Servant of God Alcide De Gasperi

Alcide Amedeo Francesco De Gasperi was an Italian politician and statesman who founded the Christian Democracy party and served as prime minister of Italy in eight successive coalition governments from 1945 to 1953. De Gasperi was the last prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, serving under both Victor Emmanuel III and Umberto II. He was also the first prime minister of the Italian Republic, and also briefly served as provisional head of state after the Italian people voted to end the monarchy and establish a republic. His eight-year term in office remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics. De Gasperi is the fifth longest-serving prime minister since the Risorgimento. A devout Catholic, he was one of the founding fathers of the European Union along with fellow Italian Altiero Spinelli. De Gasperi was born in 1881 in Pieve Tesino in Tyrol, now part of the Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige, which had been part of Austria-Hungary for more than 500 years. His father was a local police officer of limited financial means. From 1896, De Gasperi was active in the Social Christian movement. In 1900 he joined the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in Vienna, where he played an important role in the inception of the Christian student movement. He was very much inspired by the Rerum novarum encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. In 1904, he took an active part in student demonstrations in favour of an Italian-language university. During the inauguration of the Italian Faculty of Law in Innsbruck, he was imprisoned with a number of other protesting students, but was released after twenty days. In 1905, De Gasperi obtained a degree in philology. In 1905, he began to work as editor of the newspaper La Voce Cattolica (The Catholic Voice) which was replaced in September 1906 by Il Trentino and he soon became its editor.