Word: luigi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Early Life: Born in Caltagirone, Sicily, Sept. 5, 1901, christened Mario Scelba (pronounced Shell-ba). His poor family sharecropped land owned by Don Luigi Sturzo, Italy's great political priest who founded what is now the Christian Democratic Party. Don Luigi was the boy's godfather, paid for his law studies in Rome, employed him as his private secretary, thus launched him in politics...
Political Career: When Don Luigi's party was suppressed by the Fascists in 1926, Scelba dropped out of politics, lived as a none-too-successful criminal lawyer. In wartime, when the movement revived underground, he was arrested by the Nazis for publishing a clandestine newspaper. After the war, he was appointed a member of the Allied-controlled temporary Parliament. He became De Gasperi's Minister of Interior...
...courteously consulted ruffled deputies. He dashed off an earnest public message to Party Leader Alcide de Gasperi: "On my taking office . . . my first affectionate, devout and admiring thought goes to you." He made a personal trip out the New Appian Way to a convent where resides frail Don Luigi Sturzo, the aged priest who founded the Christian Democrat Party, was once Scelba's mentor (see box). Though Scelba was unable to persuade the last two Premiers (Amintore Fanfani and Giuseppe Pella) to serve in his cabinet, Attilio Piccioni, a right-winger, agreed to stay on as Foreign Minister. Scelba...
Apples on the Desk. In World War II, Fanfani escaped Mussolini's draft by fleeing to Switzerland, where (together with Italian President Luigi Einaudi) he taught Italian students in internment camps. Ambitious, aggressive and a disciplinarian (he says he believes in authority, efficiency, and the Sermon on the Mount), Fanfani after the war, took on a succession of ministries under Premier Alcide de Gasperi. As Minister of Labor, he developed the "Fanfani house" program which so far has produced more than 7,700 government-built workers' homes; he put 200,000 of Italy's many unemployed...
Locomotive Engineer Luigi Cremonini, who flies from Rome to Milan, is an art-minded man, and his fellow workers call him "the Professor." During station stops he makes a habit of sketching in his cab. When his son was born 28 years ago, Luigi Cremonini hopefully named the boy Leonardo Raffaello. Father and son spent days off together painting by the green-scummed Navile Canal, which connects their native city of Bologna...