Massimo Franco

Massimo Franco (Rome, 6 of November, 1954) is a political commentator for the Corriere della Sera, where he writes a daily column. Before joining the Rome office of the leading Italian daily, he worked for the national Catholic daily Avvenire, for Il Giorno and for the magazine Panorama as a special correspondent and analyst. Since 2002 he is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of London, UK. He was a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 1986-87, to study lobbies and interest groups. Commentator for State tv Rai, Television and Radio, and for Telecom’s tv La Sette, where he is a regular guest at 8&1/2> evening talk show. He contributes time by time to the BBC. His articles were also published in The Los Angeles Times, The Congressional Quarterly, in the IISS Quarterly Survival, and the French Jesuits’ review Etudes. In 2011 he contributed as a Vatican analyst for the English daily The Guardian ‘s Comment is Free.

Some of the awards he received: Premiolino> as Political Columnist. 2001, Milan. Prize Capalbio for political essays, for his biography of Giulio Andreotti in 2009. Prize Ernest Hemingway for Journalism in 2010, Lignano Sabbiadoro. International Prize A. Sala> for political journalism in 2010, Mantova. Amalfi International Award as author and columnist, 2011. International Award Ischia as Journalist of the Year, 2012.

As an author for Mondadori, the most important and respected Italian publishing house, he wrote many essays on Italian and international politics and on the Vatican. The most recent ones: Imperi Paralleli, a history of Vatican-U.S. relationship (2005), published in 2009 in the U.S. by Random House-Doubleday, as Parallel Empires. Andreotti (2008), the non authorized biography of former controversial Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. C’era una volta un Vaticano (Once there was a Vatican). Why the Catholic Church is loosing influence in the West, in 2010. And now La Crisi dell’Impero Vaticano (The Crisis of The Vatican Empire) Why the Church has become the global accused. From this book we publish the chapter: Spread: a Catholic Sin. Massimo Franco is married to Ilaria Angeli. They have one daughter, Federica, and two sons, Matteo and Tommaso.