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April 18, 2021 Former parliamentarian and former undersecretary Luigi Covatta, who as a Catholic intellectual contributed to the formulation of the reformism of the 'new course' of Bettino Craxi's PSI, died in his home in Rome at the age of 77. From 2009 he was the editor of "Mondoperaio", the socialist cultural magazine founded by Pietro Nenni. After the end of the PSI, Covatta carried out an intense activity as a publicist and with the publisher Marsilio he published the books "Menshevichi. The reformists in the history of republican Italy" (2005) and edited, together with Gennaro Acquaviva, " Moro. Firmness and negotiation thirty years later "(2008) and" The 'great reform' of Craxi "(2010).
In 2018 Covatta was among the first founding members of the Socialism Foundation with Gennaro Acquaviva, Giuliano Amato and Riccardo Nencini. Since 2019 the Foundation had acquired the ownership of the monthly magazine "Mondoperaio". Born in Forio d'Ischia on May 15, 1943, Covatta's political activity began at a very young age: as a student he was national secretary of the University Intesa, the Catholic-inspired organization.
As a left-wing Catholic he ran for political elections in 1972 on the lists of the Labor Political Movement of Livio Labor, the former president of the ACLI who had made the choice for socialism. The list got no seats and, with most of the party, Covatta also joined the PSI. As an intellectual he came to the direction of the PSI Study Center, which contributed to the ideal and programmatic elaboration of the new socialist course imprinted by the secretary Bettino Craxi in the second half of the 1970s.
From 1979 to 1994 Covatta was first a deputy and then a senator for the Socialist Party. From July 1986 he was undersecretary for public education in the Craxi II government; then with
the same position in the Goria government and in the De Mita government, until July 1989. He then held the position of Undersecretary for Cultural Heritage in the Andreotti VI government and in the Andreotti VII government. From 1992 to 1994 he was vice-president of the parliamentary commission for institutional reforms and from 1993 to 1994 president of the Labor Commission of the Senate.
After the dissolution of the PSI, Covatta followed Giuliano Amato and for the 1994 general elections he joined the central aggregation of the Pact for Italy for which he was a candidate for the Senate in the college of Pozzuoli without however being elected. He had then participated, in its initial phase, in the constitution of the Democrats of the Left, only to detach from them, disappointed by the way in which that affair unfolded.
As a journalist he has carried out an intense activity collaborating with "La Repubblica", "Il Mattino", "L'Italia", "Avanti!", "Social Relations", "Settegiorni", "Il Corriere della Sera", "Il Riformista" and "The Reasons of Socialism".