Giulio Andreotti

Giulio Andreotti (14 January 1919 – 6 May 2013) was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the Christian Democracy party; he was the sixth longest-serving Prime Minister since the Italian Unification and the second longest-serving post-war Prime Minister, after Silvio Berlusconi. Andreotti is widely considered the most powerful and prominent politician of the so-called 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 state over the course of a forty-year political career, being seen as a reassuring figure by the civil service, business community, and Vatican. 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 fifth-biggest economy in the world. Critics said he had done nothing against a system of patronage that had led to pervasive corruption.

At the height of his prestige as a statesman, Andreotti was subjected to damaging criminal prosecutions. Charged with colluding with Cosa Nostra, courts found he had broken the links by the 1980s, and ruled the case out of time. The most sensational allegation came from prosecutors in Perugia, who charged him with ordering the murder of a journalist. He was found guilty at a trial, which led to complaints that the justice system had "gone mad". Acquitted due to statute barred, Andreotti remarked, "Apart from the Punic Wars, for which I was too young, I have been blamed for everything that's happened in Italy."

Andreotti served as the 41st Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior (1954 and 1978), Defence Minister (1959–66 and 1974) and Foreign Minister (1983–89) 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).