Mennini denies hearing Aldo Moro’s last confession

The Vatican’s ambassador to Great Britain has denied visiting the final holding place of the ­murdered former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro to hear his last confession in May 1978. Moro’s bullet-riddled body was found in the boot of a red Renault 4 in Rome’s Via Michelangelo Caetani on 9 May, 55 days after his kidnap by Red Brigades terrorists.

The nuncio, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, spoke on Monday before a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Moro case, the latest in a long series. He has spoken at ­earlier inquiries and some of the five trials in the case. Last Monday, he tried to set the record straight on the widely held belief that – when acting as a priest in Moro’s parish – he heard his last confession.
“I could not confess Moro and give him Communion during the 55 days of his captivity,” Archbishop Mennini said.

Italian Cardinal Loris Capovilla, 99, several Red Brigades terrorists in prison and Moro’s secretary all suggested that Moro was visited while he was in captivity by a priest. The Interior Minister at the time, Francesco Cossiga, claimed before his death that Mennini had reached Moro in the Red Brigades’ hideout without the Government’s knowledge.

But on Monday, Archbishop Mennini dismissed these claims as “urban legend”. “If I had gone to the hideout, I would have tried to do something concrete to free Moro. I would have offered to take his place or tried to reason with the terrorists. Or I would have tried to remember the journey so I could give useful information to the investigators,” Archbishop Mennini said. The nuncio confirmed he was used twice by the Red Brigades to deliver letters to Moro’s family. And he told the commission that Pope Paul VI, a personal friend of Moro’s, had prepared a 10 billion lira (£3.7 million) ransom. “I came to know [this] two or three years later,” he said.

Moro had agreed to form a governing coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party, and was kidnapped on the day the deal was to be ratified in parliament. Opposition to these arrangements was widespread.

After Moro’s murder, Mennini was quickly given a diplomatic position and posted abroad.

As an ambassador to Britain, Mennini is entitled to diplomatic immunity, but Pope Francis apparently gave permission for the new investigating commission to summon him, possibly  hoping to bring to light Paul VI’s attempts to intervene on Moro’s behalf.

On 22 April 1978, Pope Paul VI asked the Red Brigades to return Moro to his family, specifying that they should do so “without conditions”. Moro, who had previously written a letter to the Pope, reportedly reacted angrily to the latter point, feeling he had been abandoned by the Vatican.