It began the way any Italian comic opera should: amid flowers, panoply and applause. The fanfare last fall was for little Italian Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani, off in New York greeting the Pope, making speeches and generally cutting a bella figura as the first of his nation to be honored with the presidency of the U.N. General Assembly. Then—omen of trouble—came the first slip: he fell on an icy New York sidewalk, mildly injuring his leg.
As the mishap hit the headlines back home, all Italy chuckled. Fanfani had hardly smoothed down his dignity and limped away when the next blow came. He found himself involved in a Hanoi "peace feeler" to the U.S. that turned out to be a dismal flop. Of course, he felt he was only doing his duty—that it was the responsibility of any statesman to pass along to the President of the U.S. the slightest intimation of an end to the bloody Viet Nam war. The folks back home, however, were less impressed than amused at this "amateur peacemaking." Particularly since Fanfani had been misled by a friend he reveres, but whom most of Italy considers a buffoon.
Big Saints. The friend was Giorgio La Pira, known as "the Saint" to his admirers, who credit even his garments with healing powers. Saint or quaint (and a law professor at the University of Florence), he came by both reputations as mayor of Florence in the 1950s when, trying as a Christian Democratic politician to beat the Communists at their own social-welfare game, he was largesse to a fault. La Pira lived alone in a bare room above a clinic and gave away most of his salary. He was equally openhanded with the Florentine treasury, which ultimately cost him the mayoralty job. Fanfani and his buxom, dimpled wife Biancarosa (White Rose) have not only been close friends to La Pira, but have also regarded him as their health and spiritual counselor. They even had one of the Saint's old hats around to wave over the heads of their seven children as a "cure" for minor ailments.
When La Pira's touch failed to exercise healing powers in Viet Nam, Fanfani gamely went ahead with his final duties at the U.N., gaveling the session to a close and returning home—just in time to find himself guffaw-deep in a whole new farce with La Pira. This time the unwitting agent of humiliation was his own Biancarosa. Aiming to rescue La Pira's and her husband's image, she had invited the chief editor of the rightist satirical weekly Il Borghese, one of La Pira's harshest critics, to meet the old family friend—certain that his personal charm would carry the day. The editor came to the Fanfani apartment atop Rome's Monte Mario hill, expecting the Saint to talk about "saints and santoni [sarcastically, big saints]. Instead, he started talking about politics."