by secretary Forlani, tried to continue his centrist strategy, but his attempt only lasted a year. The cabinet fell due to the withdrawal of the external support of the Italian Republican Party on the matter of local television reform. Social policies Andeotti's approach owed little to a belief that market mechanisms could be left to work without interference. He used price controls on essential foodstuffs and various social reforms to reach an understanding of organised labour. A law of 11 August 1972 extended health insurance to citizens over 65 to receive a social pension. A law of 30 June 1973 extended the cost of living indexation to the social pension. A devout Catholic, Andreotti was on close terms with six successive pontiffs. He occasionally gave the Vatican unsolicited advice and was often heeded. He updated the relationship of Roman Catholicism to the Italian state in an accord he presented to parliament. It put the country on a more secular basis: abolishing Roman Catholicism as the state religion, making religious instruction in public schools optional, and having the Church accept Italy's divorce law in 1971. Andreotti opposed legal divorce and abortion, but despite his party's opposition, he couldn't avoid the legalization of abortion in May 1978. Foreign policy Andreotti was a strong NATO supporter and was invited to America by the U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1973. A year earlier, he paid an official visit to the Soviet Union, the first one by an Italian Prime Minister in over a decade. During his premiership, Italy opened and developed diplomatic and economic relationships with Arab countries of the Mediterranean Basin, and supported business and trade between Italy and the Soviet Union. Second term as Prime Minister After his resignation, Andreotti served as Minister of Defence in the government of Mariano Rumor and as Minister of Budget in the cabinets of Aldo Moro. In 1976, the Italian Socialist Party left the centre-left government of Moro. The ensuing general elections saw the growth of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and the DC kept only a minimal advantage as the relative majority party in Italy, which was then suffering from an economic crisis and terrorism. After the success of his party, the Communist secretary Enrico Berlinguer approached DC's left-leaning leaders, Moro and Fanfani, with a proposal to bring forward the so-called Historic Compromise, a political pact proposed by Moro which would see a government coalition