10 Facts About Adriano Ossicini

Adriano Ossicini was an Italian partisan, politician, psychiatrist, academic, and Minister for Family and Social Solidarity in the Dini Cabinet.

Adriano Ossicini disagreed with the future post-war Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi over the reconstitution of a single political party for Catholics, the future Christian Democracy, placed at the center of the political spectrum.

On 18 May 1943, Adriano Ossicini was arrested by the fascists during a raid and was imprisoned for more than two months.

On 30 September 1943, Adriano Ossicini received a letter from Giulio Andreotti, in which the future Prime Minister expressed "in the name of the Pope" the opposition to unconditional co-operation between Catholics and the Italian Communist Party.

Adriano Ossicini graduated in medicine at the end of 1944 and was admitted as a volunteer assistant at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital.

Adriano Ossicini enrolled in a specialization course in Psychiatry, dealing with nervous and mental diseases; in 1947 he became a university professor of psychology at the Sapienza University of Rome.

In 1968, Adriano Ossicini returned to politics and was elected to the Italian Senate as an independent candidate in the list of the PCI.

Adriano Ossicini was vice-president of the Senate from 1979 to 1983 and from 1985 to 1987.

Adriano Ossicini joined Lamberto Dini's Italian Renewal party and was elected for the last time to the Senate in 1996.

In 2007 this latter movement merged with the ex-Communists to form the Democratic Party, which Adriano Ossicini then supported for the rest of his life.