Giulio Andreotti was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st prime minister of Italy in seven governments, and was leader of the Christian Democracy party and its right-wing; he was the sixth-longest-serving prime minister since the Italian unification and the second-longest-serving post-war prime minister.
70 Facts About Giulio Andreotti
2.
Admirers of Giulio Andreotti saw him as having mediated political and social contradictions, enabling the transformation of a substantially rural country into the world's fifth-largest economy.
3.
Giulio Andreotti staunchly supported the Vatican and a capitalist structure, and opposed the Italian Communist Party.
4.
Giulio Andreotti was not opposed to the implementation of the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund in building the European economy.
5.
At the height of his statesman career, Giulio Andreotti was subjected to criminal prosecutions and charged with colluding with Cosa Nostra.
6.
Giulio Andreotti was found guilty at a trial, which led to complaints that the justice system had "gone mad".
7.
Giulio Andreotti, the youngest of three children, was born on 14 January 1919 in Rome.
8.
Giulio Andreotti's father, who died when Giulio was two, was a primary school teacher from Segni, a small town in Lazio; after a few years his sister Elena died.
9.
Giulio Andreotti showed some ferocity as a youth, once stubbing out a lit taper in the eye of another altar boy who was ridiculing him.
10.
Giulio Andreotti did not use his influence to advance his children to prominence, despite being widely considered the most powerful person in the country for decades.
11.
Giulio Andreotti was known for his discretion and retentive memory, and a sense of humour, often placing things in perspective with a sardonic quip.
12.
Giulio Andreotti did not shine at his school and started work in a tax office while studying law at the University of Rome.
13.
In July 1939, while Aldo Moro was president of FUCI, Giulio Andreotti became director of its magazine Azione Fucina.
14.
In 1942, when Moro was enrolled in the Italian Army, Giulio Andreotti succeeded him as president of FUCI, a position he held until 1944.
15.
In July 1943, Giulio Andreotti contributed, along with Mario Ferrari Aggradi, Paolo Emilio Taviani, Guido Gonella, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ferruccio Pergolesi, Vittore Branca, Giorgio La Pira, Giuseppe Medici and Moro, to the creation of the Code of Camaldoli, a document planning of economic policy drawn up by members of the Italian Catholic forces.
16.
In 1946, Giulio Andreotti was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Italy, the provisional parliament which had the task of writing the new Italian constitution.
17.
Giulio Andreotti's election was supported by Alcide De Gasperi, founder of the modern DC, of whom Andreotti became a close assistant and advisor; the two politicians became close friends despite their very different characters.
18.
Giulio Andreotti began his government career in 1947 when he became Secretary of the Council of Ministers in the cabinet of his patron De Gasperi.
19.
Giulio Andreotti's main undertaking was representing the interests of Frosinone in the province of Lazio.
20.
In 1952, ahead of local elections in the municipality of Rome, Giulio Andreotti gave proof of his diplomatic skills and gained credibility.
21.
Giulio Andreotti persuaded De Gasperi not to establish a political alliance with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, as Pope Pius XII asked, to prevent a Communist victory.
22.
In 1954, Giulio Andreotti became Minister of the Interior in the first government of Amintore Fanfani.
23.
Giulio Andreotti's corrente was supported by the Roman Catholic right wing.
24.
Giulio Andreotti ordered the destruction of the dossiers; but before the destruction, Giulio Andreotti provided the documents to Licio Gelli, the Venerable Master of the clandestine lodge Propaganda Due.
25.
Giulio Andreotti was involved in the Piano Solo scandal, an envisaged plot for an Italian coup in 1964 requested by then-President of the Italian Republic Antonio Segni.
26.
In 1968, Giulio Andreotti was appointed leader of the parliamentary group of Christian Democracy, a position he held until 1972.
27.
Giulio Andreotti remained in office in two consecutive centre-right cabinets in 1972 and 1973.
28.
Giulio Andreotti, supported by secretary Forlani, tried to continue his centrist strategy, but his attempt only lasted a year.
29.
Giulio Andreotti used price controls on essential foodstuffs and various social reforms to reach an understanding of organised labour.
30.
Giulio Andreotti occasionally gave the Vatican unsolicited advice and was often heeded.
31.
Giulio Andreotti updated the relationship of Roman Catholicism to the Italian state in an accord he presented to parliament.
32.
Giulio Andreotti opposed legal divorce and abortion, but despite his party's opposition, he couldn't avoid the legalization of abortion in May 1978.
33.
Giulio Andreotti was a strong NATO supporter and was invited to America by the US President Richard Nixon in 1973.
34.
Giulio Andreotti, known as a staunch anti-communist, was called in to lead the first experiment in that direction: his new cabinet, formed in July 1976, included only members of his own Christian Democratic party but had the indirect support of the communists.
35.
In 1977, Giulio Andreotti dealt with an economic crisis by criticising the luxury lifestyle of many Italians and pushing through tough austerity measures.
36.
However, when the PCI asked to participate more directly in the government, Giulio Andreotti refused, and the government was dissolved in June 1979.
37.
In 1983, Giulio Andreotti became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first Cabinet of Bettino Craxi, despite the long-lasting personal antagonism between the two men which had occurred earlier on; Craxi was the first Socialist to become Prime Minister of Italy since Unification.
38.
The Italian authorities had banned the Lion of the Desert war film about the Second Italo-Senussi War during the Italian colonization of Libya, because, in the words of Giulio Andreotti, it was "damaging to the honor of the army".
39.
On 14 April 1986, Giulio Andreotti revealed to Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham that the United States would bomb Libya the next day in retaliation for the Berlin disco terrorist attack which had been linked to Libya.
40.
In 1989, when De Mita's government fell, Giulio Andreotti was appointed as the new Prime Minister.
41.
On 22 July 1989, Giulio Andreotti was sworn in for the third time as Prime Minister.
42.
Giulio Andreotti would create a new government consisting of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Social Democrats, and Liberals.
43.
In 1990, Giulio Andreotti revealed the existence of the Operation Gladio; Gladio was the codename for a clandestine North Atlantic Treaty Organization "stay-behind" operation in Italy during the Cold War.
44.
In 1990, Giulio Andreotti was involved in getting all parties to agree to a binding timetable for the Maastricht Treaty.
45.
In 1992, at the end of the legislature, Giulio Andreotti resigned from premiership; he was the last Christian Democratic Prime Minister of Italy.
46.
Giulio Andreotti was one of the most likely candidates to succeed Cossiga as President of the Republic in the 1992 presidential election.
47.
In 2001, after the creation of The Daisy, Giulio Andreotti abandoned the People's Party and joined the European Democracy, a minor Christian democratic political party in Italy, led by Sergio D'Antoni, former leader of the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions.
48.
Giulio Andreotti immediately became a prominent party member and was widely considered the de facto leader of the movement.
49.
Giulio Andreotti opposed this union and did not join the new party.
50.
In 2006, Giulio Andreotti stood for the Presidency of the Italian Senate, obtaining 156 votes against the 165 of Franco Marini, former Labour Minister in the last Giulio Andreotti Cabinet.
51.
On previous occasions, Giulio Andreotti had always supported Prodi's government with his vote.
52.
Giulio Andreotti came under suspicion because his relatively small faction within the Christian Democrats included Sicilian Salvatore Lima.
53.
Giulio Andreotti's defence was predicated on character attacks against the prosecution's key witnesses, who were themselves involved with the mafia.
54.
The defence said Giulio Andreotti had been a long-time politician of national stature, never beholden to Lima; and that far from providing protection, Giulio Andreotti had passed many tough anti-mafia laws when in government during the '80s.
55.
One such informer testified that Riina and Giulio Andreotti had met and exchanged a "kiss of honour".
56.
Giulio Andreotti was eventually acquitted on 23 October 1999; however, together with the greater series of corruption cases of Mani pulite, Giulio Andreotti's trials marked the purging and renewal of Italy's political system.
57.
Giulio Andreotti was tried in Palermo for criminal association until 28 September 1982 and mafia association from 29 September 1982 onwards.
58.
In 2010, the Court of Cassation ruled that Giulio Andreotti had slandered a judge who had given testimony by saying the self-governing body of prosecutors and judges should remove him from his position.
59.
Giulio Andreotti had said that leaving the man as a judge was "like leaving a lighted fuse in the hand of a child".
60.
Contemporaneously with his trial for Mafia association, Giulio Andreotti was tried in Perugia with Sicilian Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, Massimo Carminati, and others on charges of complicity in the murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli.
61.
Giulio Andreotti was allegedly afraid that Pecorelli was about to publish information that could have destroyed his political career.
62.
Local prosecutors successfully appealed the acquittal, and there was a retrial, which in 2002 convicted Giulio Andreotti and sentenced him to 24 years imprisonment.
63.
Many failed to understand how the court could convict Giulio Andreotti of orchestrating the killing, yet acquit his co-accused, who supposedly had carried out his orders by setting up and committing the murder.
64.
On 16 April 1945, Giulio Andreotti married Livia Danese, Marilena, Stefano and Serena.
65.
Giulio Andreotti was accused of participation in a variety of plots.
66.
Giulio Andreotti was alleged to be the eminence grise behind the Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge, a secret association of politicians, civil servants, industrialists, military leaders, heads of the secret service, and prominent journalists conspiring to prevent the Italian Communist Party taking office.
67.
Giulio Andreotti was accused of having a hand in the death of Aldo Moro and terrorist massacres in a strategy of tension aimed at precipitating a coup, as well as banking scandals and various high-profile assassinations.
68.
Giulio Andreotti was nicknamed Belzebu or "The Devil himself" by Bettino Craxi, a political opponent who later fled Italy while sought on corruption charges.
69.
In 2008, Giulio Andreotti became the subject of Paolo Sorrentino's film Il Divo, which portrayed him as a glib, unsympathetic figure, in whose orbit people tended to meet untimely and unnatural deaths.
70.
Giulio Andreotti was depicted in the 2020 film Rose Island, which tells the story of the Republic of Rose Island, played by Marco Sincini.