Venerable Luigi Calabresi

Luigi Calabresi (14 November 1937 – 17 May 1972) was an Italian Polizia di Stato officer in Milan. Responsible for investigating far-left political movements, Calabresi was assassinated in 1972 by members of Lotta Continua, who blamed him for the death of anarchist activist Giuseppe Pinelli in police custody in 1969. The deaths of Pinelli and Calabresi were significant events during the Years of Lead, a period of major political violence and unrest in Italy from the 1960s to the 1980s. Calabresi was born on 14 November 1937 into a middle-class Roman family. His father was a wine and cooking oil merchant. He attended the classical secondary school San Leone Magno and then the Sapienza University of Rome to study Law. In 1964, he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on the Sicilian Mafia. Having been part of Catholic associations during his years in school, he enrolled, while studying at the Sapienza, in the Oasis movement, founded in 1950 by Jesuits. After finishing his studies, Calabresi, feeling himself, as he'd confided to friends, unsuited for the forensic work of jurisprudence, chose to try to enlist in the police. In 1965, he won the competition to enter L'istituto superiore di polizia and, after completing his studies there, he was assigned to the position of deputy commissioner in Milan. During his time in the police force, he occasionally wrote articles that were published under a pseudonym in the newspaper Momento-sera. Calabresi, in the course of his work in the political section of the police, cultivated contacts with various persons of the Italian left. Journalist Giampaolo Pansa, who knew him, described Calabresi as having a "cordial and easygoing air," someone who "reads a lot and tries to understand the ideas and the men of the extra-parliamentary left," ideas that had become "his job".