Mariano Rumor

Mariano Rumor (16 June 1915 – 22 January 1990) was an Italian politician and statesman.

Mariano Rumor was born in Vicenza, Veneto, on 16 June 1915.

His father, Giuseppe Rumor, was the owner of a printing studio and promoter of a local magazine, "The Catholic Worker" founded by Rumor's grandfather.

His mother, Tina Nardi, came from a liberal family.

He attended the classical lyceum Antonio Pigafetta in Vicenza, then he earned a degree from the University of Padua in literature in 1939.

After his graduation, Rumor became a teacher at an Italian lyceum until his mobilization as a lieutenant in the Italian Army during the Second World War.

Subsequent to the Armistice of Cassibile in 1943 between Italy and the Allied powers, Rumor joined the Italian resistance movement.

After the end of the war, he was among the founders of the Christian Associations of Italian Workers (ACLI), the widespread lay Catholic associations, and joined the Christian Democracy (DC) party, of which he became one of the main leaders in Veneto, very close to Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi.

In the 1946 election, Rumor was elected with more than 29,000 votes to the Constituent Assembly, for the constituency of Verona–Padova–Vicenza–Rovigo.

He became a member of the new-born Chamber of Deputies in 1948.

The 1948 elections were heavily influenced by the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, and are now best known for the covert political warfare waged by the US State Department and Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of the DC.

The elections were eventually won with a comfortable margin by De Gasperi's DC that defeated the left-wing coalition of the Popular Democratic Front, that comprised the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).

As a deputy he became very close to Giuseppe Dossetti, becoming a member of his Christian leftist wing.

In 1950, Guido Gonella succeeded Paolo Emilio Taviani as National Secretary of the DC; the target of the new secretariat was to build a unitary management of the party in support of the government led by Alcide De Gasperi.

In this context, Rumor was nominated for the first time as National Deputy Secretary, together with Dossetti.

The withdrawal from politics of Giuseppe Dossetti, left his faction without a charismatic leader; however, Mariano Rumor played a decisive role in the birth of the new faction, called "Democratic Initiative", which brought together not only Dossetti's followers, such as Giorgio La Pira, Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro, but also members of the centrist pro-De Gasperi majority, as Paolo Emilio Taviani and Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.

Rumor himself presented the manifesto of Democratic Initiative, published on a magazine with the same name.

In this text, alongside the declaration of support for De Gasperi and the Atlantic Pact, Dossetti's principles of a Christian reformist party were reaffirmed, with the aim of moving the country towards a "democratic evolution".

Rumor immediately played a leading role in the faction.

This position, led him to hold the first government posts, becoming Undersecretary for Agriculture in De Gasperi's seventh government, a position he also maintained in De Gasperi VIII Cabinet and, after De Gasperi's retirement in 1954, in the short-lived government led by Giuseppe Pella.

In the brief first Fanfani government, from January to February 1954, Rumor was appointed to Secretary of the Council of Ministers.

In 1954, after the National Congress of Naples, which saw the affirmation of Democratic Initiative and the subsequent election of Fanfani as party's Secretary, Rumor was elected again deputy secretary.

He held this office for the next five years, until Democratic Initiative split up.

In fact, many members of the faction, started criticizing the political line of Fanfani's secretariat, who cautiously began to open to the prospect of a collaboration with Italian Socialist Party (PSI).

Rumor served as Italian Minister of Agriculture from 1959 to 1963, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1976, and Italian Minister of the Interior in two brief periods, in 1963 and from 1972 to 1973.

Prominent members of the faction, including Rumor himself, put the Secretary in minority during the National Congress of March 1959.

In this way, Democratic Initiative split up between the followers of Fanfani and the dissident group, now renamed by all Dorotei ("Dorotheans"), from the place where they had gathered before the congress, the convent of the sisters of Santa Dorotea in Rome.

The new faction was built around Antonio Segni, Mariano Rumor and Aldo Moro, who was elected new Secretary.

In the same year, as one of the faction's leaders, Rumor was appointed Minister of Agriculture, in the second Segni's government, a position he would keep in the governments of Fernando Tambroni, and Fanfani.

In this role, Rumor contributed to the definition of one of the first plans for the development and innovation of the national agricultural sector, the so-called "Green Plan".

In 1963 election, the DC suffered a sharp decline of consensus.

Rumor was appointed Minister of the Interior in the short-lived government chaired by Giovanni Leone.

As minister, he had to face one of the most tragic events in Italian republican history, the Vajont Dam disaster.

On 9 October 1963, a landslide occurred on Monte Toc, in the province of Pordenone.

The landslide caused a megatsunami in the artificial lake in which 50 million cubic metres of water overtopped the dam in a wave of 250 metres, leading to the complete destruction of several villages and towns, and 1,917 deaths.

In the previous months, the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE) and the Italian government, which both owned the dam, dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.

Immediately after the disaster, government and local authorities insisted on attributing the tragedy to an unexpected and unavoidable natural event.

Rumor was the secretary of the DC from 1964 to 1969.

A member of the Christian Democracy (DC), he served as the 39th prime minister of Italy from December 1968 to August 1970 and again from July 1973 to November 1974.

As prime minister, he led five different governments, supported by various coalitions.