Giulio Andreotti, Rest in Peace

           Seven-time Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, the most enduring political figure of post-war Italian politics, died at his home in Rome yesterday at the age of 94. 

            Born in Rome in 1919, Andreotti studied law in the Eternal City and joined the Italian Catholic University Federation during the Fascist dictatorship, later becoming the leader of the group that produced several future leaders of the Party of Christian Democracy and premiers of Italy.

           After the war, Andreotti was elected to the Italian provisional parliament in 1946.  He became the assistant to Italy’s first republican leader, Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, the founder of the Christian Democratic Party.  Andreotti began serving in high party posts in the Gasperi governments of the Italian Republic, from 1947 to 1954.

            Meanwhile, Andreotti was elected to the newly-formed lower house of the Italian Parliament in 1948, the Chamber of Deputies, serving until 1991, when he was appointed to the upper chamber as a life Senator, an office in which he served until his death.  While in Parliament as a Christian Democrat, he served in numerous Cabinets, beginning in 1954, as Minister of the Interior, Finance, Treasury, Defense and Foreign Affairs, often in more than one stint and under successive governments.  Andreotti was Prime Minister of Italy from 1972-1973, 1976-1979 and 1989-1992, leading seven executives.

           The Christian Democrats, like Andreotti, were centrist, with some right and left-wing elements within their ranks.  The principal accomplishment of the Christian Democracy was, through its formation of various coalition governments in the multi-party Italian parliamentary Republic, to keep both the Fascists and Italian Communist Party out of power.  The latter was for decades supported by the Soviet Union and was the largest Communist Party in the free world.  The takeover of a major Western state by Soviet-backed Communists would have been disastrous for the United States and its Western allies.  The Christian Democrats maintained friendly relations with the U.S. and supported Italian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

           The Christian Democrats held leadership until 1994, when the party was dissolved, except from 1981-1987, when it was a junior member of successive coalition governments, some of which included Andreotti as a minister.  During their long time in power, Italy’s economy prospered from its post-war ruins into one of the largest in the world.  
     
          As the dominant figure within the Christian Democracy, these accomplishments are partly to the credit of Andreotti.