The Italian statesman Bettino Craxi (1934-2000) was the youngest person and the first socialist to become prime minister of the Italian republic. He resigned after three and a half years in office due to problems with his coalition government. In the...

Craxi has plans CRISIS is hardly the word for the fall of an Italian government. They come like swallows and like swallows usually they go. So on May 19th Mr Ciriaco De Mita handed in his resignation after only 13 months in...

BETTINO CRAXI scored two major achievements in his turbulent career in Italian politics. He became the first member of a left- wing party to head a national government, in a country whose political system had traditionally sought to exclude the Left at all costs...

Italian Premier Romano Prodi promised Monday to promote dialogue with the Vatican after churchmen were alarmed by the government's proposal to grant legal rights to same-sex partners and unmarried heterosexual couples.Prodi was to review church-state relations in a meeting later Monday with Pope Benedict XVI's...

Pope Benedict XVI's top aide and Premier Romano Prodi on Monday discussed a proposed Italian law to grant legal rights to same-sex partners and unmarried heterosexual couples _ a prospect that has alarmed the Vatican."Naturally we talked about" the proposed legislation, with "each side making...