Aldo Moro

Aldo Moro (1916-1978) was an italian politician.

One of the most important leaders of Democrazia Cristiana (DC), Moro was considered a fine intellectual and an incredibly patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his party.

His political career had started during the late times of fascism, in the G.U.F., universitarian groups, and soon after the fall of the regime he joined the F.U.C.I. (federation of catholic university students, later completely merged with DC).

During the 1970s, he was one of those political leaders who gave the deepest attention to Enrico Berlinguer's project of a so-called Compromesso Storico (historical compromise). The leader of PCI (Italian Communist Party) had proposed a solidarity between communists and democristiani in a moment of serious economical, social and political crisis in Italy, and Moro, then the president of DC, was one of those who had helped in finding a way to finally form a government of "national solidarity".

In 1978, the day in which this newly formed government should have gone in front of Parliament to obtain the fiducia (the approval), he was kidnapped by Red Brigades, that massacred his escort, and murdered him too after a 55 days detention.

During these period, Moro wrote several letters to the principal leaders of DC and to Pope Paul VI (who later would have personally celebrated his solemn funerals). In these letters it has been supposed that Moro sent cryptic messages to his family and his colleagues. Doubts have been advanced about the effective complete publishing of these letters; Carabinieri's general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (later killed by mafia) found copies of the letters in a house that terrorists had in Milan, and by some reason this retrieval wasn't publicly known until many years after.

Red Brigades proposed to exchange Moro's life with the freedom of some other terrorists who were in prison at the time. During the detention, it has been said that many knew where he was detained (an apartment in Rome), and even Romano Prodi (current president of European Commission) was involved in a strange story of indications on a possible place of detention.

Moro's dead body was left by terrorists at a 100 meters distance from both the head-offices of DC and PCI, as a last symbolic challenge to police and institutions, that were keeping all the nation, and Rome in particular, under a severely strict surveillance.

His rapture and the manoeuvres that surrounded causes and methods of his elimination, still are not clearly identifiable, despite several trials and dozens of separate investigations, as well as a general internal and international attention. Most of what regards Moro's death is still covered by a dense mistery.