Politician (n. Maglie 1916 – d. prob. Rome 1978). Among the founders of the Christian Democrats and his representative at the Constituent Assembly, he became its secretary (1959). He was minister several times and as Prime Minister he led several center-left governments (1963-68), promoting (1974-76) the so-called. strategy of attention to the Communist Party. In 1978 M. was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades.
LIFE AND ACTIVITY
President of FUCI (1939-43) and of the Catholic Graduate Movement (1945-46), director of Studium magazine, he was one of the founders of Christian Democracy, which he represented in the Constituent Assembly (he was part of the Commission of 75) and in the Chamber of Deputies in all legislatures. It was prof. of criminal law at the Univ. of Bari (1948-64) and institutions of criminal law and procedure in Rome from 1964. Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in the fifth De Gasperi government (1948-49), he was in many ways close to the positions of G. Dossetti. President of the parliamentary group of the DC (1953-55), Minister of Justice in the Segni government (July 1955 - May 1957), of Public Education in the Zoli and Fanfani governments (May 1957 - Feb. 1959), in Feb. 1959 he was elected secretary of the DC, in a position of mediation between Fanfaniani and Dorotei. M. led the party through the complex crisis of centrism to the opening to socialists and the launch of the centre-left, on the prospect, highlighted in the 1962 Christian Democrat congress of Naples, of the enlargement of the majority for a radical renewal of social, economic and political living conditions of the Italian company. Prime Minister since Dec. 1963 to June 1968, M. he was the head of three successive governments which saw the stabilization of the centre-left formula but also the disappearance, with the crises of 1964 and 1966, of his renewing charge. Since then and for several years he mainly held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs in various governments (ag. 1969 – July 1972, July 1973 – Nov. 1974). Prime Minister again (Nov. 1974 - July 1976), resumed the line defined since 1969 as a "strategy of attention" towards the communist party, at the time based on the perspective of the "historical compromise" and increasingly present in national political and civil life. As president of the DC National Council (since Oct. 1976) accentuated the role of mediation in Italian political life during the experience of the government of national solidarity called "of non-distrust" (July 1976 - March 1978). On the day of the launch of the fourth Andreotti government, which concluded a long political crisis with the entry of the PCI into the majority (March 16, 1978), M. he was kidnapped in Rome, in via Fani, by a commando of the Red Brigades who massacred the men of the escort. Faced with the dramatic event, which was followed by the request by the BR for the release of prisoners of the Red Brigades and for political recognition, the press and the political world were divided between supporters and opponents of the negotiation, with a clear prevalence of the latter. Authoritative appeals for clemency fell on deaf ears (including those from the pope and the secretary general of the UN) and the action of the police forces proved inconclusive; the statesman's body was found by the BR on 9 May 1978 in the trunk of a car in via Caetani in Rome. The works of M. are collected in Scritti e discorsi (6 volumes, 1982-90); the writings from the period of the kidnapping, found in a Red Brigades hideout in Milan, were published in 1991.
from the encyclopedia Treccani
