[7][8] Aldo Romeo Luigi Moro was born on 23 September 1916 in Maglie, near Lecce, into a family from Ugento in the Apulia region of the Kingdom of Italy.

He kept the post until 1942, when he was forced to fight in the World War II and was succeeded by Giulio Andreotti, who at the time was a law student from Rome.

[14] In July 1943, Moro contributed, along with Andreotti, Mario Ferrari Aggradi, Paolo Emilio Taviani, Guido Gonella, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ferruccio Pergolesi, Vittore Branca, Giorgio La Pira, and Giuseppe Medici, to the creation of the Code of Camaldoli, a document planning of economic policy drawn up by members of the Italian Catholic forces.

[28] After Dossetti's retirement in 1952, Moro founded, along with Antonio Segni, Emilio Colombo, and Mariano Rumor, the Democratic Initiative faction, which was led by his old friend Fanfani.

On 1 July 1958, Fanfani was sworn in as the new prime minister at the head of a coalition government with the PSDI and case-by-case support by the Italian Republican Party (PRI).

[39] After the brief right-wing government led by Fernando Tambroni in 1960, supported by the decisive votes of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), the renovated alliance between Moro as secretary and Fanfani as prime minister led the subsequent National Congress, held in Naples in 1962, to approve with a large majority a line of collaboration with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).

Some rightist electors abandoned the DC for the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), which was asking for a centre-right government and received votes also from the quarrelsome monarchist area.

Initially, the DC decided to replace Fanfani with a provisional administration led by an impartial president of the Chamber of Deputies, Giovanni Leone.

During the presidential consultations for the formation of a new cabinet, Segni, the then moderate DC member and president of Italy, asked the PSI leader Pietro Nenni to exit from the government majority.

[58] On 16 July 1964, Segni sent the Carabinieri general Giovanni de Lorenzo to a meeting of representatives of DC, in order to deliver a message in case the negotiations around the formation of a new centre-left government would fail.

[73][74] The existence of this pact and its validity was confirmed by Bassam Abu Sharif, a long-time leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The train was travelling from Rome to Munich; having left Florence about 45 minutes earlier, it was approaching the end of the long San Benedetto Val di Sambro tunnel under the Apennines.

[49] During his premiership, Moro signed the Osimo Treaty with the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, defining the official partition of the Free Territory of Trieste.

[96] The fourth Moro government, with Ugo La Malfa as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, started the first dialogue with the PCI, with the aim of beginning a new phase to strengthen the Italian democratic system.

[99] Moro's main aim was to widen the democratic base of the government, including the PCI in the parliamentary majority, in which the cabinets should have been able to represent a larger number of voters and parties.

Such a move made eventual cooperation more acceptable for DC voters, and the two parties began an intense parliamentary debate in a moment of deep social crises.

[103][104] The early-1978 proposal by Moro of starting a cabinet composed of DC and PSI members, externally supported by the PCI was strongly opposed by both superpowers of the Cold War era.

[106] On 16 March 1978, on via Fani, in Rome, a unit of the militant far-left organization known as Red Brigades (BR) blocked the two-car convoy that was carrying Moro and kidnapped him, murdering his five bodyguards.

[107][108] On the day of his kidnapping, Moro was on his way to a session of the Chamber of Deputies, where a discussion was to take place regarding a vote of confidence for a new government led by Andreotti, that would for the first time have the support of the PCI.

[126] The committee concluded that the judicial truth was produced on the basis of the confession of the terrorist Valerio Morucci and that other evidence which contradicted his version was downplayed.

[127] In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of Moro has in public discourse.

This position was openly criticized by prominent DC party members, such as Amintore Fanfani and Giovanni Leone, who at the time was serving as president of Italy.

[118] On 2 April 1978, Romano Prodi, Mario Baldassarri,[131] and Alberto Clò, three professors of the University of Bologna, passed on a tip about a safe-house where the Red Brigades might be holding Moro.

Prodi stated he had been given the tip by the DC founders from beyond the grave in a séance through the use of a Ouija board, which gave the names of Viterbo, Bolsena, and Gradoli.

[136] The specified "without conditions" is controversial; according to some sources, it was added to Paul VI's letter against his will, and that the Pope wanted to negotiate with the kidnappers to secure the safety of Moro.

[153] In a 2012 interview with Ulisse Spinnato Vega of Agenzia Clorofilla, the BR co-founders Alberto Franceschini and Renato Curcio remembered Pecorelli.

This position was supported by Leonardo Sciascia, who discussed it in the minority report he signed as a member of the first parliamentary commission and in his book L'affaire Moro.

[155] In 2005, Sergio Flamigni, a leftist politician and writer who had served on a parliamentary inquiry on the Moro case, suggested the involvement of the Operation Gladio network directed by NATO.

He asserted that Gladio had manipulated Moretti as a way to take over the Red Brigades to effect a strategy of tension aimed at creating popular demand for a new, right-wing law-and-order regime.

[158] In another interview, Cossiga revealed that the Crisis Committee had also leaked, in a form of black propaganda, a false statement attributed to the Red Brigades that Moro was already dead.