in 1979, he was appointed secretary of the small but powerful Italian Republican Party (PRI). As a journalist, he sometimes used the pseudonym Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (Giovanni of the Black Bands). Prime Minister of Italy He served as Prime Minister of Italy from 1981 to 1982, the first PM since 1945 not to be a member of the Christian Democrats. He pledged to fight corruption (in particular a scandal involving certain Italian political figures connected with a Masonic lodge known as P2) and mounting terrorist violence. In foreign policy, he was a non-interventionist but also moderately Americanist. In particular, he shifted away from Italy's previous pro-Arab policy, refusing to meet Yasser Arafat during his official visit to Italy to protest the murder of Stefano Gaj Taché, an Italian Jewish child, by PLO terrorists, and suggesting that the Bologna train station bombing may have been perpetrated by the PLO and Gaddafi's Libya, in spite of a majority accusing neo-fascists. In 1982, after a political crisis between the Minister of the Treasury Beniamino Andreatta (DC) and the Minister of Finance Rino Formica (PSI), Spadolini resigned and formed a new cabinet identical to the former, which collapsed in November when Bettino Craxi's Socialist Party withdrew its support. Later life Under his leadership, the PRI obtained 5% of all votes for the first time in the 1983 Italian general election. From 1987 to April 1994, he was president of the Italian Senate. He became Acting President of Italy on 28 April 1992, upon the resignation of then President Francesco Cossiga, for a month. Following the electoral success of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, he lost the chairmanship of the Senate to Carlo Scognamiglio Pasini by a single vote. Personal life and death Spadolini never married. In July 1994 he had a stomach operation. He died of respiratory failure in Rome in August 1994. Electoral history References External links 1925 births 1994 deaths 20th-century Italian journalists Candidates for President of Italy Culture ministers of Italy Deaths from respiratory failure Deputies of Legislature VI of Italy Deputies of Legislature VII of Italy Deputies of Legislature VIII of Italy Deputies of Legislature IX of Italy Deputies of Legislature X of Italy Italian Ministers of Defence Italian Republican Party politicians Italian life senators Italian male journalists Italian newspaper editors Politicians from Florence Presidents of the Italian Senate Prime Ministers of Italy