Editing Pope Paul VI (section)

===Kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro===
[[File:Aldo Moro br.jpg|thumb|[[Aldo Moro]], photographed during his kidnapping by the [[Red Brigades]] in 1978]]
On 16 March 1978, former [[Prime Minister of Italy|Italian prime minister]] [[Aldo Moro]]—a friend of Paul VI's from his FUCI student days—was kidnapped by a far-left Italian terrorist group known as the [[Red Brigades]]. The kidnapping kept the country and the Pope in suspense for 55 days.<ref>Hebblethwaite 699</ref> On 20 April, Moro directly appealed to the Pope to intervene as [[Pope Pius XII]] had intervened in the case of Professor [[Giuliano Vassalli]] in the same situation.<ref name="Hebblethwaite 700-701">Hebblethwaite 700–701</ref> The eighty-year-old Paul VI wrote a letter to the [[Red Brigades]]:

{{blockquote|I have no mandate to speak to you, and I am not bound by any private interests in his regard. But I love him as a member of the great human family as a friend of student days and by a very special title as a brother in faith and as a son of the Church of Christ. I make an appeal that you will certainly not ignore. On my knees I beg you, free Aldo Moro, simply without conditions, not so much because of my humble and well-meaning intercession, but because he shares with you the common dignity of a brother in humanity. Men of the Red Brigades, leave me, the interpreter of the voices of so many of our fellow citizens, the hope that in your heart feelings of humanity will triumph. In prayer and always loving you I await proof of that.<ref name="Hebblethwaite 700-701"/>}}

Some in the Italian government accused the Pope of treating the Red Brigades too kindly. Paul VI continued looking for ways to pay ransom for Moro, but his efforts were fruitless. On 9 May, the bullet-riddled body of Aldo Moro was found in a car in Rome.<ref>Hebblethwaite 706</ref> Pope Paul VI later celebrated his State Funeral Mass.