Prelude: 'A Long Preparation for Dying'? The Life of Aldo Moro, 1916-1978

Abstract

In life Aldo Moro was frequently portrayed as an enigma, most famously by journalist Indro Montanelli in his remark that the only clear thing about Moro was small shock of white hair above his forehead. Moro cultivated a rather un-Italian sense of self-sufficiency � presenting himself almost as a 'man out of nowhere', in his daughter's phrase. Studies of aspects of his thought have mostly been produced for commemorative occasions and are therefore inevitably pious rather than probing. In the post-war Italian context all such compromises were especially fragile: he was living in a society which he described in his last speech as characterised by 'passionate intensity and fragile structures'. In 1944 the young lecturer published his conception of the proper relations between university staff and students, a view he maintained and practised for next thirty years. Moro's own religious commitment � communion daily, even when abroad on official business, and Mass every Sunday � was neither fierce nor flaunted.