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Giulio Andreotti was an Italian politician of the Christian Democracy party, and seven-time premier. Andreotti became active in politics after a chance encounter with Alcide De Gasperi, who became his mentor. The compromise that Gasperi advocated was central to Andreotti's political style; some interpreted it as showing a certain cynicism. He attained junior ministerial rank at the age of 28, and first became prime minister in 1972. Occupying all the major offices of state, he was a figure who reassured the civil service, business community, and the Vatican. Andreotti was instrumental in the deeper integration of Italy into the European Union, though imposing the required discipline on his country's public finances was not something he pursued with rigor. In foreign policy he established closer relations with the Arab world. Admirers of Andreotti saw him as having mediated political and social contradictions, enabling the transformation of a substantially rural country into the fifth-biggest economy in the world. Critics said he had done nothing against a system of patronage that had led to pervasive corruption. In his personal life he was a devout Catholic with a relatively modest lifestyle who did not use his position to enrich himself or his family.
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