He read it again, “…at the direction of the pope…” He laughed again. His coffee spilled onto his lap.
The phone rang. He picked it up. It was George Bush…
Aldo Moro
A short time before the death of his lifelong friend Paul VI, former prime minister and leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Aldo Moro, turned up in the trunk of a car on Via Caetrina.11
Moro had emerged as the great enemy of the Vatican and the United States. He had been methodically going about changing the mindset of the Italian population—leading the people away from the Church and the rich and poor society its doctrines demanded.
Moro was encouraging citizens to ignore the Vatican’s ban on contraception and use their judgment as to how many children they can afford. He had become the leading proponent in encouraging the use of contraceptives, not only as a means of birth control but as a means of curbing disease; syphilis and gonorrhea had been running rampant among teens.12
It had been his lobbying, much to the consternation of the Curia, which made contraceptives legal in Italy in the first place. When the religious right tried to push a bill through Parliament requiring a warning label on contraceptives: “Use of this product will cost you your soul,” Moro not only killed the bill, he pushed through another bill which—to the horror of fundamentalists in the Vatican and the United States—made them available to teenagers.13
Moro was also lobbying abortion be made legal in order that it could be better controlled by the state as it was resulting in unnecessary mutilation of women and often death. He knew that being illegal, it resulted in countless abortions that otherwise might be prevented by the state; implementation of Roe vs. Wade in 1973 which legalized abortions in the United States had reduced abortions overnight from over three million to less than a million a year.14
In legalizing abortion, the government sets the rules under which abortions can take place. For example, in the United States, third-term abortions are limited to cases in which either the mother’s life is threatened or the child would be born severely physically or mentally impaired. In 1978, in Italy, driven by the Vatican’s policy banning contraception, abortions were exceeding a million a year—a country one-sixth the size of the United States.
Much to the chagrin of the Curia, Moro was embarrassing the Church by demanding it make sexual education more explicit and easier to understand in the curriculum of its schools. Perhaps, worst of all, he was encouraging homosexuals, even transsexuals, to stand up for their rights. He was riling them up.15
Yet, most dangerous of all, on the heels of the 1976 election, he had united his Christian Democratic Party (38.8% of the vote) with the Communist Party (34.4%) positioning communist ministers to take control of Italian Parliament.16
Karol Wojtyla, anti-communist archbishop of Krakow, called the union, “An engine of destruction of all moral values in the western world.” 17
From the other end of Poland, Boleshaw Filipiak, pro-communist bishop of Gniezno and longstanding archenemy of Wojtyla, called the union, “The embryonic beginning of a more just world.”18
Regardless, on March 10, 1978, Moro announced he would move communist members into control of Parliament on March 16th, an authority given him by the combination of the Historic Compromise and the results of the 1976 election. Italy was about to become a free communist nation sitting in the middle of Western Europe.19
Moro was not only the most influential man in Italy, he had rapidly emerged as the most influential man in all of Europe. The threat of communism loomed over Europe.
A quiet morning
Early on the morning of March 16, 1978, Eleonora Moro sat pensively at one end of the breakfast table while her husband scoured through a stack of newspapers at the other end. She thought back a couple years to when she and her husband and four children had lived in freedom, back to those days when their lavish estate was a paradise with views as far as the eye could see.
Now she lived in a fortress.
All she could see when she looked out of her windows were the blank stucco walls of the buildings that surrounded the modest fifth floor penthouse she now found herself living in. Moro had selected the building because those facing it had no windows.
On the floor beneath her, two dozen armed guards were either sleeping, readying themselves for the night shift, or getting up to the light of day. Two more were on the roof above, armed with surface-to-air missiles should a low flying aircraft threaten the building. It was as if she had moved into the Castel Gandolfo, except the guards were not dressed in the elaborate garb of the Swiss Guard.
Outside the walls enclosing the building, a line of cars was forming as if a funeral procession was about to begin. Yet, these cars were not loaded with flowers and dressed-up mourners. Instead, they were loaded with more armed guards who would guarantee Aldo’s safe travel to his office and the safety of Giovanni, the last of their live-in children, as he made his way to school.
Speaking of the Castel Gandolfo, it was there it had all began two years before. When, at the request of Paul VI, Aldo spent a week at the papal residence within the ancient fortress.
She thought they would spend the time reminiscing about the good old days. Like the time, she had told Aldo his first and only son was on his way. Of that time, Aldo had suggested they surprise his uncle and name the boy after him. So it was the infant was baptized Giovanni Montini Moro by Paul who, at the time, was Giovanni Montini, Archbishop of Milan.
She knew something must have gone terribly wrong that week for shortly afterwards Aldo united his Christian Democratic Party with the Communist Party in his Historic Compromise. He began to move the people away from much of the ideology of the Roman Catholic Church. After that, Aldo never met with Paul—at least as far as she or anyone else knew.
Paul’s favorite son and chosen successor Cardinal Luciani and the man Paul had picked to succeed himself as Archbishop of Milan—Giovanni Colombo—had something to do with this strange turn of events. They had been involved in that clandestine meeting and she believed it had been their strategy to unite the two parties in the Historic Compromise to give them time to iron out their differences.
Nevertheless, it was then the threats began—the anonymous death threats to Aldo and his family. For the most part, Aldo ignored them.
Then one day a threat came from across the pond—America. The next day Aldo hired an army of armed guards and moved his family out of the sprawling suburban estate she had once lived in happiness into the fortified prison which she now found herself.
Yet, on the other hand, she knew Paul and Aldo were constantly in touch with each other. It was she who approved the household phone bills for payment. Each week Aldo would make calls to Paul as if he were trying to reconcile himself with the Pope. She knew he must have been making some headway, as the calls were quite lengthy. Paul had not been hanging up on him.
There was something strange about the order of the calls. They followed a geometrical pattern on consecutive days of the week. If one week’s call was at 8 o’clock on Monday, the next week’s call was at 9 o’clock on Tuesday, and the following week’s call would be made at 10 o’clock on Wednesday, and so forth.
It was as if Aldo knew at these particular times the calls would go directly to Paul without being routed through his secretaries, as if to keep the matter of their possible reconciliation a private one between them. None of the calls were made by Paul as to leave no evidence of their communicating in the Vatican records.
Nevertheless, she missed Paul. It was a rare day in summer or winter the reigning pontiff would not show up at the Moro estate and spend the afternoon playing with the children and chatting with those who were lucky enough to get invited for the day. Yet, since she had moved her family here, Paul had never come to her prison.
Yet, the void had been filled by Cardinal Giocomo Violardo, a frequent visitor to the guarded penthouse in the sky. Giocomo, who held a doctorate in civil law from a Rome university, was how Pa
ul kept his fingers on what was going on in Parliament. The cardinal had powerful influence with devout Catholics in the House of Representatives—votes which Aldo often needed to lock up his agenda—the reason he and Giocomo had grown so close.
Eleonora had no idea Giocomo’s visits were about to come to an end. The following morning, his body would be found at the bottom of staircase in a remote corner of the Vatican bank.
Regardless, it was that morning she decided to ask Aldo, just what was the story? She had noticed the phone calls and she wanted to know if he had made progress with Paul. She asked the question.
He took her by the hand and led her to an overly-stuffed wingback chair which looked out of an enormous picture window. One that, in her memory, at one time had enclosed a beautiful blue pond hedged in with the greenery of weeping willows which had served as a home for swans. But now, all she could see, on this magnificent spring day, was the sun bouncing off a blank browning stucco wall.
“Paul also has his walls. But, in his case, the walls are built of flesh and bone and mostly of the minds of men. Unlike concrete, it will take much longer to tear them down. Only we here on the outside can help Paul tear down his walls. It is important his walls not know they are being taken down from the outside.”
That is all he told her. He smiled and kissed her lightly on the cheek and left her there in the chair. He headed for the door. That was the last time she saw him.20
‘A Quiet Morning’ is a part of Eleonora Moro’s court testimony in the Moro trial July 1982
The kidnapping of Aldo Moro
Moro set out from his self-made prison with a half-dozen security guards in two cars for the last time. The cars turned onto the busy Via Fani and moved at a whisker above medium speed.
Suddenly, the car directly in front of Moro’s car slammed on its brakes. Moro’s car crashed into its rear. The car with his bodyguards slammed into the rear of Moro’s car, pinning it between the two.
The incident took place in front of the Café Randolfo on the south side of the avenue. Immediately on impact, nine men and one woman dressed in the uniforms of the Italian airline Air Alitalia emerged from behind the bushes which hemmed in the sidewalk cafe with automatic weapons. When all was said and done, all of his bodyguards were dead or mortally wounded. Moro was whisked away in a three-car convoy escorted by two motorcycles equipped with police sirens. He was never seen alive again.21
An hour after the siege, Prime Minister Andreotti—expected to lose the upcoming election to Moro—addressed a shocked nation, “This is obviously the responsibility of the Red Brigades. Under no circumstances will we negotiate with terrorists.”22
Andreotti’s message confused the Italian people. Why would a left wing terrorist group, that, up until that time, had kidnapped thirty-two others all prominent right wing leaders, suddenly change its direction and kidnap someone from their own side of the aisle?
Andreotti was right. Shortly, the press received calls from people who claimed to represent the Red Brigades. The ransom demands included a payment of three billion lire—five million dollars—and the release of fifteen Red Brigades’ members who were awaiting trial for resisting arrest in a political rally.
At the time, there were twenty-three Red Brigades’ members serving life sentences for capital crimes. It made little sense the Brigades would seek the release of members who had not yet been convicted and who most likely would be released in the short term and allow the state to retain others for the rest of their lives.23
Eyebrows were raised as to how Andreotti knew the kidnappers were the Red Brigades before they had identified themselves. Yet, that they identified themselves should have set off a bell by itself.
Though the Brigades had been brought to court and convicted of other kidnappings and murders they had never before identified themselves as the perpetrators in order to protect themselves in the event they were brought to trial.
Had the kidnappers not identified themselves, it would have been assumed a right wing terrorist group, most likely Operation Gladio, was involved, as Moro was a prominent left wing leader.
Though involved in dozens of abductions, the Brigades had not previously committed a capital crime in a kidnapping. The gangland style of the attack was more characteristic of Operation Gladio and other right wing terrorist groups than it was of the Red Brigades.
The event had been witnessed by two hundred, several of whom knew members of the Brigades. Yet, no one recognized the attackers described as being in their forties and fifties. The Red Brigades was a youth organization, almost entirely in their teens and twenties.24
There remained the question, of the rich and powerful, Moro was the most heavily protected. Why take unnecessary risk in abducting him. Why not kidnap an easier target.
It would seem if the Brigades desired release of prisoners they would have abducted children or other relatives of right wing Prime Minister Andreotti who had little protection. Andreotti would have released the prisoners and paid the five million dollars on day one.
If the motive had been release of prisoners, why kidnap the greatest enemy of Prime Minister Andreotti who as head of state was the only person in Italy empowered to pardon prisoners. All of Italy knew Moro was Andreotti’s greatest adversary. The Brigades would have known their demands would never be met.
Despite these glaring inconsistencies, without other leads to go on, the police concentrated their search entirely on the Red Brigades.
The rise of communism in Western Europe
To determine who murdered Aldo Moro as well as most of the others we have and will talk about in this book, one must understand what was going on in Europe and Central America regarding the rise of communism in the western world as a free democratic society.
We will get to Central America soon. Now we will cover Europe.
In the aftermath of the war, Italy and Spain emerged as sitting ducks for communism. The Italians had suffered under the Hitler-Mussolini-Fascist regime and were prone to turn to the other extreme. The Spanish had suffered under the Franco-Escriva-Opus Dei-Fascist regime and were more and more finding their salvation in communism. These were two of the most Catholic countries in Europe and their populations were fed up with the remnants of fascism the Vatican continued to impose on them.
Yet, the threat of communism in Western Europe was not taken seriously until 1958 when the Communist Party in Italy achieved a recognizable level of electoral progress. Immediately following the 1958 election, the CIA and British Intelligence, through NATO, established Operation Gladio—a right wing terrorist militia with a mission to keep communism out of Western Europe.
Gladio remained relatively dormant until late in the 1960s when developments in northern Italy—the priest-worker revolution—gave it the foe it had been established to defeat.25
The common objective of Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic Party, the Italian Communist Party and the Red Brigades was to create a society that affords every child an equal opportunity to earn his/her share of the pie, with an emphasis on education, to enable each of them to make their maximum contribution back to society.
Communism in Italy then was not in the pure Marxist/Christ-like sense of the word—all God’s province is to be divided up equally. It intended only to impose heavy taxation on the rich to give equal opportunity to the poor, again, with an emphasis on education.
It was not a pawn of the Soviet Union. Unlike Stalinism, the Italian Communist Party had a clear fidelity to democracy and free elections; it was how it had come to power in the first place.
The wave of terrorism in Italy
The wave of terrorism that engulfed Italy in the 1970s had its roots in the 1960s.
On March 26, 1967, in his encyclical—Populorum Progressio—Paul condemned private property—the distribution of the world’s goods and resources should benefit all rather than few.
He defined the inalienable economic rights of man. Among these were the right to a just wage and the right to fai
r working conditions and the right to join a union. He specifically defined what was not the inalienable right of man, ‘…It is the inalienable right of no man to accumulate wealth beyond the necessary while other men starve to death because they have nothing.’
Thus began the priest-worker revolution.
The student movement took to the barricades and other social protagonists emerged to make their mark in the political arena. The factory worker class demanded fair wages for all. Communism has long been tagged by the opposition right to be synonymous with revolution of the poor in third world countries. In postwar Italy’s case, it extended to revolution of the workers.
The revolution was particularly strong in the northern industrial areas of Venice and Milan. The Archbishops of Venice and Milan, Luciani and Colombo, not only supported the worker’s cause, they had risen up as leaders of it. Paul VI—often tabbed a communist—had by design placed these champions of human justice in these heavily industrialized areas.26
Luciani had a personal motive for supporting the uprising. Many of the workers were orphans who had survived to adulthood. Regardless, it was from this unrest in the northern factories emerged the left wing terrorist group that today we know as the Red Brigades.
For much of Italy’s youth the movement was going too slowly. The Red Brigades was a left wing Marxist youth group which sought to accelerate the movement toward a more just society through terrorist activities. It followed a pattern of high profile kidnappings of the rich and powerful who were using their influence to impede the progress of communism in Italy. Among those it kidnapped were executives of factories, magistrates including Genoa Judge Mario Sossi, industrialists including Vallarino Gancia and even NATO generals. It financed itself with ransom money following a precise pattern: If the ransom was paid, the victim was returned. If it was not paid, the body of the victim was returned.27
While its members were repeatedly brought to trial in connection with the string of bombings that terrorized the Italian population in the 1970s, no Brigades’ member was ever convicted of any of them. An indisputable record of court decisions stand as historical proof the Red Brigades had no involvement in the wave of bombings that terrorized Italy in the 1970s.
Murder in the Vatican Page 38
