Giulio Andreotti

Giulio Andreotti (US: AHN-dray-OT-ee, Italian: [ˈdʒuːljo andreˈɔtti]; 14 January 1919 – 6 May 2013) was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st prime minister of Italy in seven governments (1972–1973, 1976–1979, and 1989–1992). He was leader of the Christian Democracy party and its conservative faction; he was the sixth-longest-serving prime minister since the Italian unification and the second-longest-serving post-war prime minister. Andreotti is widely considered the most powerful and prominent politician of the First Republic. Beginning as a protégé of Alcide De Gasperi, Andreotti achieved cabinet rank at a young age and occupied all the major offices of the state over the course of a 40-year political career, being seen as a reassuring figure by the civil service, the business community, and the Vatican. Domestically, he contained inflation following the 1973 oil crisis, founded the National Healthcare Service (Sistema Sanitario Nazionale) and combated terrorism during the Years of Lead. In foreign policy, he guided Italy's European Union integration and established closer relations with the Arab world. Admirers of 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. Critics said he had done nothing to challenge a system of patronage that had led to pervasive corruption. Andreotti staunchly supported the Vatican and a capitalist structure and opposed the Italian Communist Party. Following the popular Italian sentiment of the time, he supported the development of a strong European community playing host to neoliberal economics. He was not opposed to the implementation of the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund in building the European economy. At the height of his career as a statesman, Andreotti was subjected to criminal prosecutions and charged with colluding with Cosa Nostra. Courts managed to prove that he was undoubtedly linked with them until 1980; however, the case was closed due to past statutes of limitations. The most sensational allegation came from prosecutors in Perugia, who charged him with ordering the murder of a journalist. He was found guilty at trial, which led to complaints that the justice system had "gone mad". After being acquitted of all charges, in part due to statute-barred limitations, Andreotti remarked: "Apart from the Punic Wars, for which I was too young, I have been blamed for everything that's happened in Italy." In addition to his prime ministerial posts, Andreotti served in numerous ministerial positions, among them as Minister of the Interior (1954 and 1978), Minister of Finance (1955–1958), Minister of Treasury (1958–1959), Minister of Defence (1959–1966 and 1974), Minister of Budget and Economic Planning (1974–1976), and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1983–1989), and was a senator for life from 1991 until his death in 2013. He was also a journalist and author. Andreotti was sometimes called Divo Giulio (from Latin Divus Iulius, "Divine Julius", an epithet of Julius Caesar after his posthumous deification), or simply Il divo.