Corridors of silence.

• Author: Flamini, Roland
• Position: Rome's former political powers

When I was a correspondent in Rome in the early 1980s I regularly did the rounds of four centers of political power. First stop was usually the Christian Democrat Party headquarters in Piazza del Gesu, across the square from Giacomo della Porta's severe facade of the Jesuit church del Gesu, prototype of early Baroque churches all over Europe. Until 1992, the Democrazia Cristiana - or DC - had been the main party in Italy's fifty-six postwar governments, almost all of which were coalitions, and to a large extent Italy was run from the party's ancient palazzo. Dark blue Alfa Romeos drove in and out of its cobbled courtyard. A continuous procession of politicians, diplomats, supplicants, and hangers-on filed past the portico, which bristled with police.

A block away, in the quaintly named Via delle Botteghe Oscure, was the base of operations of the DC's major rivals, the Partito Comunista Italiano, the powerful PCI. The solid, granite structure, built after the war with Soviet money, housed the party that for over twenty years, from the 1950s to the 1970s, gained the largest number of votes, but was consistently kept out of office by a succession of political alliances cobbled up by the Christian Democrats with a varying collection of bedfellows. The exclusion of the PCI from the government at all costs was the central fact of Italian postwar political life, imposing limits on the country's democratic system; but the vigorous comings and goings at its headquarters reflected the party's undeniable influence.

The entrance to the Italian Socialist Party's headquarters was through a galleria of fashionable stores. In the main hall there used to be large pictures of the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi. When Craxi was prime minister of Italy at one stage of the eternal political choreography, banners with the Italian Socialist emblem of a red carnation fluttered from the balcony, and the waiting blue Alfas blocked the busy street.

The fourth power center, of course, was the one inside the stone embrace of Bernini's circular colonnade in St. Peter's Square. With an Italian pope on the Throne of Peter, Vatican backing of the Christian Democrats was automatic. Italian bishops issued regular directives to the faithful on how to vote before every election, and threats to excommunicate those who supported the Communists were frequent. The late William Colby once told me that when he was CIA station chief in Rome he worked as closely with the Pope's substitute secretary of state, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI), as with any political leader.

I went back to Rome in September. The pace was slowly picking up after the long summer vacation. Clouds of scooters raced like gnats through the streets. Wall posters advertised the Rome Opera season's performances in the Borghese Gardens. Until the summer of 1995, opera in the famous...