Pieczenik, a conspiracy theorist, and expert on international terrorism and negotiating strategies who had been brought to Italy as a consultant to Cossiga's Crisis Committee, stated: "We had to sacrifice Aldo Moro to maintain the stability of Italy."Emmanuel Amara, Les derniers jours d'Aldo Moro ( The Last Days of Aldo Moro), Interview of Steve Pieczenik put on-line by Rue 89Hubert Artus, Pourquoi le pouvoir italien a lâché Aldo Moro, exécuté en 1978 (Why the Italian Power let go of Aldo Moro, executed in 1978), Rue 89, 6 February 2008 Pieczenik maintained that the United States had to "instrumentalize the Red Brigades". According to him, the decision to have Moro killed was taken during the fourth week of his detention, when Moro was thought to be revealing state secrets in his letters,Emmanuel Amara, Les derniers jours d'Aldo Moro (The Last Days of Aldo Moro), Interview of Steve Pieczenik & Francesco Cossiga put on-line by Rue 89 namely the existence of Gladio. In another interview, Cossiga revealed that the Crisis Committee had also leaked, in a form of black propaganda, a false statement attributed to the Red Brigades that Moro was already dead. This was intended to communicate to the kidnappers that further negotiations would be useless since the government had written Moro off.
During his political life, Moro implemented numerous reforms that 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 DC towards more left-wing 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 received a file on beatification for Moro; this is the first step to becoming a saint in the Catholic Church. In April 2015, it was reported that the process of beatification might be suspended or closed following the recent controversies. The postulator stated that the process would continue when the discrepancies were cleared up. The halting of proceedings was due to Mennini, the priest who heard his last confession, being allowed to provide a statement to a tribunal in regards to Moro's kidnapping and confession. Following this, the beatification process was resumed.
In January 2022, a note claiming responsibility for the abduction of Moro was auctioned despite widespread condemnation.
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